King Kaufman

But looking back at the piece almost 10 months later, it’s a little cringe-inducing for me. Expressions of raw emotion usually are when revisited, and emotions were pretty raw in the week after Sept. 11. The wrestling with my feelings over the flag that I described seems a bit overwrought to me from this distance, but it’s easy to forget the prevailing atmosphere.

A reader in New Lenox, Ill., wrote me that week to tell me he didn’t have a flag flying, but only because he couldn’t find one. He’d gone to every store in town and they were all sold out. He found this note in his mailbox: “Dear JERKS, Where is your FLAG? Everything you have is from your freedom. Either show your patriotism or MOVE to another country.”

I doubt that notes like that are still being left in mailboxes, but the flag is much more casually evident than it was 10 months ago. It’s no longer flying from every porch and fluttering from every car window, but it does seem to be everywhere, usually in the much more convenient and durable window-sticker format. And while it’s not a requirement anymore, it’s still not a bad idea to fly the thing if you’re concerned about what the neighbors think. Last week I had lunch in an Indian restaurant that was decorated in the usual delicate, graceful manner, except for a giant American flag tacked ungracefully in the front window. We are Americans, too, it seemed to be saying. It’s OK to spend your money here, and please don’t break our windows, good people.

I also cringe because of the clumsy way I wrote something. I had talked about how I love the flag because it represents, for me, the spirit of questioning and rebellion that I think is this country’s greatest attribute, along with its physical magnificence. And then: “But when I see that flag flying from a neighbor’s porch, I think, ‘Oh boy, right-wing nut.’”

What I meant to say is that that’s my knee-jerk reaction, my reflex, whenever I see the flag flying from any porch. I knew, of course, that everyone flying a flag after Sept. 11 wasn’t a right-wing nut, just as I knew that everyone flying a flag before the attacks wasn’t a right-wing nut. But as written, it sounds as if I thought my actual neighbors, who at the time were flying the flag, were right-wing nuts. I was new to the neighborhood, and though I never spoke to my new neighbors about it, and none of them has ever been anything but friendly and kind to me, I convinced myself that they’d all read that passage and thought of me, justifiably, as a narrow-minded left-wing nut.

I still have the same mixed feelings about the flag. I still love it, still feel ambivalent about it, still feel that it’s been largely co-opted by those who claim it as being emblematic of their agenda and no other, and most of the people who do that have agendas far different from mine.

Since the initial raw feelings of 9/11 have smoothed over some, I also feel it’s been cheapened by its ubiquity, in the same way that those little red AIDS ribbons lost their meaning over time as they went from being a symbol of support for those who were suffering prejudice on top of sickness to being a de rigueur accessory.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, an American flag less fraught with meaning is something I would have been glad to hear about nine months ago.

My wrestling match with the flag came to a peaceful end not long after I wrote “Rally Round the Flag.” That’s because I got excellent advice from Salon’s readers. They wrote me wondering why I hesitated to fly a flag that I claimed to love just because it’s often used in ways I don’t like. Fly it for your own reasons, they wrote, and don’t worry that someone like you might wander by and think you’re a “love it or leave it” type.

“I wouldn’t agonize too much about whether or not to fly the flag,” wrote a man named Brian Saunders, who described himself as a former Marine who flies the flag while supporting the right of others to burn it. “If you want to, go ahead and do it. Most people don’t draw as many conclusions as you do from a display of Old Glory, other than perhaps an assumption of some level of pride in country.”

I was mistaken when I wrote that I didn’t have a flag. I found one that the previous owners of my house had left in a shed out back. I stuck it into the dirt of a pot of fake flowers that sits on my front porch, another gift left behind, because it’s my flag too. It sits there still, a bit forlorn, a little Charlie Brown Christmas tree kind of a thing.

The stores have long since restocked. It would be easy to replace it with a nicer one.

I guess that’s why I haven’t.

But it was Joyce’s response that turned this terrible tale into one that’s almost heart-warming. Not as heart-warming as a journeyman pitcher tossing a perfect game, mind you, but pretty toasty.

Having asked to see the video replay after the game, an emotional Joyce spoke to reporters: “It was the biggest call of my career and I kicked it. I just cost that kid a perfect game,” he said. “I missed it from here to that wall. I had a great angle, and I missed the call.” He also asked to speak to Galarraga, apologized to him and hugged him. Offered the next day off by his superiors, Joyce declined, saying he was ready to face what he assumed would be a hostile reaction from the Detroit crowd.

This eminently reasonable, grown-up reaction stood out because baseball umpires are ordinarily cloistered. They have what amounts to lifetime tenure. They don’t face reporters, rarely admit mistakes publicly and are not held accountable for their actions in any way that’s visible to the players or public. Don’t like that call? Replays showed the ump got it wrong? Tough.

Galarraga said he’d forgiven the umpire, and Joyce’s response to his error has been widely praised beyond baseball. He’s become a go-to example of how to handle mistakes in politics, religion and — especially because his straight-forward behavior came in the midst of BP’s oil-spill debacle — business.

Less than two weeks after the blown call, ESPN surveyed major league players for their opinions about umpires. Their overwhelming choice as the best in the business: Jim Joyce.

The entire conversation about umpiring has been predicated on the assumption that the only solution to the problem is a technological one, which is fascinating — and maybe just a little troubling — because everyone in the conversation knows two things: There are acres of room for improvement that has nothing to do with technology, and the technology itself is far from perfect.

We know from other sports, especially NFL football, that video replay is hardly perfect. Putting aside the unnecessarily long delays that accompany video replay in the NFL, it’s a simple fact about video that it does not always provide conclusive evidence of what happened. Camera angles can be as deceptive as the naked eye.

And more important, the NFL’s replay system is a laboratory of unintended consequences. Introduced for the same reason many people want to introduce replay to baseball — to put an end to egregious officiating mistakes — it has become the lord of officials. It has changed the way officials call games. Refs now err on the side of the reviewable call, or make no call at all so replay can be possible. They have changed the way they call fumbles and completions. Watch an old NFL game from before replay and you’ll be struck at the difference in officiating and rules interpretation.

People will argue over the specifics of those last two paragraphs, but there’s no one familiar with replay who doesn’t know that replay is far from perfect, that despite — I would say because of — replay being entrenched in the NFL for years, officiating is still such a problem that a huge number of fans can convince themselves that a recent Super Bowl was fixed by the refs.

Yet the only anti-replay argument that ever sees the light of day is the Luddite one: Instant replay would rob baseball, that most human of games, of an essential human element.

That’s a valid argument, but it’s a religious one. No one is ever going to be argued off of it, and if you don’t buy it, you’re not going to be talked into it.

But it’s interesting that the argument against it goes like this: Instant replay might not be perfect, but it’s better than what we have now, so we should use it. That argument ignores a vital question. Is instant replay better than some other solution?

If you’ve been around as long as most of the people who are in the most public part of this argument — media figures and baseball officials — technology has been a series of miracles in your life. You can carry a supercomputer in your pocket that connects you to anywhere in the world all the time? Are you kidding? I’m not even 50 and I remember when it was a big deal that someone could leave you a taped message when they called your house — the only place you could have a phone — and you weren’t there.

Got a problem? Technology can probably fix it, and if not, just wait a little. It’s coming. Marvelous times.

But I think we sometimes forget that technology isn’t the only fix, and it isn’t always the best one, and not just for squishy reasons having to do with idealizing human error. Human error is a bad thing, and technology is often fantastic at doing away with it. But it can also do away with some good human things, like judgment and holistic problem solving.

Think about law enforcement for a moment — and sports officiating is essentially law enforcement. Which is more effective at fighting crime, an elaborate system of video surveillance or a program of job training, substance abuse education and treatment, community investment and so on? Or if that’s too liberal-sounding for you, focus in tighter. If you’re a parent, which is more effective at getting your kids to behave like solid citizens, spy cams around the house or engaged, loving parenting?

If you wanted to design a system that would result in poor umpiring, you would design Major League Baseball’s system. It’s positively medieval. Umpires essentially have lifetime tenure. They are sequestered from the media and answer only to a review system that is as secretive as it is pointless, since it hardly ever results in umpires losing their jobs. Instant replay won’t change that lack of accountability.

“We never know why or when they are fined, or reprimanded or held accountable,” Oakland A’s pitcher Brad Ziegler told ESPN’s Amy K. Nelson last week. “Any time a player is punished, suspended or sent down to the minors, the public knows about it. It would be a lot easier to communicate with umpires if everyone was held to similar standards. Our statistics as players are a lot more quantifiable than the umpires’.”

I am something of a Luddite when it comes to instant replay, not because I’m anti-technology — I have a long-distance line to New York in my pocket, and the call is free? Score! — but because I think baseball has been smart about being slow to change over the last century-plus. Replay would suddenly, irreversibly alter a game that has a pretty good history of solving its problems without radical, game-altering solutions.

I don’t believe baseball should absolutely avoid instant replay because instant replay is evil. I believe it should try to tackle the organizational problems that are leading to the poor umpiring rather than slap an electronic band-aid on them.

Nelson’s ESPN story is about a planned winter meeting between the grumbling players association, baseball officials and the umpires. Nelson describes such a meeting as “rare,” which is a problem right there. Shouldn’t the three parties involved in this major issue for Major League Baseball talk to each other more than rarely?

It’s a good step. I’m not too hopeful it’s going to lead to a new era of transparency and reform. No one from the umpires or Major League Baseball would comment for the story.

So it’s that old TV thing. NBC does a story on “Dateline” about families struggling through the recession in rural Ohio, and letters and donations and job offers come pouring in from all over the country.

The retired Air Force vet has “job offers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona, Iowa.” Someone sent him $5,000. A woman reads through tears from a letter she’s received: “In a couple of weeks I will be able to send you some money to help with expenses. I hope this letter raises your spirits and that you know I really do care. Most of all, you have a friend in me. You are going to be OK, and so are your children. I will be thinking of you, sweetie, and praying that lots of other people send you much-needed money.”

She says, “It’s really hard to believe that someone you’ve never met could actually care that much.”  

The food pantry lady has gotten 500 phone calls and donations from Texas, California, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine and Canada. She says, “I just can’t even describe how good it feels to know that there are so many people out there that really do care.”

This is absolutely par for the course, it’s what happens every single time there is a sob story on the TV, but here’s the thing: People don’t care. They just respond to what’s on television.

There are folks right down the street in Texas, California, Florida and Iowa who need food and basic supplies. There are good, capable people, some of them retired military, right down the street in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona and Iowa who are looking for work. And, after NBC’s report, those people still need the basics and are still looking for work. And those people who sent the heartfelt letters and the donations and the job offers likely never moved a muscle for those people down the street.

A guy who drove to the food pantry with a Hefty bag of donations tells the food pantry lady, “Cincinnati Ohio’s thinkin’ of ya,” and she gives him a big hug. Really, guy who drove 170 miles to Lottridge to find someone to give your Hefty bag of stuff to? Because where were you and the rest of Cincinnati before NBC aired its report?

Curry, who is among the best in the business and whom I don’t mean to beat up on, gets “a smile” out of this, as she should. She did a good piece about people who are struggling, her viewers responded in overwhelming fashion and the people she reported about are deeply moved by their good fortune.

If you focus in tightly enough, it really is a wonderful thing. That a relatively tiny group of people in Ohio actually did get a lot of help they weren’t going to get without that TV report. It was like a little miracle, and you’d have to have a hard heart indeed not to be touched by the young mom reading the letter or the hardworking food pantry lady who is suddenly able to provide so much more help to so many more people. I love America too.

But back your view out to the larger picture and what you see is something much more depressing.

Obviously, the people who sent money and goods and job offers had both the means and willingness to help their neighbors in need, but instead they helped some people they saw on TV. Now, I suppose it’s possible that every one of them, from the donor of $5,000 to the Hefty bag guy from Cincinnati to the job offerers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona and Iowa, is doing just as much for lots of other people closer to home and not on the TV.

I would just be willing to bet a lot that they aren’t.

What Curry’s story suggests is that the generosity of the American people can solve the problems of a lot of folks who need help — as long as they can get on TV. Getting on TV is a lottery ticket, and the depressing part of it is that if you’re in trouble, your chances of getting on TV are about the same as your chances of winning the lottery.

What about all the desperate people who didn’t have a TV network drop out of the sky into their local food pantry? How do we turn their story into “a smile”? Because there are clearly people out there willing to help. There just isn’t enough TV to go around.

I grew up not listening to Ernie Harwell but to the man who replaced him in the Brooklyn Dodgers booth in 1950, Vin Scully. I hadn’t come to know Harwell until 1999, when baseball broadcasts were still streamed online for free and Harwell had returned to the radio side after five years on TV. Like generations of Michiganders, I quickly fell for his warmth, his charm, his knowledge of the game, his old-timey broadcast voice.

When he announced that 2002 would be his last season, I wanted to write about him, so I got in touch with him through the Tigers, asking if I could come to Detroit for a few days, hang out with him, shadow him. A day or so later there was a voicemail message. That incredible voice was right on my phone! I saved it for as long as I could. I wish I still had it:

“King, this is Ernie Harwell from Detroit. I don’t know that there’s much to write about me, but sure, come on up.”

I had planned to write about a fundamental shift in the way people follow baseball, about how Harwell was one of the last of the old radio men who were identified with a team as much as any player, often more than any player. Now, with most games on TV, far more games on national TV, larger squads of announcers and the Internet providing more baseball information than any one person could ever absorb, fans weren’t dependent on that one broadcaster to serve as the conduit to their team.

Yes. Well, it seemed interesting in my head. A little of that stuff made it into the piece, but after about 10 minutes with Ernie Harwell, I knew that my story couldn’t be about anything but Ernie Harwell.

It’s hard to talk about what kind of guy Ernie Harwell was without sounding like you’re talking about a guy on the night of the day he died. But it was just as hard when he was still alive. I spent three days with him, and he was unfailingly kind, generous, cheerful, energetic, positive and humble. And not just with me. At 84 years of age, he was tireless, making sure as he roamed the ballpark — which he did a lot — that every fan who wanted a moment with him — and there were many — got the moment he or she wanted.

I talked to a lot of people about Ernie Harwell that summer, and in the eight years since then I’ve talked to more people about him and I’ve heard and read many things said about him, and I’ve never heard a hint that the man I came to know in those three days wasn’t the genuine article. It may be that there has never been an unkind word said about Ernie Harwell.

Jon Miller, the ESPN and San Francisco Giants announcer, was hurrying across a field when I sidled up to him asking if I could talk to him for a minute. He kept walking as he asked what I wanted to talk about. “Ernie Harwell,” I said, and he stopped on a dime. All of a sudden, I had his attention and he grew animated as he told stories about Ernie.

Mike Shannon, the longtime St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster, was pressed for time just before a game one day but he told me to sit in the press box and wait for him. Minutes before the first pitch, he leaned out the door of his radio booth. “Where’s the guy who wanted to talk about Ernie Harwell?”

Ty Cobb liked Ernie Harwell, for crying out loud. Ty Cobb didn’t like anybody.

“He’s so generous with his time,” I wrote back then, “that a reporter in town for three days to research a story on him confesses on the third day that he’s just about run out of questions to ask.” That reporter was me, of course. We were sitting in an empty broadcast booth in the Comerica Park press box when I told him that. He looked out at the field for a few seconds, then started throwing out some suggestions, things I might want to ask about.

It sounds silly to say, but after spending time with Ernie I told myself that I would try to be a better person, more generous, more cheerful, more optimistic, more kind. More like Ernie Harwell. I failed miserably at this, of course, but I’ve returned to that thought fairly often over the years, and I like to think I’ve moved just a tiny bit in an Ernie-like direction.

Here’s the story I wrote about Ernie. I think I worked harder on it than on anything I’ve ever written. I did things I never do. I made outlines, wrote things on index cards and arranged and re-arranged them.

I swung for the fences, wanting to do justice to the living legend and the time I’d had with him. I used a flamboyant structure, organizing the piece around Ernie’s call of a single game, weaving his epic story between snippets of a thoroughly ordinary contest between two lousy teams, the Tigers and the Kansas City Royals.

I’m not sure it worked. But you don’t get to hang out with the greats that often, and it’s less often that you end up liking them. I wasn’t going to write just another piece about Ernie Harwell in his last year.

A few days after it ran he sent me an e-mail thanking me for the piece. “Best thing that’s ever been written about me,” he wrote. I’m sure he said that to every single person who ever wrote a story about him. And here’s the thing: I’m sure he meant it every time.