It’s Playoff Time! Handicapping Wednesday’s Debate Home Run Derby
Mitt Romney is in the on deck circle awaiting his first at bat against Jim Lehrer, a seasoned veteran pitcher of eleven previous home run contests. These competitions are not times when pitching counts for much. Pitchers throw middle speed pitches down the middle so that batters can get good wood on them; after all, it’s a home run contest. So Lehrer’s pitches will be familiar ones, a few may get away from him, but both contestants will likely keep their bats on their shoulders not wanting to venture a swing outside his wheel house.
With November drawing near Romney’s behind in the overall contest.He bungled the fielding contest badly, so he comes into this, the biggest and most anticipated event, needing to knock the cover off every pitch he puts his bat on. His opponent, Barack Obama, seemingly, has merely to match Romney’s performance to hold his lead.
Romney, a persistent player in the minors since 2003, is just up from the Class A GOP primary circuit. The home run contest rivals he faced there were people who, in baseball lingo, were not blessed with good, or even sufficient, swings. In short, they struggled to reach the “Mendoza line.”
Named after superb shortstop Mario Mendoza, his efforts to lift his batting average above the .200 level were memorialized by his teammates with an eponymous statistical “line”: “the Mendoza line, “a .200 batting average is the minimum average considered barely sufficient for a ball player. Well, in the end, Mr. Mendoza managed that, and a bit more: he finished his nearly nine year career at an above sufficient .215. (The “line” really ought to be named after the famous baseball announcer and sometime actor Bob Uecker. He was the definition of barely sufficient, managing in his six years to hit exactly .200.)
So, Romney faces a tough challenge this Wednesday nigh, his toughest. Some 75 million will be watching, fans now as fully engaged as fans are when the playoffs are in earnest. Barack Obama, a seasoned three year veteran in the bigs, hasn’t appeared in n a home run contest in a few years, and in those competitions he did well enough, but sometimes took far too long a swing, taking his eye off the ball. In in the process he popped up to short right field. He’s rusty. He may be a bit overconfident. Sometimes he does that; visualizes the outfield walls as being much nearer than they are.
But it’s Romney who is, to borrow from boxing, on the ropes. He’s lost every contest thus far and trails Obama in overall points.And Obama’s neither an out of shape Newt Gingrich nor a wild swinging Rick Perry. He’s no Jon Huntsman or Tim Pawlenty either who just picked up their bats and quit when behind. Undoubtedly, he’s no clinically insane Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain who showed up at home run contests with golf clubs. In short, the easy swinging days of Mitt Romney’s halcyon year have long passed.
So how does he win? What are the odds? He doesn’t. And very long, 50 – 1. This is a contest where one cannot win by finishing even. Nine home runs each doesn’t do it. The champ, Mr. Obama, has the edge in those. Romney can only squeak out a win in this first of three home run contests with a performance that helps him cut into his large deficit. Perhaps , with a 10 to 6 total, he will look alive enough to draw fan interest, perhaps some Vegas money will head his way. Remember, this is not his last chance. If his bat explodes with never before seen competence in the next two home run derbies, well, stranger things have happened. But they are strange precisely because they were so unusual and unexpected, and statistically unlikely.
Like Truman defeating Dewey in ’48. Or Bobby Thompson taking out ‘dem Bums in 1951 . . . but Thompson was a slugger, and that was the “shot heard around the world.” Does Mitt Romney have a Truman heart or a Thompson swing in him? Or will the highlight of Mitt’s 2012 campaign be winning the nomination. That cakewalk accomplishment, though, was a lot like Bob Uecker’s description of his baseball highlight reel:
“The highlight of my career? In ’67 with St. Louis, I walked with the bases loaded to drive in the winning run in an intersquad game in spring training.”
Go get ’em Mitt!
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