I was once a counterfeiter, and the rise of the Reds

Stepping Stupid

I have a lot of little things to write about, and a few big things that take research. Guess what I am doing today? Anyway, our Chamonix traffic tickets reminded me of this.

Back in the 1970s I worked for an oil company in the downtown area of Billings, Montana. I parked a few blocks away in a non-metered area. While that was going on, the Billings Police Department announced a program called “STEP”, or Selective Traffic Enforcement Program. The great minds behind it thought that if they selected an area, in this case downtown Billings, and ticketed every offense they saw, no matter how small or insignificant, that people would behave better.

I am not kidding. They thought this was a good idea.

I was a big fan of actor James Garner, who once starred as a sheriff in a short-lived TV series called Nichols. I remember two things about it: A man at a bar was catching flies and removing their wings. Said Sheriff Nichols, “It’s not the flies that bother me. It is the joy he takes in doing that.” The other was a complaint that some townspeople in some manner were misbehaving and that the sheriff should step in. Said Sheriff Nichols, “People ’round here have about all the law enforcement that they can stand.”

So I left work one day, and walked to my car. I came to a crosswalk on Montana Avenue, and the sign said “WALK.” I saw a police car stopped for the red light. I stepped into the intersection, took a few steps, and the sign flashed “DON’T WALK.” Just like a yellow light, if you are in the intersection, you need to keep going. I kept walking, and once on the sidewalk the police cruiser pulled up and I was told to get in the back seat.

“What’s the problem?”

“You jaywalked.”

“I did not. The sign said WALK when I started to cross.”

“It did not. We watched you the entire time.”

My word against theirs. STEP at work, I thought. I was issued a $10 citation.

Then I got stupid. Or, I should say, my native stupidity took hold. I was allowed to pay the citation by mail, so I stuffed it and a $10 Monopoly bill in an enveloped and mailed it in.

I thereafter received notice that I was to appear before Judge Donald J. Bjertness, a complete no-nonsense guy. Called before him, he said the issue at hand was paying a citation with counterfeit currency. Guilty as charged, I was. He let me go on condition that I pay the citation with real money. I did that, lesson learned.

Not everyone appreciates my sense of humor, especially those annoying ongoing collections at the office for babies and stuff, where I would also add Monopoly money to the pot.

STEP was outrageously stupid. This made the newspaper as a matter for ridicule: A man was ticketed for going 26 in a 25 zone. Even Bjertness said from the bench how crazy it was, but said that he could not overrule the police, and fined the guy. I would think that it could be that the man’s speedometer was not taking a proper reading, but if he said that, the STEP officer would also cite him for driving with malfunctioning equipment.

Billings is not a stupid place, don’t go by my behavior. I think at that time the citizens got just about all the law enforcement they could stand.

________________

Freemasonry and baseball

For many years I was a fan of the Cincinnati Reds baseball franchise. I was without a team for quite a while, as I grew up cheering for the Milwaukee Braves.  My cousins, aunts and grandparents lived there. The Braves ownership unceremoniously dumped Milwaukee and moved to Atlanta. I quit being a baseball fan.

My older brother Joe stayed a Braves fan for his whole life. I met my first wife at a time when the Reds were a super team, Johnny Bench and Pete Rose and the like, and they were playing the New York Mets in the playoffs. I sat  through the series, which I think the Mets won, not sure, but my wife was insufferable in her devotion to everything New York. She was from there. Clearly, as I see now looking back, I was channeling my aggression through the Reds. Our marriage was doomed to fail, but being Catholic, divorce was out of the question. I had to quit the Church before I could quit her. Which I did, though not till many years and kids later.

The Reds won the World Series in 1975, 1976 and 1990. After the ’90 win, they fielded an occasional good team, but just as quickly disassembled  when players got too expensive. Still, I followed them, even as fans complained that the owners of the franchise were not even trying. Some went so far as to put paper bags over their heads, causing majority owner Bob Castellini to eject them from the stadium. Castellini later apologized, I should say in fairness.

There was (is?) a movement in Cincy to get Castellini and company to sell their interests in the franchise, and to bring in someone or some group that would invest in the team. Castellini’s son warned the people doing this that if that happened, the new owners would probably pull out of Cincinnati.

Along came Covid, and in 2020 the Reds were playing in front of empty seats. Come to think of it, they were playing before empty seats before that. Bad teams tend to draw poorly. Little had changed in 2020.

I quit following the Reds, only occasionally checking in, as with last year when they lost 100 games. This year was not predicted to be much better, as it is still a very bad team. But something is shaking, something unusual going on. I checked the standings not  expecting much, but found that they were not in last place! They were only a few games under 500. I heard a rumor that they were the talk of the league, on a winning streak. I began to follow them, and sure enough today they won their eleventh straight game, and are in first place in the National League Central.

The 2016 World Series was rigged, I am pretty sure. The Cubs were selected to win, as it had been 108 years since that team had won a World Series. 1+8=9=3*3, by the way. Just a clue.

Baseball games are fairly easy to rig. The players are so good that if a pitcher feeds them a ball down the middle, no matter how fast it is going, they will hit it, often far. That was happening way too often that year, Cubs hitting dingers late in games and pulling off remarkable comebacks. They won the World Series, their last to this moment.

So the Reds last won a World Series in 1990, 32 years ago. This year is the 33rd year since that win. Are they selected to win? Are pitchers told to throw down the middle? A young inexperienced team is playing over their heads, even as their three best pitchers are on injured reserve.

I don ‘t know. I am following them again, though I will not be subscribing to anything in order to watch them. I’ll just read about them, watch the highlight reels.

Next year, when the weather is not so fair, and the team against sinks to the bottom, I will give up on them again.

(By the way, and there have been other owners over the years, when you think Reds, think Chiquita Bananas. When you think Chiquita Banana, think United Fruit, as that is what the company was called. United Fruit was famous for abusive practices in banana-growing regions. Anyone who follows the US in Central America in the 50s, 60s and 70s knows about CIA activities to protect the company. In the 90s, when Bill Clinton was famously (we are told) canoodling with Monica, his executive office phone rang. He answered personally. On the other end was Reds owner Carl Lindner. As I recall.)

26 thoughts on “I was once a counterfeiter, and the rise of the Reds”

  1. The Reds’ farm system pooped out several guys this year who seem to have blossomed all at once. Cleveland had a similar run last year. Right now the Giants are getting great play from several young’ns to supplement the veterans.
    Cleveland has regressed but are in the weakest division in baseball so they are hanging in there.
    The Reds are in the second weakest division (what’s with the central time zone teams?) so they could sneak in as well.
    The Giants have the best shot as the Dodgers are seriously wounded.
    The team everyone expected to be the Death Star, San Diego, is self-immolating and it’s an ugly situation. They signed or have under control several Latin stars, Manny Machado being the wealthiest. He is the de facto team leader and his lackadaisical demeanor and deceptively lackadaisical playing style has infected these others. They aren’t as good as Machado and can’t play like him- but they act like him and it’s been a disaster. They lost two games in a row to the Giants after having late leads and the shrug and sigh they exhibited is the last thing you’d expect from Latinos.
    A significant chunk of my family is Mexican and I get Latin stuff. This team has a cultural dissonance that is going to wreck them.
    But, no one, and I mean, NO ONE, in the MLB inc. orbit is going to say it. They’d say it’s racist.

    PS- Eons ago the Giants had a Machado type on the team: Orlando Cepeda. They traded him and he continued on to a HOF career as Machado will. With Bob Gibson in the Cardinal clubhouse, Cha Cha had to defer his elevated self-regard and they won it all in ‘67, Cepeda winning the MVP. I don’t know who the Padres could pick up to take leadership from Manny, but they should be looking now!

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  2. Baseball – There’s a scene in the X files series. Mulder romanticises it’s all about numbers. A game can be described with a few numbers, implying even the emotions can. It’s occult, starting with the angle of the field itself. We don’t have such fields in Germany, I first came along such in Japan, there are many, they look so alien there.
    On tickets in Europe, thumb rule: Double what you paid in France, and you know what to expect in Switzerland. Half in Germany, but you will pay the money saved at the pump, speeding or not. PS I’m waiting for a MM paper on the submarine, the story got the taste. The Titanic paper is a good read.

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  3. Reading your post, I imagined the obviously stupid STEP program must have only lasted a short while before being quietly scuttled, and thought it would be fascinating to read–or write?–an article or even a book about the many everyday absurdities it must have led to. But a quick search told me that the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program is still a thing in Billings, and the city’s web site describes (in more flattering language, of course) pretty much the program you described. Sioux City, Iowa also has a program that goes by the same name but sounds like it’s not the same thing. I see announcements that grants are available for STEP, but I don’t know if the grants are for the same idiotic program you experienced.

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  4. Oh, those Reds and their owners. Didn’t Marge Schott and her enormous dog get in trouble for saying Hitler made the trains run on time or somesuch? I think the problem was it was Mussolini who did that. Yep.

    Saw the Reds in 1976 on a trip to visit family. That was the classic team. Grandma took us kids to Johnny Bench’s restaurant, which was fun. My old man went to Western Hills HS with Pete Rose. Said he was an asshole, and never liked baseball anyway. Prolly why I never cared much for it too. Rode bikes on the massive dirt piles when they were building the SF Giants new stadium though.

    Best game I ever saw was in Nicaragua, though the locals blew out the Bluefields team; they love their baseball down there, but no love for futbol. They are like a land-locked Cuba or Dominican Republic. Maybe Smedley Butler’s boys brought balls and bats on one of their enforcement missions back in the day?

    PS: be careful with the fried cheese sold by street vendors near the stadium. Tasty, but I think it gave me Sandino’s revenge.

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  5. do you have any thoughts on the allegedly missing titan sub?

    i assume it’s a hoax but i’d like to hear your thoughts.

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      1. Unicorns could be real too. I like the futility of the titan getting crushed. Gives not so new meaning to the words tourist trap.
        Stockton rush is a hell of a name though. The mathites should be all over that one by now. Wifey too…
        “ Rush married Wendy Weil in 1986.[22] The couple had two children.[23] Wendy Weil Rush is a great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Blun Straus, both of whom died in the sinking of the Titanic.[22] She is the director of communications at OceanGate”
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_Rush

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    2. I see now where you are coming from, a Mathis paper. So be it. A whole lot of reading but not time wasted, his views on Titanic, with which I agree. That anything current is in any way directed at his writings … I withhold judgment. His thing.

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    3. I’m reading a Time magazine article about it that’s chock full of howlers that feel familiar from having endured other fake stories.

      Here’s a quote from a sister of one of the victims:

      “I am thinking of Suleman, who is 19, in there, just perhaps gasping for breath. It’s been crippling, to be honest… I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them.”

      What the actual fuck? Who talks like that? Does that sound like a real human being reacting to the news that her brother has just died? I dunno, maybe I’m distracted because it reminds me of the “I can’t breathe” meme brought to us by the George Floyd psy-op.

      The article then goes on to quote academicians opining about the lack of government regulation for “extreme adventures.” One of these extremely intelligent professors tells us that “extreme adventures” used to be almost exclusively the domain of “the lunatic fringe,” but now it’s all the rage among respectable rich people. Huh? Am I missing something? Does that make any sense? Only lunatics used to travel around doing dangerous shit… but now that respectable people want to leave their homes and explore unusual parts of the world, the government needs to get more involved?

      Like all psy ops, it sounds like this one is intended to accomplish multiple things. Maybe normalizing the idea that government needs to keep its eye on you if you get a bug up your ass about exploring the world is one of them.

      https://time.com/6289279/titanic-tourism-sub-deep-sea-regulation/

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      1. Great work there, Scott! Someone has to read Time; thank you for your service. How do people accumulate such wealth and then do stupid things? The photos of the rig are comical; who would pay 250k to poop and pee in a plastic bottle amongst strangers for days to see a wreck? I mean aside from fetishists…Where is the drinking water storage? What about food? Maybe it was Tang and Space Food Sticks? Well worth the investment!

        This story stinks to high heaven. Are the Borg writers also on strike? These AI scripts suck.

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        1. It does look ridiculous from what I’ve seen too.. makes me curious about non “experimental” submarines though.. or submersibles. What are the off-the-shelf options I wonder. Are they all “real,” or a mix of fact and fancy?

          ScottRC – I noticed that “I can’t breathe” theme too, mainly because Tim Ozman has brought it up wrt other psyops.. it seems to be a major recurring motif threaded through the overarching world stage narrative.

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          1. It’s a two-step process to disbelieve, one that the Titanic is down there.If it is not, then the Titan is a hoax. Kinda where I am at. I just read the MM paper this morning.

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            1. Sarnoff’s famous heroics aren’t believed so much anymore by the cleverer apes. But there’s no denying the titanic made him a famous radio man. He would go on to start rko with jack’s daddy of course.

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  6. This baseball talk reminds me of the movie Moneyball. Really well crafted, highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It is still a Hollywood movie though, no doubt distorting perception and pushing lies, as easily as it goes down.. based on the book by Michael Lewis, who’s written the biggest “nonfiction” bestsellers about every financial crisis since the Eighties.

    The lead character “Billy Bean” has your standard scripted style of name, and a fantastic story arc.. so much about the story, and the team’s story, is too Hollywood to be true.. of course they may claim they’ve taken artistic license, and I haven’t read the book. But the book and movie, and the theory of baseball strategy they propose, are crying out for someone skeptical to pick them apart and see if they hold up to scrutiny.

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    1. I read the book.I also read a lot of the work of Bill James, who was the real pioneer in sabermetrics. James put out large volumes of work. The reason that sabermetrics came to be was the revolution in personal computing that allowed bright young men like Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) to crunch numbers beyond anything possible before. The movie Moneyball was very hard on A’s manager Art Howe, but that was just to create an antagonist. Howe was actually a good baseball man, and he was furious at what the movie did to him.

      James worked for the Red Sox for 17 years, during which time they won four World Series. One of those was a four game sweep of the Colorado Rockies in 2007, when temperatures in Denver were in the 30s. We lived in Bozeman, but managed to squeeze out tickets for game five in a lottery kind of setup. I had to write to the Rockies to get a refund. They were not volunteering anything.

      One guy who refused to pay any attention to sabermetrics was Dusty Baker, who was old school all the way and infuriated the whiz kids with his stubbornness. Odd thing about him, he got results. He is currently the manager of the Houston Astros, world series champions. I do not know how the organization is run, however. It could be they brought him in because he is known to be very good as a players’ manager, warm and supportive. Maybe the saber guys are making his big decisions for him.

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      1. James told the story of Dodger catcher Steve Yeager, who posed for a nude centerfold for some magazine, everything hanging out. Yeager caught one in the nuts that had him writhing on the ground in agony. Either the umpire or some other player leaned over and said to him “Hey Steve – did it catch you in the staple?”

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      2. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’d be the perfect person to ask, given your interests. Numbers, baseball, contrarian views.. however, what about fakeology.. 17 years with the Red Sox, eh? Indeed, the movie briefly mentions Bill James.. and he comes across as a persona created for this op (or that inspired it maybe, or was enlisted into it.) The movie paints him as a fringe figure, almost a “conspiracy theorist,” working janitorial night shifts or guard duty or something, at some godforsaken factory, while writing his ignored but maybe brilliant mathematical baseball theories.. sound a little too good to be true to anyone else?

        I’m not saying there’s nothing to sabermetrics. But my guess is they scripted all these characters, James, Bean, Brand, and the Oakland A’s winning season, to address something in baseball or promote some change or some agenda I can’t even guess at. I do have a copy of the book, and little doubt that if I picked it up, from first page to last it would be filled with “aces and eights” lol…

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        1. It is just applied statistics, not always accurate since baseball is random, but generally telling management a general direction to go. Sabermetrics basically attempts to remove noise from statistics. It is in my view real, and not possible before the rise of the personal computer.

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          1. Is Moneyball, the movie, about anything real? Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay; the same guy who wrote the script for the movie Social Network about Facebook. Apparently he can dramatize anything. Both films canonize geeks with social issues. I’m fairly certain the Zuck is a fictional character but Beene is a real guy, if obviously plugged into an elitist system.
            Baseball has always operated on the ideal that what you see is what you get. Other major sports are designed like land acquisition wars but baseball, having been Masonically derived, is designed to highlight the individual in the context of a collaborative effort. The defense controls the ball; the batter is one against many. A very appealing context for the manifest destiny ethos of the 19th century mind. It is all a con, but an appealing one up against the alternatives.

            Football exploded during the Cold War op (The us against them dynamic stifled individuality while a field general ran things) and baseball, gagging on ‘tradition’, was slow to respond. Today it’s laughable how desperate Baseball is to appeal to the X Games generation, what with multiple clown colored uniforms, natty dreads where possible and cartwheeling around the bases after a homer- impossible in eras past where such grandstanding would elicit chin music or worse the next time such a showboat came to the plate.

            Bill James is largely responsible for the way the game is interpreted and executed these days, though I’m sure he would be the first to say you can get carried away with this granulated statistical analysis. (He has dismissed new stuff like ‘barrel rates’ as mere noise.)
            Where he originates is anyone’s guess, but he claims to descend from Jesse James so make of that what you will. (He also writes about true crime and has backed the worst JFK conspiracy theory of all time: A secret service guy in the car behind JFK’s Lincoln accidentally shot the prez in the head. This idea was published by James’ fellow Kansan, “Bonar Menninger”. Good grief!)
            James may have been born innocent, but he’s obviously, at this late date, a useful idiot.

            But I will repeat what I think involves direct intervention in controlling outcomes in key baseball games and season long narratives: Roster management involving phantom injuries slowing down or stopping a team not scheduled to win anything. And, collaboration between teams and individual adversaries at key moments.

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            1. Thanks for those insights, all fascinating.. On football, I remember reading a critique somewhere that described it as suited to the Fifties corporate culture model.. the coach and quarterback equating to a CEO and other roles.. however that hierarchy goes, I’m not really sure the exact parallels.

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            2. Dusty Baker was widely criticized for not advancing Sabermetrics in his management if the Reds, but the team did notably better under his stewardship than after. There’s that.

              (George) William James shares a common name, many famous, many adopting the surname. George is not in Thepeerage.com, though I don’t pretend to know what that amalgamation of names is about. He’s been involved in several controversies which seem to indicate he is of independent mind. I just got done reading about them and promptly forgot them, so you are on your own. He did say that if all the current players died they’d be replaced in three years, that the game is no more about the players than the beer vendors. Typical James quote, and I like it.

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  7. The Titanic sinking is so fake, scientists in 2010 had to come up with a bacteria, which they named “Halomonas Titanicae”, that is allegedly eating up the remains of the wreckage, and they’re pretty sure it’ll be all eaten by 2025…why 2025 and not, say, 2027?
    The wreckage is said to be located at about 4 kms under the ocean (ca. 2,5 miles), and we’re supposed to believe that they can actually see something at 4 kms under water, yeah right.
    For those who don’t know, the pressure for 1 km underwater is 100 to 1 atmosphere at sea level. That means that at about 4 kms depth, we have 400 to 1 atmosphere. Meaning that no human or technology can actually reach that depth without disintegrating, the same thing that apparently happened to the Titan.
    So how can photos of the wreckage exact location be taken? They can’t, that’s the point.
    It’s all FAKE.
    Btw… Titanic, Titan, and they both sinked.
    The Titanic had a twin ship (actually 2, one being the Britannic) called Olympic.
    For those who know a little bit about greek mithology, the Titans were defeated and exiliated by the Olympic gods after an epic battle; the winners made mankind go back to slavery and misery.
    I think it should be clear what’s going on here.

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      1. I was about to caution Enoch about his wild claims as well.. in fact, Cameron has been down there.. ahem.. 33 times.

        No, thanks Enoch, great info.. if that’s standard official science though, I wonder how they excused it away for Cameron (Camera On.)

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