The timing of this is good.  I was going to take a respite after having written my expectations yesterday for the debate tonight and had nothing to add about that.  And there was nothing that struck me as being anywhere near as important and therefore somewhat distracting.  So, I was looking for something frivolous.  And this fit.

As readers here have long-since figured out, I love the Chicago Cubs.  Having said that, bear with me and don't go running off yet.  The point here isn't about baseball, though it's part of the story, but only part.  And it isn't all praise.  Just some.

The baseball part:  on Sunday, the Cubs had a Cubs Hall of Fame presentation for two of their all-time great players, pitcher Kerry Wood (legendary on the team for having pitched one of the greatest games in major league history his rookie season -- a one-hit game with a still-record-tying 20 strikeouts) and third baseman Aramis Ramirez, who hit 368 home runs in his career.

Okay, that's pretty much the baseball part.  This is where we get into the point.

The Cubs made a video to honor the two men, which played on the scoreboard at Wrigley Field, but they also posted it on their website this way --

Okay, without knowing anything about the Cubs, or even if you knew zero about Kerry Wood or Aramis Ramirez -- when you see that tweet above, and read it in full...take a guess, with no more clues, and who do you think "Justin Wood" is?

While there is a reasonably good chance that you're right with your guess (well-done!), I won't give the answer yet, because for those who might still not be 100% sure, here below is the video itself.

And trust me, there is actually a point to all this.  And a non-baseball point it is.

By the way, you don't have to watch the 2-1/2-minute video to keep playing the game, because I'll give some more hints from it below.  But it's a very good video, filled with clues, and it's also fun to see how emotional Kerry Wood and Aramis Ramirez are while watching it -- narrated as it is by Justin Wood and Aramis Ramirez, Jr.  Especially Kerry Wood, who clearly seems on the verge of bursting into tears at any given moment, with a clench, quivering jaw.
​

Okay, if you did watch the video, you got a bunch of clues to the question at hand.  If you didn't watch it, though, some of the clues are --

Justin Wood saying that "Wrigley Field was your office, but some days you took me to work."  And also, as this is being said, there are pictures of Kerry Wood and a little boy.

In addition, another clue:  Justin Wood says that to Cubs fans, Kerry Wood's most famous strikeouts were his 20 in that one memorable game, but "For me, it's your last one."  And as he says that, we see Kerry Wood strike out a batter, and then turn to walk off the field, as we hear the announcer say that that is Kerry Wood, who is retiring, leaving the field for the very last time -- and a little boy runs onto the field and hugs him.

And one last clue if you haven't figured out a guess yet.  Near the end of the video, Justin Wood says, "To Cubs fans, you were a hero.  But to me, you were my dad."

Okay, now, it's time to make a guess.  No need to guess on who Aramis Ramirez, Jr. is, I'm sure you've got that one figured out.  It's easy.  The harder question is who do you think the other narrator is, Justin Wood?

I'll give you a moment.

Are you ready?  Okay, he is --

Kerry Wood's son!  Yes, really.  It's true!

I know that some of you (which is the polite way of saying "all") guessed -- "Kerry Wood's son" and think that this quiz game is stupid.  And you're right on both couonts, but as I said, that's not the point.  There is a totally separate point to it all.

That's because, as much as I love the Cubs.  And think the fans are wonderful and loyal and know and love baseball and stuck with the team for 108 years of futility --

-- it turns out that for a handful of the fans, that is the limit of their expertise, deep and abiding love of the team, and perhaps because they pour so much love on the Cubs, for other areas of their daily life away from baseball they have little room left for common sense and are unearthly stupid.  Because, and I swear this is true, these few took to Twitter to not only ask who  "Justin" was, but also slam the Cubs administration for not telling them.  And the thing is, lunatic as that is, it's not just one of two who just screwed up, but almost close to a dozen or so!!

Yes, really.

To be clear, no, not everyone, thank goodness.  And not even most, thank heavens.  Most Cubs fans who posted weren't delusional, but sane and rational with an awareness of life outside the ballpark.  And they loved the video tribute and were emotional and were joyous celebrating two of their all-time favorites.  But that many people, maybe around 10, actually were that totally clueless.  Honest.  It explains much about problems in life caused by others.

(Were some joking?  It's possible, too, obviously.  But when you see the breadth of them, and the phrasing of most, some people pissed off, some even posting graphic memes of annoyance, and that there's no real reason to make yourself look that stupid publicly, even for just a joke -- no, I think all of them were on the level.)

And because even though I'm insisting it's true that people posting couldn't figure out who Justin Wood was, I feel this is so insane that proof is needed.  So, here are just a couple screen shots of some of them.
​

And also --

Yes, I know.  Dear Lord.  I only hope they aren't licensed to drive heavy machinery. 

(I also hope some were not Cubs fans at all, but just Twitter stragglers who'll comment on anything that scrolls by their feed. But it's not likely.  Besides which, if Cubs hopes were effective, the team would have won a World Series a lot sooner than 108 years.)

But for all that, this below was my favorite of them all.  My favorite because the guy not only didn't have a clue, but he was so annoyed at the Cubs' website administrator for not explaining who this "Justin" person was that he took them to task.

Yet what I like most about the exchange is that the Chicago Cubs official who handles the online account -- someone who I'm sure is told to be as absolutely polite and gracious to everyone who posts on the website, even St. Louis Cardinals fans -- was clearly so taken aback and aghast at the depth of monumental stupidity (forget all the brain-dead obvious clues, the first line says, "We call them heroes. They call them Dad") that even he couldn't help but be just a wee bit snarky in reply.
​

So, for all of you readers here who correctly guessed that "Justin Wood" is, in fact, Kerry Wood's son -- 

Huge congratulations!  You win our Chicago Cubs Fan of the Day Award!!

It's why I always say that we have the finest readers on these pages in the entire Internet.  And I appreciate you all.

Don’t become a vegetarian.
 
Israel does have a right to exist.
 
Putin is the bad guy.  Not Zelensky.  

The Philadelphia Eagles are the bad people.  Not Saquan Barkley.
 
Whenever you are told something by a politician or college administrator, always keep these questions in mind:  Who the hell are you to tell me what to do with my body or my money, what words to use, or how to think?
 
Always do the right thing and try to help people.  It will always come back to snap you in the ass in some way.  Just enjoy the drama.
 
Never say anything bad about a person behind their back.  Say it to their face.  Your life will be so much richer.

​A friend asked me the other day how I thought the debate would go tomorrow.  I repeated pretty much what I wrote here a long while back before Trump and President Biden debated.  I was wrong about that for all of the reasons that we now know.  President Biden just wasn’t up for it.  However, there are two things worth adding for perspective: 
 
The first is that Trump himself did not do well during that debate.  Polls showed that viewers were put off by his relentless lying.  And not doing well against an 81-year-old man having a day so poor that he soon after dropped out of the race is a very huge warning sign for Republicans.  Particularly when he himself is 78 with his own very serious cognitive issue of dementia that, unlike old age (which he also faces), is not normal, and degenerative.  And the second is that Kamala Harris is a generation younger, and twice-elected Attorney General of California and elected District Attorney of San Francisco, a career prosecutor whose professional life has been convicting criminals and dealing with liars and con men.  Further, all the difficult debates issues for Trump that I’ve written about, every one of them still holds. 

And one other thought –
 
It is my hope that Kamala Harris doesn’t go into the debate having prepared with the strategy to win it, as is the norm for debates, of course, but rather with the uncommon goal of showing that Trump is in such horrible shape -- mentally, criminally, politically, emotionally -- that he should be disqualified from even being considered a serious candidate for president.  Winning the debate will help her in the election, but keep the race razor-thin close.  Accomplishing the latter, needless to say, would be impactful.  And as uncommon as being able to do that is, it is not improbable.  Why?
 
That brings us to tomorrow.
 
In anticipation of a presidential debate, I’ve long felt that triggering Trump was the core.  The thing is, VP Harris doesn’t have to do much to trigger him.  Just being on a debate state for 90 minutes standing next to a Black woman will be a trigger for him.  Not only because she is a Black woman, but I suspect that to Trump Black women are the cause of his problems – Letitia James, Judge Tanya Chutkin, Fani Willis, and now Kamala Harris.  Also, another basic trigger for Trump is that he always wants to be called “Mr. President,” and VP Harris almost always refers to him in speeches as “Donald.”  There’s no reason for her to stop that at the debate, and calling him “Donald” all night – nothing more than referring to him by his actual name -- will be a trigger for him.  And third, I’m sure she will say “You’re wrong,” “That’s a lie,” “That’s not true” all night.  Given that Trump has shown he believes he is right about literally everything (to the extent that he’s said he has no reason to go to confession in church, since he has nothing to confess!) being told he’s wrong and lying all night will be a trigger for him.  Especially when it’s a Black woman telling him.
 
So, without doing much at all, I think Kamala Harris will be triggering Trump all through the debate.  But I’m sure it won’t stop there.  And the reason I’m sure is that she and her campaign have been going out of their way to trigger Trump ever since she entered the race.  And it seems improbable that she’ll stop now -- at the debate.
 
And so, I’m sure she’s being prepped to trigger him as much as possible.  She might well bring up sharks, electricity, bacon, wind and such, and talk about how out of control he is.  How weird he is – Trump has repeatedly made clear how he dislikes being called “weird.”  And further, Trump has actually said at a rally, “I really, really, really, really hate being laughed at.”  (Something his niece has explained, as well.)  And without even needing to be prompted, we know Kamala Harris loves laughing, laughs all the time,  and so she might well be prepped to laugh when it's appropriate (not guffaws, just head-shaking and mere chuckles of ridicule.)
 
Further, she’ll absolutely bring up that he’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable of sexual abuse and guilty of fraud.  After all, she brings it up in her speeches, so she won’t stop now.  Most likely, Trump will insist all his convictions were political and rigged, and he’s won court rulings, however him saying all that alone in a speech is very different from saying it with your opponent, a career prosecutor, standing right next to you, ready to respond.  Perhaps even explaining that every criminal she convicted insisted they were innocent. And she may even explain how the judicial process works – and that you either believe in it as core to the Constitution and democracy, or you’re out to destroy it.
 
After all, again, she is a career prosecutor.  She knows how to go after a witness who lies and tries to deflect and insists on his innocence.  And when Trump tries to talk crime, and how he’s the anti-crime candidate (which is his latest position), I think she’ll lay him out flat on that.  Not just on actual statistics that crime is down, but again, how he’s the only person on stage who’s been literally convicted of crimes – felonies, sexual abuse and fraud.  She may even point out that the judge in his sexual abuse case wrote that it was the equivalent of rape.
 
And we haven’t gotten to two of the biggest hurdles she will make certain Trump can’t get over.
 
The first is abortion.  Trump can dance and twist and obfuscate and try to crawl towards the center and insist he’s all for States’ Rights on abortion – but that will fall with a resounding thud with a woman standing next to him, ready to excoriate his words.  That he took pride in ending Roe v. Wade, that Red states are blocking abortion, tracking women’s travel, that he has literally said on camera there should be a penalty for women having an abortion, and that (as far as States' Rights go) he said he would vote for the six-week abortion ban in the State of Florida.  And more.  And the “more” might be that all this allows her to get into comparing vice presidential candidates and the total, mind-blowing weirdness of “JD Vance.”  And his positions on childless cat women and post-menopausal women giving up their careers to take care of their grandchildren, and giving more votes to parents with children, none of which Trump has repudiated.
 
And second, it seems near-impossible to imagine that the Jan. 6 Insurrection won’t be brought up.  And how for four years Trump has insisted the election was supposedly rigged, and that he really won, and that he would pardon all the rioters convicted and in jail.  Indeed, it took until a week before the debate against a career prosecutor that Trump finally even acknowledged, but weakly that he barely lost.  Though not that the election wasn’t rigged.  And I suspect that VP Harris will be happy to position Trump into ranting about that.
 
And yes, she has flaws that she will have to defend.  Two which most stand out.  However, this is hardly a false-equivalence situation.  

When Trump brings up border security and that she is the failed “Border Czar,” VP Harris will not only explain what her actual job was – as an emissary with the Northern Triangle countries in South America to help keep their citizens from leaving for the U.S. and how successful that was – but then bring up the bipartisan border security bill that the Biden Administration put together, but Trump personally blocked.

And the other major concern the public has that is a challenge for VP Harris is the economy.  And while she can (and will) get into numbers about how vastly it's improved, what I think she is more likely is do is point to Trump's own position on handling the economy, using tariffs -- something which, up to now, he's been able to taut unchallenged -- and she will explain how that would literally work in reality and be utterly disastrous for the economy and cause massive inflation.  In fact, she'll now be able to point to an open letter released just today by 88 major business leaders who said exactly that.

And Trump may bring up that she flipped on fracking.  But I’m sure she’ll say that she did, indeed, change her position on it over the course of several years and explain the reasons – but then (importantly) add that if you want to talk “flipping,” Donald not only flips around all the time on a wide range of issues , but just last week, he flipped in one day on how he was going to vote on abortion in Florida.
 
Finally, I suspect that Trump has actually convinced himself (like he seems to always do with his repeated false claims) that Kamala Harris really, truly is “dumb” and “stupid” and an “awful person.”  So, when she responds to him all night with competence and intelligence and expertise, it might well throw him completely off.
 
Obviously, I could be all wrong about that.  But I do have reasons to support my opinions, and I don’t think any of the reasons are stretches.  Most especially that just being a Black woman, calling him “Donald” and saying “You’re wrong” – and being a career prosecutor -- are as basic as you can get.  And talking about abortion and the Insurrection are core issues.  Not to mention his legal convictions.  And so, I think she’ll show herself as smart and able, and he’ll be “Trump being Trump.” 
 
And in the end, worse than Trump being Trump, there is not an unreasonable possibility that he’ll be triggered enough to snap at a few points and even have his dementia kick him at places and give a rambling answer or two, or have some “paraphasia” moments, making up words that sounds like what they’re trying to say but can’t think of it.  I’m not suggesting he’ll have a meltdown rant.  Just angry or dementia-related moments that are troubling for the public to watch.  I don’t discount that he could have a meltdown, but I don’t expect him.  But then, voters seeing “troubling moments” are likely awful enough.
 
That said, if he does give a long, incomprehensible answer (still just an "if" – but if not, she can bring up some of his others), my hope is that she’ll point that out, say they’re not only troubling, but disqualifying.  That’s my hope, but I don’t expect that she will.
 
As I said, I don’t know what will happen.  As I said, I could be totally wrong.  But for these reasons, most of which I believe are very basic and reasonable, I think I’ll be right.

​On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest contestant is musician and actress Maya Hawke, who had her breakout with the series, Stranger Things.  (And will be starring in the upcoming movie, Wildcat, directed by her father Ethan Hawke.  She plays Flannery O’Connor, in a true story based on the author’s life.). Her interview with guest host Alzo Slade is self-effacing, enthusiastic and often quite amusing, notably when discussing people asking her for spoilers on Stranger Things. 
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts just before the 18:30 mark.

​The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is Martin Short, in a repeat episode.  As Al writes, “My interview with Martin Short just in time for the new season of Only Murderers in the Building. Marty and I spoke in 2022 just as the show was debuting on Hulu. In our conversation Short discusses his role on the show and his 50+ years in showbiz. He also examines his relationship with his co-star Steve Martin and breaks down some of his classic characters from over the years.”

And as I wrote at the time – “The talk with Martin Short is very entertaining and funny.  But what I most like about it is that whenever I’ve seen Martin Short interviewed, he seems like he’d have a lot of interesting things to say about his career and profession but always tends to play a character and go for the jokes.  But he actually puts that aside for the interview here and (though not ‘serious’ because it’s a funny, lively conversation) is himself, almost no shtick, making it all the more intriguing. Whether that’s because he’s friends with Franken, or a case of not playing to a TV camera, who knows?  Perhaps both, but I suspect more the latter.  In any events, it’s very good.”

​From the archives.   This week's contestant is Margaret Chan from Carmel, New York.  I found the hidden song pretty easy (no, make that very easy), though the contestant was stumped.  And it seemed like host Fred Child may have even been a bit stumped, which surprised me, though I suspect he may have just been staying quiet without helping – though he usually helps.  The composer style was one that I tend to overlap with a bunch of possibilities, and I guessed wrong.  But at the last moment, when Bruce Adolphe gave a hint at nationality, I made a second guess and at least was right on the follow-up.