What's in Dave's Head

There’s an inspiring article in the Jan. 29 Washington Post about Seattle Seahawks outside linebacker Bruce Irvin.  Irvin had little football experience, playing in just three games on his high school team his freshman year.  He was later ruled academically ineligible and dropped out of high school in his junior year.  His mother kicked him out the house and he moved from house to house, “often settling in those shared with friends who sold drugs,” according to the article.  In 2007 Irwin spent three weeks in a juvenile detention center on burglary and weapon charges.    A turning point came one day when he was 19 and living in a house where drugs were sold.  He happened to be out of the house when a police raid resulted in his friends being arrested.  If he had been there, he too would have been arrested. He was taken in by Chad Allen, a mentor who, seeing Irvin’s potential, urged him to straighten out his life and take the GED exam....

This offseason the baseball hills are alive not with the sound of music but with the wailing and gnashing of teeth of other clubs while the New York Yankees seem to climb ev’ry mountain and yodel like the lonely goatherd.   The good news for Yankees ownership, led by Hal Steinbrenner, just keeps coming. In 2002 The Yankees launched the Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network, a regional TV network that televises Yankees games and other programming.  On Jan. 25 the AP reported that 21st Century Fox will raise its stake in the YES Network to 80 percent.  Sports blog Fangraph indicated that could mean more than $150 million per year in additional money for the Yankees.   That kind of money, combined with national TV revenue, ticket and concession sales and merchandise proceeds, can buy a lot of talent. So far this year the Yankees have complemented their list of favorite things by adding catcher Brian McCann ($85M, five years), outfielders Jacoby Ells...

My paternal grandfather, Granddaddy Paul, worked as a leading-man model maker and machinist at the David Taylor Model Basin, a naval facility on the Maryland side of the Potomac River in Carderock.  You can see the Model Basin from the American Legion Bridge on the Capital Beltway.   The Model Basin is so named because it houses a gigantic, .6-mile-long pool of water with a carriage that runs above it to tow model ships through the water to test their waterborne characteristics.  The carriage can tow models at very precise speeds up to 50 knots.  In addition, the basin can generate waves of exacting height and modulation.  Considering the Model Basin was built in 1938, the technology is amazing, though with today’s computer-aided design systems the idea of testing hull designs by building wooden models and towing them through water seems a bit anachronistic. But the Model Basin is still operating and admirably serving the U.S. Navy.  It is on the Natio...

I have swum for and coached a number of age-group swim teams.  When I was 14 I joined our community pool’s swim team, at the suggestion of a girl I had interest in, and I really enjoyed it.  I later coached that team, and swam for and coached my high school team and swam on an AAU team in high school.  For the last eight or so years I have been on a Master’s club for post-college swimmers.  We have meets and, like the summer community pool leagues of my youth, the results are posted by age bracket. There is an interesting phenomenon in age-group swimming.  When you are young, it’s to your advantage to be at the top of your age group—in the 13-14 age group, the 14-year-olds have the advantage over the 13-year-olds.  As you age, however, at some mysterious tipping point the advantage switches to the younger members of an age group.  The U.S. Masters Association has national competitions and sets qualifying times for the various events by age bra...

I have more blessings than I can count.  Yet, like all of us in this crazy, incomprehensible zero-sum universe, there are some things on the negative side of my ledger.  One such deficit: I’m cursed to be a sports fan in the Washington, D.C. area.  My teams—the Washington ‘Skins (I’m boycotting its racist name), Washington Wizards and Baltimore Orioles (The Washington Nationals didn’t arrive until my allegiance to the O’s was fatefully cemented)—have dismal historical records during my fandom. The ‘Skins during the past 21 years, which include the six seasons prior to Daniel Snyder buying the team in 1999, have made the playoffs just four times.  Twice they were eliminated in the first, Wild Card, round.  Last season they won their division with rookie phenom Robert Griffin III at quarterback; this year they returned to earth with a 3-13 record amid the swirls of factional dysfunction: bickering between the owner and coach; between the coach and the ge...

My core wishes for 2014: I get a meaningful job. My and Donna’s families stay healthy. We strengthen our relationships with family and friends, and expand our circle of friends. J.D. finds rewarding employment. I appreciate and show my gratitude for all the many blessings given to me. We all work to make the world just a little better. All your wishes come true. My stretch wishes: President Obama, who I voted for twice, stops disappointing me so greatly. The U.S. Congress rises to the challenges facing our country and stops its idiotic, dysfunctional, partisan, scorched-earth, ideological, negative, egocentric, win-at-all-costs, hold-the-country-hostage, self-enrichment approach to governance. The U.S. government dismantles its surveillance-state apparatus before someone with bad intent makes things really ugly. The Supreme Court decides that no, corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as people. Dan Snyder has an epiphany about the difference bet...