By Jeffrey Page

I never met Jim Farrell, the district attorney of Sullivan County, but he’s now on my imaginary list of people I’d like to have over for dinner along with Jackie Robinson, Clarence Darrow, Shakespeare. You know what I mean. Farrell, for no other reason than he seems to be one of those rare public officials who refuses to mince words.

My admiration came to light this week when I read about Farrell’s reaction to a judge’s remarks as he sentenced a man Farrell had prosecuted. County Judge Frank LaBuda reasoned that if you’re two years shy of the legal drinking age, and if you nevertheless drink to the point where your blood alcohol level is 50 percent higher than the statutory limit, and if you smash your car into a tree, you somehow become “a hero” for getting two passengers out of the burning wreckage even if you’ve killed your third passenger who, it turned out, was your cousin.

LaBuda noted that driving drunk was “a mistake” on the motorist’s part. Now, I can understand the defendant’s family rallying around him with this dubious argument about “mistakes” and “heroes.” I might offer it myself in a similar circumstance. But the judge?

Charles Wolff, 19, had pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and driving while under the influence of alcohol and marijuana, the Times Herald-Record reported. On the night of the crash, his blood alcohol level was 0.12 percent.

(The legal limit in all states is 0.08 percent, but this doesn’t indicate sobriety. Imagine you weigh 180 pounds and you drink four bloody Marys in one hour, and the world starts spinning out of control and you’re having a little trouble remaining vertical. Guess what. Your blood alcohol level would be 0.08 percent, according to a BAL calculator – www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm – offered by the University of Oklahoma.)

It was sentencing day for Wolff, and some of the pleas LaBuda heard could be expected. They were the words people use to describe their kin in the hope of getting a dose of mercy from a judge.

“He is a good kid,” said the father of the cousin who died. The father of one of the injured friends also asked for a sentence of probation and no jail time. So did the other injured friend.

Then Judge LaBuda described Wolff as “a hero” for having rescued his two friends from the crash. He declined the family’s requests for a strictly probationary sentence, and, having the option of sending Wolff away for seven years, sent him to the county jail for six months.

“Even a hero who makes mistakes, there must be accountability for our actions,” said LaBuda, according to a story in the Times Herald-Record. “There must be incarceration when life is lost.”

Farrell was having none of it.

“I would certainly take issue with the judge’s definition of [Wolff] as ‘a hero.’ He is not a hero,” Farrell said. “He caused the death of his cousin.”

One of these days, society is going to take drunken driving seriously. It will begin with an understanding that forgetting to pay a parking ticket is a mistake. Driving drunk into a tree and killing your cousin is a felony.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Michael Kaufman

I’m glad I struck a nerve with fellow Zester Bob Gaydos last week. His response to my tweaking him for his advocacy of the designated hitter (DH) rule in major league baseball inspired some of the best writing yet to appear in this corner of cyberspace. Too bad it was written on behalf of a foul cause.

Bob did not appreciate that I quoted Ron Blomberg, former player for Bob’s beloved New York Yankees and the first designated hitter to come to bat on Opening Day after the abominable rule was put into effect in the American League in 1973. “I screwed up the game of baseball,” Blomberg admitted in 2003. “I never thought it would last this long.”

I had hoped that quoting Blomberg, who was a fan favorite during the seven years he wore the Yankees pinstripes, might help Bob come to his senses. Instead, he responded with a scurrilous attack reminiscent of the Bush Administration response to people like Scott Ritter, the ex-Marine who was a weapons inspector for the UN and returned from Iraq with the news that there were no “weapons of mass destruction” to be found there. Well, sort of like that.

“First of all,” wrote Bob, “Ron Blomberg is one of those Old Timers Day ‘Oh yeah, he was a Yankee, too’ guys. He had a couple of decent years and faded fast. He was never big enough to screw up the Yankees, let alone the whole game of baseball.” Not content with simply dispensing with Blomberg, the wily Gaydos added, “But Blomberg and Kaufman miss the point.”

Blomberg and Kaufman! Do you see? By linking my name with Blomberg’s immediately after using words like “faded fast” and “never big enough” to describe Blomberg, Gaydos hoped to belittle me as well. Well not so fast, Mr. Bigshot Yankee fan and wonderful writer! First of all, let the record show that Blomberg’s career batting average with the Yankees was a robust .302 (with an on-base percentage of .378 and slugging percentage of .476). He joined the team, albeit just for a cup of coffee (appearing in four games) in 1969 when the Yankees were in a rare period of decline. (Mets fans remember that year quite well but I can understand why Yankee fans would rather erase the memory just as they don’t like to remember the 1955 World Series.)  Blomberg returned to the still-struggling Yankees in 1971 and played for the team for six years, including the “return to glory” period under the ownership of the late Geroge Stalin….I mean Steinbrenner.

Blomberg certainly contributed to that ascent with his bat. His glove is another story (the guy had hands like cement) but the point is that when it comes to the DH rule, neither he nor I are the ones who miss the point. Gaydos tells us that “next year teams are going to play teams in the other league every day. That’s not fair to American League teams whose pitchers will have to bat.” Awwwww, poor babies. How fair was it when the DH rule cost the San Francisco Giants the 2002 World Series? The Giants were a team “constructed around its bullpen, not its spare bench parts,” noted ESPN commentator Jayson Stark. Giants’ manager Dusty Baker “essentially had no DH. In fact, his Game 7 DH — Pedro Feliz — was a guy who had made it through the first six games without an at-bat. No other sport would tolerate a situation this farcical.”

For Gaydos the answer is simple: “National League teams will gladly find a guy on the bench to add some punch to their anemic lineups.” Stark doesn’t think so. “The only reason to have a DH rule is that fans allegedly like more offense,” he wrote in 2003. “Obviously, DHs are better hitters than pitchers. But how much more offense does this rule really generate? The average AL team scored one more run every three games than the average NL team last year — and got one more hit every four games. So we’re talking about two extra runs a week. That’ll pack ’em in, all right.

“The game is simply way more interesting without the DH than with it. Period. Ask any manager which is more strategically challenging — managing a game under NL rules or AL rules. It’s no contest. It’s baseball’s cerebral side that separates it from all the other games ever invented. And the game is way more cerebral with no DH than with it.”

I don’t understand why Bob Gaydos, whose middle name should be “Cerebral, doesn’t get it. Or why he doesn’t realize that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Bain Capital. But I’m glad we agree that dog owners shouldn’t let their dogs pee on other people’s mailbox posts.

michael@zestoforange.com