In October 1818, John Keats responded to a letter from Richard Woodhouse complimenting him on a review of Endymion which had appeared in the Quarterly Review. He wrote: “As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet." He goes on to point out that “A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity.” He has “no self”.

The parallel is clear. John Bauldie’s posthumously published book, titled The Chameleon Poet and sub-titled Bob Dylan’s Search for Self is a tardy but nonetheless interesting contribution to the faux Dylan-Keats debate of decades ago, a debate in which I engaged at the time but always with an understanding that, although I was a lover of Keats and remain so to this day, the quarrel was of no relevance to an appreciation of either. Then, it was about defending the genius of Dylan against the snobbery of people like AS Byatt and, crucially, defending the song against the poem. It was about defining poetry.

Bob of course, Bob being Bob, he was ambivalent. “Yippee, I’m a poet and I know it” he sang, before adding (just in case he was being taken seriously) “Hope I don’t blow it!” And when asked directly if he regarded himself as a poet, he replied “I think of myself as just a song & dance man”. Michael Gray, the pioneer of Dylan studies, seized on this conceit in his seminal triptych, Song & Dance Man, the first volume of which was published as far back as 1972 and in which I am not aware of any mention of John Keats. 

According to Bill Allison’s excellent (and for me, informative) introduction to The Chameleon Poet, Michael’s first volume inspired Bauldie. Reading it, he realised he wanted to be more of a Dylanologist than a Bobcat (although he is credited with the coinage of the latter term, which refers to those who follow the shows as compared with the desk-bound scholars). Certainly, Bauldie makes no reference to shows, to music, to performances. His emphasis is almost exclusively on textual analysis, including the movies and - importantly - Bob’s writings on the back cover of the sleeves. It's practical criticism. Throw in his degree in English and his experience as a teacher of English, and you have the nub of Bauldie’s approach.

It is, in many ways, a schoolmasterly book. You see how I started this piece talking about Keats and only by association moved onto Bob himself? That’s a trick Bauldie uses in this book as he must have done many times in classrooms as both student and teacher. One chapter, ostensibly concerned with Bob’s early work, begins with a lengthy exegesis of King Lear. Others reference Hesse, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Jung. Even if one didn’t know about Bauldie’s untimely death, one could make an informed guess at the date of the manuscript of this book.

Bauldie was older than me. By five days. We were both born in the last days of the summer holidays in 1949. We both combined our love of Bob with support for under-performing football teams. His interests were my interests at that time and the compare-and-contrast methodology with which we had been imbued is a way of thinking and explaining adopted by all of us in and out of the classroom.

He is not as meticulous in his readings as Michael Gray, who, in turn, is not as meticulous as Christopher Ricks. But who is? Nevertheless, there are some keen insights here. He is particularly good on Planet Waves and John Wesley Harding. And, passim, he is excellent in his distinguishing of the noumenal Bob from the phenomenal, the inner from the outer, the masked and anonymous from the simple and direct.

I wish I had known John Bauldie. But I know him well enough now through this book. And I am reminded of one of my favourite Bob stories.

“You don’t know me, but I know you” said a fan, outside a show.

“Let’s keep it that way” said Bob.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob’s first show back on the road, in Milwaukee, on Tuesday night. A wonderful show, with eight songs from Rough & Rowdy Ways and the sound of Shadow Kingdom. It’s only been in the vault for 48 hours but it is currently playing for the fourth time around.

I am writing this on ‘short rest’. A wild card game against the Yankees followed by a fantastic and ultimately successful series against the Rays have conspired to deprive me of sleep and contribute major stress to my extended waking hours. But the Sox are now champions of the ALE and there are two sleeps available before the first of the ALCS against either the White Sox or the Astros. There is a sense in this solitary part of the Red Sox Nation that the Sox are on a roll.

Being a Sox fan in Europe means long nights. Games mostly start after midnight, and even the game 3 afternoon start at Fenway (9pm BST) went to extra innings and continued into the early hours. But during the day and early evening, normal life continues and has its own highlights.

One such took place last Friday, the anniversary of my father’s death. After 18 months or so, the International String Quartet series returned to Leamington, featuring the Sacconi Quartet. I had missed their previous performance at the Pump Rooms, a decade ago, so was keen to be right upfront for their return. In a heavily and professionally Covid-proofed auditorium, I managed to reserve Seat B1.

In fact, the attraction was not solely the Sacconi, nor even the return of live chamber music to my neck of the woods; it was the programme.

The Sacconi were to play (after the obligatory Haydn warm-up) the eighth of Shostakovich’s quartets and to devote the second half of the concert to the String Quartet In C# minor, Opus 131 by Beethoven.

The latter has been one of my favourite pieces of music. I have a dozen or more versions of it at home and one of them will doubtless figure in my list of Desert Island Discs. The Sacconi did it more than justice: they are are a powerful, muscular band and they brought out the grandeur of the fugue, the joy (in the Allegro) and passion throughout, whilst addressing the delicacy and profundity of the Adagio. It is a heavy responsibility to play this masterwork. The Sacconi took it on and triumphed.

But by then, we knew they would. We had already heard the Shostakovich 8th, his 1960 response to a visit to a bombed-out Dresden.

I mentioned that it was the anniversary of my father’s death because he was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the war. And a distinguished one, with a DFC and AFC to prove the point.

I do not know whether he was involved in those controversial raids in mid-February 1945, during which the city was systematically destroyed and more than 30,000 civilians are believed to have died. (Some estimates place it over 200,000.) At this stage of the war, the only ‘civilians’ would have been the elderly and sick, women and children.

It has been described as a war crime, principally by those of my political persuasion. But it is significant that Churchill, in his massive 6 volume history of the war, makes no mention of the Dresden destruction.

As I say, I have no idea if my father was one of those involved. He never spoke of it, but then he never spoke of any of his wartime experiences.

But I know enough of him to know that he would have listened to the Shostakovich quartet and, as did Shostakovich himself when it was played to him by the Borodin, “buried his head in his hands and wept”.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Away from performances and mlb.tv, I am listening to English music. Warlock, Delius, Elgar and - currently - Vaughan Williams. It's A Sea Symphony​ playing right now. 

I haven’t done a word count, but the press reckons that it is 12500 or perhaps 14000 words long. Seems longer. When I embarked on reading it, I was looking to take issue with his policies. Unfortunately, I can’t do that, because there are none. Or, at least, none proposed or even mentioned here.


I didn’t vote for Starmer, but I thought about it. I have his Ten Pledges on my notice board and, when they were published, each one made me more open to his candidacy and potential leadership. It seemed I was not alone. Many of those who had voted twice for Jeremy Corbyn were attracted by Starmer’s claim that he would not change track, and that the 2017 Labour manifesto was the basis of the party in the future.


In my case, I allowed my heart to overcome my head. I voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey. But when the results came in, I nevertheless believed that Starmer would be a good leader of the party, perhaps in the manner of John Smith, but certainly not like Tony Blair, under whose aegis the party lost my support (though not my membership subs).


Since Starmer’s election, a great deal has happened to cause concern amongst those of my Labour persuasion. I won’t list them because most of you will be aware of the purge of the left, the expulsion and suspension of Jewish socialists, the lack of opposition to Johnson, and of course the current proposals to change the one-member-one-vote system within the party.


But this much-vaunted Fabian leaflet - an ‘essay’ apparently, but not even a good try - was Starmer’s opportunity to show himself as a positive, forward-looking leader: someone who had a vision which was not confined to purging opponents, but concerned itself with ideas, practicality, policy.


I have now read it. Not The Guardian’s summary. I have read it all, word by word, cliché by cliché, banality after banality.


It is heart-breaking. Not merely because of the style - where is that forensic approach? Where is that legal mind at work? Where are the strong socialist principles? Where, indeed, are any principles at all?


Where, in short, is the leadership?


Perhaps the claim to leadership is to be found here ….

Or perhaps not.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I have of course been listening to Volume 16 of The Bootleg Series, and tbh, one needs to get to the last two tracks of the fifth and final CD to listen to anything new and/or worthy of the man. I have also been listening to a soundtrack of Shadow Kingdom, which is masterful. But I have mostly been listening to James Knight's poignantl and cathartic suite, Close. Quite beautiful.

Bob's birthday took about three weeks. It included much preliminary listening to albums and shows as well as tuning in to Radio 4 which ran a number of Bob-related broadcasts which exceeded my expectations; notably the Front Row conversation and the play Dinner with Dylan.
 
I commend both to you. But the celebrations really began with the arrival – by courier! – of Michael Gray’s Outtakes on Bob Dylan (#13 since you ask).
 
Anyone with even a passing interest in the extraordinary genius of Bob Dylan will be aware of the commentary, critiques and criticism provided by Michael Gray. We have all taken from our shelves our copy of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia to confirm a fact or check a reference and found ourselves, hours later, moving seamlessly from one entry to another.
 
Outtakes on Bob Dylan is different from the encyclopedia and from Song & Dance Man. It is more personal, more subjective. And because the selected pieces were written in real time, more alive and immediate, less retrospective.
 
The book begins in 1966 and subsequently covers if not every year, certainly every period of Bob. Part of my enjoyment is the realisation that Michael and I attended many of the same shows, though not always coming to similar judgements. One show on which we agreed was Bob’s dreadful performance on the first night in Birmingham (UK) with Tom Petty in 1987. It is the only Bob show I have ever left early, out of embarrassment, and the story goes that, as Bob started a new song, one Heartbreaker asked Petty what it was. “Dunno, but it’s in D” said Petty. Michael is right that the next two nights were a transformation. But that’s Bob being Bob and there are countless examples in Outtakes, because Michael is always honest. He is, primarily, a fan but his academic rigour is never relaxed. He will never, as I do, look to justify or praise when there is no reason.
 
Many of the selected pieces are familiar, but even I cannot keep up with every item of Dylanology in every periodical. So many are new to me, including of course the recently written essay on Rough & Rowdy Ways.
 
This is a fine piece of work, worthy of the exhortation given to Michael by an editor many years ago that he “should do an FR Leavis on Dylan”. Spoiler alert: Rough & Rowdy Ways “isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a work of depth, warm resonance, invention and generosity.”
 
One final recommendation: the penultimate essay is a moving tribute to Bob Dylan 8-for-43 Willis. I met Bob Willis, a long-standing friend of Michael, twice only. The first time was at a Bob concert (one of the Birmingham shows in ’87)when we stood at adjacent urinals before the show and talked cricket; the second was at Lord’s when we talked about the number of bootlegs we each possessed.
 
That Michael who watches tennis in the summer was a friend of an English cricket legend is a measure of the man. And this obituary a measure of his writing.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The three shows in Birmingham from 1987. Jeez, that first night was awful.

​Crow Court by Andy Charman is greater than the sum of its parts, of which there are fourteen. Each might stand alone – and indeed a couple have been published as such. But it is in this form, in this novel, that the short stories, with their precise observations of people and landscape, are integrated and interwoven to create the diverse community of Wimborne Minster between 1840 and 1863.
 
It is a fascinating read, which I can’t tell you too much about without triggering a spoiler alert. But it begins with marriage plans and the apparent suicide of the chorister scheduled to perform a solo at the ceremony. And this is closely followed by the murder of the choirmaster, which prompts suspicion and relief in equal measure throughout the town. What follows is the long search for justice, examining the suspects and their relationships.
 
So it’s a murder mystery. But it is also a description and an examination of a changing way of life in a provincial town, with its class consciousness and power structures, its received pronunciation and its ‘Dorzet’ dialect. Dorset in general and Wimborne in particular are central to the narratives. This is not a story that could be transported to any other part of the country: its truths, its authenticity, stem from its sense of place, which we see from the inside and the outside.
 
Nor could it be transported into another era. In 1840, Victoria is on the throne and the Victorian Age is off to a flying start. The railways are opening up the provinces, welcome to some, frightening to others. And by the end of the book, Darwin’s Origin of Species has been published. This new world-view reaches Wimborne as the story evolves to its conclusion.
 
So it’s a history book also. A social history. It is possible to read it as a form of allegory, with characters ‘representing’ their class, their status, their position. Don’t. They are far from stereotypes. Characters are developed with a gentle, nuanced, understated accumulation of detail over many episodes and more years.
 
I read Crow Court in a single sitting. I shall read it again because Andy Charman’s beautiful prose belies the issues of his subject matter. I shall read it again because it works on so many levels and I know it will repay my attentions. I shall read it again in order to master the Dorzet dialect, for which a glossary is helpfully included, as fascinating to read as an Amis footnote. Jill and I have already adopted ‘dewbit’ to describe our first morning meal.
 
Most of all, I shall read it again because it’s without doubt my book of the month and will probably be my book of the year. Unless I am very fortunate.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Yesterday was the birthday of Franz Schubert. I am celebrating with the String Quartet #15, played by the New Orford String Quartet.
 

​Yesterday was Thanksgiving and, on my morning walk, I mused on those topics for which I wished to give thanks. I came up with the defeat of Trump, the return of Alex Cora to Fenway, and my rediscovery of Dando Shaft*. At which point I returned home to find that, in their infinite lack of wisdom, the government had placed Leamington Spa in Tier 3 on the basis that it falls in the same county as Coventry, Rugby, Nuneaton and Bedworth. All of which are some distance from Leamington geographically, socially, and culturally. Not to mention in terms of Covid infection rates.
 
You may think that this is a sub-genre of NIMBYism, and it probably is, but the decision is unfair, unjust and unwarranted.
 
Four weeks ago, we went into Lockdown 2 in Tier 1. Four weeks of quarantine later, we are in Tier 3.
 
WTF?
 
I have been a good boy throughout both periods of lockdown. I have done what I was told and tried to maintain respect for authority. I have listened with great attention to the proclamations of government and government advisors. Yes, even those of Johnson and Hancock. I have accepted their decisions, even when it prevented me from visiting my 94 year old mother. I have “followed the science”.
 
Much good it has done me. I and thousands of others who have obeyed the rules are now to lose freedoms because of arbitrary decisions made by those with no idea of how people live their lives.
 
The prime minister spoke of the “whack-a-mole” approach which would ensure a targeted response. But now he has reneged on this and picked up his scattergun.
 
My argument is not libertarian. I do not believe that there is no such thing as society; rather the reverse. I am not with those MPs in the Tory party who come from this tradition and will, perhaps, vote against their government on Wednesday.
 
But I’ll take their votes if it means that some common sense will be brought to bear on this complex issue. I’ll take their votes if it makes a difference to those businesses which will not re-open because of this decision. I’ll take their votes if it means that thousands of young people will have jobs next year. I’ll take their votes if it means grandchildren can see grandparents.
 
This is a major crisis. Simplistic solutions based on simplistic analysis will not suffice.
 
And don’t forget, like Sunak, I haven’t even mentioned Brexit yet.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: *Prompted by  twitter thread, I have been listening to Dando Shaft, a Coventry band with a Leamington singer, which rivalled the Fairports and the ISB in the early ‘70s but never achieved the success they deserved (though they did receive a great deal of critical acclaim). I commend them to you, although yesterday and today, what’s playing is The Complete Last Waltz, the greatest ever Thanksgiving show. And yes, I do omit the Neil Diamond bit.
 

You know you’re getting old when you count up the number of Tory prime ministers who have held sway during your lifetime: in my case, it is Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Cameron, May, and now Johnson. Ten of them. And I had no ideological connection with any of them. I loathed them all. The prime of my life has been under the aegis of Tory prime ministers.
 
But with Johnson, it is fundamentally different. Churchill was a racist and imperialist. Eden, despite being MP for my own constituency, was a wuss. Macmillan, an avowedly one-nation-Tory, was a manipulator, only one-nation while it served his purposes. Heath was out of his depth. Thatcher did not even believe in society. Major was thrown in at the deep end and could never get out. Cameron was a chancer. May was the architect of the hostile environment and a church-goer.
 
But Johnson? He makes you yearn for the old days.
 
The days when Churchill claimed that mustard gas was permissible against “inferior races”; when Eden invaded Egypt; when Macmillan “laid down his friends for his life”; when Douglas-Hume did – well, what did he do?
 
When Heath took on the unions with the 3-day week; when Major did fuck-all; when Cameron introduced austerity and called the EU referendum; when May presided over the Windrush scandal and universal credit.
 
Ah! Those were the days.
 
No thinking person could have any ideological empathy with any of these people who seem to rise inexorably to the top of the Tory party. But my loathing for Johnson is not based on ideology. Or at least not exclusively or even primarily.
 
It is the result of his corruption, incompetence and cronyism, his lying and his selfishness, his ego and vanity.
 
He is not solely a bad prime minister. He is a seriously unpleasant human being. He is a spoilt brat who has been handed everything he wanted until, suddenly and without warning, he was called on to take responsibility.
 
He was responsible for the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. But not responsible for it. It was the EU.
 
He was responsible for playing down the Covid crisis, claiming that this was an opportunity which Britain would be “brave’ enough to exploit. But this was because he was misled by “the science”.
 
He was responsible for God knows how many children. But they are not his responsibility.
 
He was responsible for a frightening alliance with Putin and the Russian funding oligarchs. But that was Labour.
 
He was responsible for some of the most outrageously racist writing I have ever read. But not his responsibility: it was taken out of context.
 
I could go on. And given half a chance, I will. But right now, the evidence is too much. Even the BBC is beginning to recognise the signs.
 
This man must go. And so should this shambles of a cabinet.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: In these physically distanced times, tickets for strong quartet concerts are at a premium. But I have managed to acquire one for the Carducci performing Beethoven Opus 95 and Shostakovich String Quartet #9. I have been listening to the Amadeus recording of the former and the Kodaly version of the latter in preparation for an evening in the Holy Trinity Church, where I am not a regular worshipper.
 

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. Friends have alerted me to the fact that it is more than 100 days since I last posted at Not Dark Yet: in other words, not a single post during the quarantine. True, I have had more time at my disposal but I have wasted these weeks. I have been musing rather than thinking, reading more than writing, drinking more than eating. And those issues which I cannot discuss, I have consigned to silence. Now, due to popular demand, I give you what has kept me going during these 100 days or so:
 
 
Angst and Anger
 
But primarily anger.
 
Anger at the sheer incompetence of this government – the lies, the procrastination, the inability to ensure the most elementary of precautions – testing? tracing? supporting? - until it is too late.
 
Anger at the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey, based on a malicious conflation of legitimate concerns about the actions of the Israeli government with anti-semitism. It allows Netanyahu free rein to continue with his annexation. It diminishes the cause it claims to espouse.
 
Anger at the media – not solely for what it is telling us, but what it is not.
 
 
Words
 
Other people’s words. As ever, I have been reading and re-reading a great deal of crime novels and thrillers, notably Don Winslow’s The Force, a morally nuanced policier which I commend to everyone. But I have also managed to force my brain into gear in order to understand Carolyn Steedman’s History and The Law: A Love Story. What I relished in these essays on the minutiae of interactions between the two disciplines is the focus on the lives and works of ordinary people. It is what Carolyn does best, and never better.
 
I have also been listening to words. Podcasts and audio books are the soundtrack to my daily route marches around the parks of Leamington. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I read as a chore as a young man, illuminated a couple of cloudy days along the river. Joyce promised that his life and writing would be based on “exile, silence, and cunning”.
 
I wish those words had registered with me 50 years ago.
 
​
Music
 
The lethargy-inducing impact of the lockdown has been mitigated significantly by Bob. First, he gave us three pre-releases from the new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. And then, the new album itself. If we thought the plethora of allusions in Murder Most Foul or the exquisiteness of I Contain Multitudes was sufficient raw material for exegesis, it’s because we hadn’t then heard Key West. I am still playing this album a couple of times a day, still learning and enjoying as it reveals more on each listening.
 
(By the way, was anyone else confused by Bob’s reference to playing the Moonlight Sonata in F# rather than C# minor? I have since discovered that F# is urban slang for ‘fuck off’! Not many people know that. Or perhaps you did.)
 
 
Family, Friends and Other Bubbles
 
The family are fine – thanks for asking. I have now managed to see my Mum, now in her 94th year, three times face-to-face or mask-to-mask. She lives alone and has no wifi or internet skills. It’s been tough.
 
Most friends, of course, have the means to communicate virtually. And we have relished the apéros, the conversations, the debates on policy, the projections of the 60 game baseball season, the test-and-trace initiatives, the concerns over diminishing cellars, the celebrations of Coventry City’s return to the Championship, and a million other things.
 
Only once have I consciously broken the quarantine advice. Black Lives Matter is a cause which cannot wait and Jill and I were proud to be part of the demonstration in our town. It was, most of the time, physically distanced but emotionally and politically close.
 
The pubs can open on Saturday. Chances are I will call in to one or more during the day, even though my instincts and “the science” say we are re-opening too early.
 
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Tomorrow, Jewish members of the Warwick and Leamington Constituency Labour Party are organising a vigil outside the Town Hall to support Holocaust Memorial Day. Implicit in this, of course, is support for anti-semitism, anti-islamophobia and anti-racism. It will start at 11am, and I'll see you there.
 
This year, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, anti-semitism is at the top of the agenda. Or rather, alleged anti-semitism in the Labour Party is at the top of the agenda, with all leadership candidates agreeing to the 10 ‘pledges’ – they are actually demands – put forward by the Board of Deputies.

​You may think, as do I together with Naom Chomsky and Jewish Voice for Labour and Jews Sans Frontières amongst others that there are some issues here. The most succinct rebuttal I have come across is from @blepharon which I circulate here for those who do not follow him on Twitter or read The Canary. 

I am disappointed that our leadership contenders have 'signed up' to these 'pledges'. I am particularly disappointed that a man of the legal calibre of Starmer and the instinctive Labourism of Long-Bailey have kow-towed.

But we understand that this is not to do with an appeal to the Labour membership. It is everything to do with appeasing the liberal elite, who have chosen to use this issue as their focus for attacks on a socialist agenda.

It is a shame that this trivialisation of the issue should be the case. But tomorrow, at 11am, we shall remind ourselves of the real issue.

The holocaust. The six million who died - horribly - under the Third Reich.

My mother, now in her 90s, is one of the last of the generation who was alive when this happened. But we have told our children who will tell our grandchildren who, I hope, will tell their children.

מיר וועלן ניט פאַרגעסן​

Today from the everysmith vaults: I am listening to Bob's shows from 2000 version of the NET. I saw several of these shows in September of that year, but the one that is playing today is from April, in Omaha, Nebraska. It is not solely the acoustic set, but that band is one of the best he has assembled. 

In the summer of 2018, during the third test between Australia and South Africa, the TV cameras at Capetown showed Cameron Bancroft applying sandpaper to the ball. This attempt to make the ball swing unnaturally was and remains one of the most egregious examples of cheating in a game which prides itself on its ‘gentlemanly’ behaviour.
 
Rightly, it took down not solely Bancroft, but also the Australian captain, Steve Smith, and the vice-captain, David Warner. All three were suspended, sent home, and banned from the game. The coach, Darren Lehmann, also resigned from his post.
 
Throughout the world of cricket, the shock and anger was palpable. And it was no consolation for English fans that the culprits were Australian. It was an assault on the game itself and we were all affected.
 
We now know that, at the same time, the other great summer game, baseball, was also under threat.
 
The Astros were stealing signs, using a video camera in centre field. They did so during their World Series-winning 2017 and again in 2018.
 
And the man who was ‘an active participant in the scheme’ was the Astro’ bench coach.
 
Alex Cora.
 
Alex, who won his successive World Series ring with us in 2018, is no longer in charge at the Red Sox, who acted quickly and definitively when the MLB report was published.
 
The Sox did not wait for the verdict of the parallel investigation into the steal-signing allegations in during the annus mirabilis of 2018.
 
They fired him. I guess even Alex realised that there was no future for him. Not at Fenway. Probably not in baseball.
 
Why? Why did he do it?
 
Because the pressure for success from owners and fans is so overwhelming? Because the need to win is more important than the game itself? Because the distinction between success and failure is so small that the tiniest advantage is worth the risk?
 
Barry Bonds was the greatest player of his generation before he embarked on his steroids. Lance Armstrong would have been a Tour de France winner without blood transfusions. Steve Smith is one of the greatest players cricket has seen.
 
The Red Sox would probably have won the World Series without steal-signing. So would the Astros the year before.
 
The outrage we feel is moral outrage. The individuals  involved have been named and shamed, the Series championships won by the Astros and the Sox will be accompanied by an asterisk.
 
But the loss is the game itself. And on its behalf, I am not just disappointed. I am angry.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Chris Forsyth from The Colony in Woodstock at the turn of the year. A great performance and a great, warm recording.