LOSING

My favorite team, the New York Mets, is on a tear.

And not in a good way.

This was not supposed to happen.

The Mets are run by Steve Cohen, their hedge funder and mega bucks owner. The team's $369 million payroll is second only to the Los Angeles Dodgers and exceeds that of their cross-town rivals, the perpetually well-funded Yankees.  This year they were expected to be in the play-offs and some even realistically hoped for  a world championship, something that has not happened in forty years.  

But the season is not even a month old. 

They are 8-16.

And they have lost twelve of their last thirteen games.

The losses themselves amounted to a streak.

As in twelve in a row.

In April.

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay noted that the Mets' twelve game losing streak was their second longest. The first one, however, didn't really count.  It occurred in 1962 when the first-year Mets, a team of cast-offs and past-their-prime veterans others in the league were willing to give away in a one-time expansion draft, lost seventeen in a row.  In those days, the Mets were hapless but loved and New Yorkers in mourning from the loss in 1958 of their beloved Brooklyn Dodgers (and less loved New York Giants) showered them with affection. That affection, however,  had nothing to do with the quality of play. 

In their first seven seasons, the Mets finished last five times and second to last twice. In none of those seasons did their wins exceed their losses and in 1962, their seventeen-game losing streak was matched by three other eleven-game ones.  

Nevertheless, fans supported them in the only real way fans can.

They showed up.

In record numbers.

In those first seven years, initially at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan and then at Shea Stadium in Queens starting in 1964, their attendance records placed them second in their ten-team league three times, third in the league twice, and fourth and sixth, respectively, once. 

1969, of course, was the year of the miracle Mets. 

That year they actually led the league in attendance. And from then until 1972, when they won their second pennant and were genuinely competitive, they were also first.  Thereafter, however, the gravity of expectations asserted itself.  When they were winning in the '80s, the fans showed up in record numbers.  When they were losing in the mid to late '70s and '90s, those numbers were at the bottom of the pack.  

The 1966 and 1977 teams captured this dichotomy. 

Both teams had virtually identical records -- 66-95 for the first, 64-98 for the second. But the '66 team  in the franchise's era as lovable losers finished second in attendance while the '77 team following the era of genuine success finished tenth.  

And since then that pattern has prevailed. 

In fact, as ownership via the Payson family changed starting in 1980 and has thereafter cycled through various well-funded corporate or individual Doubledays, the Wilpons and their Sterling Equities, and now the hedge funder Cohen, it has solidified.

Loveable losers no more, today's Mets are fielding the best players money can buy.

They are not expected to regularly lose.

And they certainly are not expected to make it a habit.

In his column in the Journal, Gay explained "There's nothing quite as dreary as a baseball team that takes itself out of contention before the kids get out of school.  As Yoda Yogi said, it isn't over until it's . .  .  well, you know the rest." 

But, he warned, "These are the Mets." 

They were the best team in baseball through June of last year and then imploded in the second half and sacrificed a play-off berth on the season's last day. Long after their infancy, similar crushing declines have been the franchise's fate in the past, and no team has ever lost twelve in a row and made it to the play-offs. 

So, Gay concluded . . .

 "It might be."

Over, that is.

Pace Yogi Berra.

Today, something similar is happening in the country.

In another piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the paper editorialized against the Food and Drug Administration's rejection of Replimune's RP1 drug.  The drug is considered a "life-saving" treatment for "metastatic melanoma."  Though the initial panel that reviewed RP1 approved it, that recommendation was later overruled by the FDA's biologic chief, Vinay Prasad.  According to the Journal, "After an uproar among oncologists, the FDA last fall agreed to reconsider" that disapproval. It then adhered to its initial rejection.

At a hearing last Thursday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. testified that he supported the reconsidered rejection. He claimed Replimune "only did a 'one armed trial, and all the people who were tested also received a chemotherapy drug, so we don't know what the effect was.'" In fact, however, as the Journal noted, "No patients in the trial received chemotherapy." Instead, "they were given the RP1 oncolytic virus therapy, in addition to an anti-PD-1 immunotherapy that is a first-line melanoma treatment.  However, the cancer had worsened for all patients in the trial on an anti-PD-1 immunotherapy, so it would have thus been unethical to give some patients an anti-PD-1 drug alone merely to serve as a control group."  

As the Journal also explained, "RP1 was given in combination with an anti-PD-1 drug because its aim is to activate the immune response, and in doing so overcome resistance to other immunotherapies.  FDA reviewers would have understood all this had they consulted melanoma doctors who tell us the RP1 rejection makes no sense and will cost thousands of lives."

Unfortunately, making "no sense" appears to be American policy these days.

On the war with Iran, the administration's views and policy appears to change by the day if not the hour.  One day the war is over, the next there are threats to resume it. One day peace talks are going forward, the next they are suspended. One day the ceasefire is extended, the next it is about to expire. 

On a number of occasions, Trump has explicitly told us Iran agreed to any number of things -- giving up its uranium stockpile, opening the Strait of Hormuz -- that Iran then tells the world it has not agreed to. One day ships can move through the Strait. The next they are attacked in it.

The economic turmoil caused by the war is not going away anytime soon.  

Gas is about $4 per gallon across the country, which the administration now concedes is likely to be the case into 2027. Inflation has reemerged as the energy supply chain deals with the war's eruption. And America's allies are hedging their bets against whatever unpredictable (or unhinged) step Trump decides to float (usually via a Truth Social post at two in the morning).  

Meanwhile, the Pope is praying for peace and condemning those who "manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth."  

In response, JD Vance has invoked St. Augustine's support for "just war" and said the Pope should be "careful when he talks about matters of theology."

The Pope is an Augustinian. 

He is more than familiar with the saint's "just war" theory. 

As Washington DC's Cardinal Robert McElroy has explained, to be just, a war must satisfy three criteria.  First, there must be "an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by" the enemy, Second, the war must satisfy the criterion of "right intention."  Third, "the benefits" of the war must  "outweigh the harm."

While conceding "Iran's own morally despicable decision to target its neighbors in the region and spread the expanse of destruction," he argues that none of these requirements were met here.

Even under the administration's view, the imminence requirement was unmet.  There was no evidence Iran was about to attack us.

But the other two were not met either.

"One of the most worrying elements of [the] first days of the war in Iran," McElroy explained, "[was] that our goals and intentions [were] absolutely unclear, ranging from the destruction of Iran's conventional and nuclear weapons potential to the overthrow of its regime to the establishment of a democratic government to unconditional surrender."

"You cannot satisfy the just war tradition's criterion of right intention," he continued, "when you do not have a clear intention."

As to whether the benefits here outweigh the costs, he noted that "The potential disintegration of Iran could well produce new and dangerous realities . . . And the possibility of immense casualties on all sides is immense."

"Finally," he emphasized, "you must ensure that this war does not turn into a prolonged conflict, lurching from goal to goal and from strategy to strategy." 

"One of the most important Catholic teachings on war and peace is that nations have the strict obligation to end war as soon as possible.  This is particularly true when the decision to go to war was not morally legitimate.  There is a logic to war that presses onward, escalating in its dimensions and timeline. Our country has fallen victim to the logic of war in the recent past, especially in the Middle East.  We must all work together to forbid this expansionism to lead us into an ongoing morass in Iran."

Unfortunately, the administration is swinging and missing on much more than the war and RP1. 

A column by Thomas Edsall in Tuesday's New York Times sets out a laundry list of fatal consequences brought on by non-sensical policies.  To wit:

•  over 14 million deaths through 2030 due to cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding.
• 30,000 expected deaths from the elimination or weakening of "30 major rules that seek to protect air and water and reduce emissions that cause climate change".
• terminated N.I.H. grants in 2025 "supporting 383 unique clinical trials, affecting 74,311 individuals".
• a disdain for renewable energy and the notion of climate change that puts "China . . . on track for 1,400 GW [of clean energy], while the US will reach only about 350 GW."
• a White House turned into "a corrupt enterprise" of pardoned donors as the president's "family's companies receive millions through cryptocurrency purchases from foreign  and crypto operators subject to US regulation." And finally . . .
• a "negative legacy" comprised of "the erosion of trust in the US by European and Asian allies; the erosion of US dominance of higher education; and huge budget deficits (not only due to Trump, but exacerbated by him)".

My baseball team is losing.

Which in the world at large is not a big deal.

But so is my country.

Which is.