Larry Kart

I've known the Cohn/Newman/Greene material since it first came out, and IMO it's rather dull compared to other "mainstream," more or less neo-Basie dates of the time, e.g. the stuff that John Hammond did for Vanguard. If I had to point to a particular reason why, it might be the freeze-dried Basie licks of Nat Pierce and (perhaps) the over familiarity (with each other) of Milt Hinton and Osie Johnson, but the atmosphere is a bit mechanical and "by the numbers." Perhaps it's just the RCA-ishness of it all. A lot of the things that came out there under the aegis of Jack Lewis had that mechanical, etc. feel -- or so I thought at the time, though there are few oddities (say, "Al Cohn with Four Trumpets") that I'd like to hear again, based on dim memories that there was some sparks in the air that day.

New Ideas also should be checked out for vibist Al Francis.

As a partial answer to Kalo's question about Ohlsson's Chopin, here's a post (mine) from Mar. 8 comparing his version, Perlemuter's, and Pollini's of the Polonaise in F Sharp Minor, Op. 44: Chopin's Polonaise in F Sharp Minor, Op. 44. What an incredible piece of music! I'm listening to three versions over and over -- Pollini's, Perlemuter's, and Garrick Ohlsson's. Pollini's is startlingly intense and, for want of a better term, gaunt -- almost skeletal. There's lots of power here from Pollini, and it's a piece that calls for that a good deal of power much of the time, but it's quite dry tonally -- deliberately, I think, in the name of a modernism that looks askance at most Romantic era gestures. And yet Chopin at his most intense and startlingly innovative -- and this piece would be one of those places -- was a Romantic era figure. Nonetheless, the Pollini is a keeper. He's especially good with the transition to section three of the piece (the bizarre mazurka interlude) from section two (the stamping "military" section, where repeated "A"s ring out against fierce, insistent, also repeated march-like figures; this section being one of the craziest and most powerful things I've ever heard -- see Charles Rosen's "The Romantic Era" for a great discussion of it). Ohlsson is powerful almost beyond belief in sections one, two, and four (the coda). He must have gigantic hands, the bronze sonority he gets, while a tad unvaried, is thrilling, and he brings out those repeated "A"s like gangbusters. (In Rubinstein's energetic, spontaneous 1932 recording of the piece, the repeated "A"s are inaudible -- no doubt the fault of the recording, not the pianist -- which makes that whole section virtually meaningless.) Also a tad unvaried, though, and a bit of a problem, is Ohlsson's rhythmic sense; there's nothing terribly wrong there, to my mind, but I'd like a bit more "bend" or "give" at times. Ohlsson almost sounds like he's trying to prove how tough and "masculine" Chopin really is, which in a piece of such power is like spraying sweat on a Olympic weightlifter. Where Ohlsson does lets me down though is in the mazurka section, where he gets soft and tinkly/moon-y salonish for a time. This is not how this music should go, I'm sure, and Perlemuter makes that clear. His mazurka magically flows right out of the "military" brutalities of section two and is, in some impossible to describe (at least by me) manner, contiguous with them -- all this thanks in large part to Perlemuter's wonderful rhythmic and tonal "rightness"; he gives me the feeling that this is Chopin playing Chopin. On the other hand, though Perlemutter throws himself at the piece's technical barriers without flinching, he doesn't have the chops one wished he did; while the power is there in terms of scale (which probably is crucial), and the superb rhythmic grasp is undeniable, there is a fair bit of smudging at times -- in part because it's a Nimbus "tiled-bath" recording, in part because Perlemuter's fingers at his advanced age wouldn't quite do his bidding. And yet he's great in section two; those repeated "A"s aren't quite as hammered out and hallucinatory as Ohlsson's, but Perlemuter seems to have a better (or perhaps just a different) sense of way they're there and therefore how to play them. Again, as with the mazurka section versus section two, Perlemuter's more or less "integrates" what is in fact meant to be quite odd and disturbing and thus makes it odd and disturbing in a more intimate manner. In effect, the weirdness feels as though it were as much in you as it is out there. I love Perlemuter. And, again, what an incredible piece!

At times he's underpowered or whatever, due mostly to age, but Vlado Perlemuter understands how Chopin should go IMO, and usually he brings it all home. Rubinstein is a pianist I've come to admire greatly just recently but not in Chopin -- in fact, it was my lukewarm response to his Chopin on repeated exposure over the years that led me to go to sleep on his marvelous way with Brahms, Mozart, et al.

Meadow is in the Mob world at its most primitive and brutal when it suits her. For instance, in the last episode, when she "allows" Carmella to bring up the subject of how she was insulted by Coco, it seems to me that she knows exactly the sort of revenge that Tony is going to take on her behalf. She has no problem with the rightness or wrongness of the kind of power that Tony can exercise, though she might prefer to look to one side when things gets especially ugly. In fact, I'd say that she's arguably less compartmentalized in this respect than her mother -- which is among the reasons that I believe and hope that Meadow's violent demise will be a key a part of the series' grand climax. Certainly, if Tony survives, nothing could leave his soul more mortally wounded than the knowledge that his daughter's blood is on his hands. P.S. My son is convinced, and I believe he's right, that the two Muslim guys that the FBI is asking Tony about are really undercover FBI agents, and that the whole thing is a sting operation that will end up with Tony being nailed on terrorism charges. As you'll recall, Tony, through Christopher, did sell them weapons; now the FBI is establishing that Tony himself thinks they're terrorists. A tunnel closed at both ends. I like this because one of Tony's chief advantages over his mob rivals is that he's smarter than they are as well as being at least as brutal. Well, here, trying to be too smart, he'll outsmart himself -- perhaps.

Please -- anyone and everyone -- don't exaggerate the part I played/am playing here. Pullman just wanted another eye to look at what he'd done (someone who already knew a fair bit about Powell's life and times, had a background in editing, and with whom he felt comfortable) before he sent the manuscript on to the publisher. I was happy to oblige and did offer some advice here and there, but that's all.

Don't recall seeing Triglia's name in the text, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Pullman didn't talk to him.

Curious if you were at the 3 original recording sessions, the Public Theater performance of L-R-G later that year or at the recreation in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art a few years back? I'm curious too, especially about the first, but would assume that the ordinary rules of space, time, and dimension need not apply to EDC. Also goes without saying that he can make himself invisible.

I'd forgotten about that but remember it now. Thanks. It sure is a great moment. Must have been a lot of love and understanding between Jackie and Lee.

I think that would be Paulie who is the "someone." We know he was doing that for a while with Johnny Sac, and seems likely that he would continue with Phil, though I don't recall any direct evidence of this.

I've been playing something of an informal advisory-editorial role here. The book is completed and is IMO excellent -- everything one could wish for when it comes to nailing down facts, sorting out myth from reality, establishing social context, etc., etc. Pullman's labors here are almost awe-inspiring in their thoroughness, and no less important, their scrupulousness. In particular (and I think this was a very wise choice), Pullman doesn't presume to be able to read Powell's mind. Also the book is not, nor is it intended to be, a book in which Powell's music is analyzed. Pullman writes very well. The density of information is at a very high level when such information exists and can be dug up (and information of that density is what most people like us would want, I think), but the book certainly flows and has moments of high drama. The only problem now is bringing it into dock with the publisher. I don't know all the details there and probably wouldn't tell you if I did, but I expect docking maneuvers will be completed successfully and soon.

"Old Devil Moon" from this album: http://www.musicweb-international.com/jazz...olo_Quartet.htm It's in long meter and is moving a good clip anyway, so it creates a fantastic illusion that the music is traveling at twice the speed of the effort the musicians are expending to move it along -- just like chosing the right gear on a bike. Terrific performance too -- Hutcherson, Tyner, Herbie Lewis and (IIRC) Freddie Waits. Another good choice with be "La Nevada" from Gil Evans' "Into the Hot" (or is it "Out the Cool"?) Whichever, the sense of relaxed speed is awesome. BTW, even though Elvin is on this date, he's not playing drums but miscellanous percusssion. The incredibly propulsive drum work is that of Charlie Persip.

Glad you mentioned "Ella and Louis," Dan. There's some great singing there from both of them. Louis brought out the best in Ella, as did the Ellington people and material on that set in a somewhat different way. In both cases, it's as though the pressure was off. BTW, I met Ella once, when I presented a Down Beat award to her on the stage of some Chicago hotel nightclub, and she seemed to me to be shy to the point of it being pathological -- at least on the part of an entertainer who had been in the public eye for so many years (this was in 1968-9). I was pretty nervous myself when I came out from the wings to give her the award plaque, but she looked and acted as though she were about to be executed.

Weird, indeed -- but on a few of those links, such as those to two Doug Ramsey's "Rifftides" blog entries, my name crops up somewhere down the line there. I suspect that the same is true of all of them, but I'm too tired to play Google ping-pong -- at least I'm tired at the age I am as of this morning.

P.S. The movie Lewis was working on was, oddly enough, "Hardly Working" (1980).

Alarming because Lewis quite actively gave me the impression that his view of comedy, and of entertainment in general, was that it if he could amuse or entertain someone, that would allow him to eat their soul. In particular, he showed me a slapstick sequence on his editing machine of a film he was working on at the time, and when I laughed at some bit of business in the right place, the look on his face was utterly vampire-ish. On the other hand, he had nothing but nice things to say about Woody and Betty Carter.

Did Liberace provide his views on Betty Carter and Woody Herman? No, but he did provide his views on Barbra Streisand. Not very positive. As I recall, she opened for Lee (so his friends called him) the first time she played Vegas and stubbornly resisted his suggestion that she replace the schmatte (his word) she was wearing onstage with something more flattering and suitable. Also, I got to meet and observe Liberace's young sidekick Scott Thorsen, who was being paid a visit by his adoptive parents and young half-siblings. Hard-core Orange County, Ca., folk. That was weird. What did they know or suspect, if anything? Among the exhibits at the Liberace Museum in Vegas was a full-sized grand piano that some prison inmate fan of Liberace had fashioned out of toothpicks. Liberace was a smart, sly dude, it seemed to me, though I guess not smart enough when it came to balancing his sex life against his health. I think on the same visit to Vegas, I interviewed Jerry Lewis. That was fairly alarming.

No -- I'm here. It's just that the last week has been very busy, and so is today probably, and the weeks to come too. On the other hand, when I can get away, here is where I seem to want to be. Thanks for the birthday wishes. I share this birthday, BTW, with Woody Herman, Betty Carter, and Liberace -- two of whom I've interviewed.

The Yahoo TV summary of the episode says that Tony said "I get it!" Phil gets pissed when he finds out that Tony's been dumping asbestos at a place he owns, and he demands a huge cut of Tony's profits to make up for it. Neither Tony nor Phil wants to give in, and the temporary solution is that the asbestos gets illegally dumped in some wetlands. While distracted by emotion and conversation (and, as it turns out, drugs) while driving with Tony, Christopher veers off the road and flips the truck multiple times. Tony was wearing a seatbelt and escapes with few injuries, but Christopher is wheezing and coughing up blood and begging Tony to help him out of the situation so he doesn't have to take a drug test, which he knows he would fail. Tony can't stop looking at the mangled car seat in the back of the truck. Disgusted by the whole situation, Tony suffocates Christopher. In a dream, Tony admits to Melfi that he's relieved that Christopher died, because now he doesn't have to worry that Christopher will turn him over to the Feds or let him down again. Tony keeps trying to get others to admit to a sense of relief that Christopher is gone, but no one will. In the meantime, Paulie's Aunt Ma dies, and Paulie is furious that her wake didn't get as good of a turnout as Christopher's. AJ seems to be doing better, and he's hanging out more with the two Jasons at college and even going to some college classes. He also doesn't stop his friends when they beat up a random Somali student for being black and in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sight of this random violence sends AJ back into a depression. Tony heads on a solo trip to Las Vegas to get away from everything. He visits one of Christopher's old girlfriends, gives her the bad news, and sleeps with her. They take peyote together. Tony wins a bunch of money playing roulette while tripping, and then collapses in giggles on the casino floor when he realizes that Christopher is really dead. They go out into the desert to watch the sunrise, and Tony starts crying and yells, "I get it!"

Clem -- About that Bennett-Merman rumor, if I were you I'd be thinking about a selective lobotomy; but perhaps you don't sleep much at night anyhow. About Ella, I don't think she made much emotional-dramatic contact with the lyrics of the songs she sang until late in her life, when her voice began to fray and falter some. I say this based on live performances I saw and a few latter-day Pablo recordings. There are some recordings before this, though, where elegance pretty much equals eloquence for her, the standards with Ellis Larkins material for example. The peppy, scatting Ella I have no taste for. About Bennett -- the whole "revival of good music" thing may have been creepy and have led to rather freeze-dried performances, but I heard a good deal of earlier Bennett in person and on record that seemed remarkable to me -- in particular the two albums of Rodgers and Hart songs he did with Ruby Braff for his own label (later reissued by Concord). The version of "Lover" on one of them is among the greatest vocal recordings I know, dramatically and musically.

Beautiful, soulful post, Allen. The self-interview format suits you very well.

I thought he said, "I get it!" -- as in one of those b.s. cosmic revelations people get when they've taken a powerful psychedelic drug and then see the sun come up, but "I did it!" certainly works too, maybe even better because it's so vile. Also, while I know Tony is a fictional character, it seems that he was determined to bed Christopher's college girl-hooker girlfriend for exceptionally twisted psychological reasons -- sort of an inside-out, upside down, half-gainer off the highboard Oedipal thing. Also, again, he says something to her about having wanted to try peyote before but not being able to because of his "responsibilities," as though killing Christopher has freed him. Further, we know that Tony has been brooding over his belief that "Cleaver" was a dramatization of Christopher's desire to kill him. I guess we should be grateful that Tony didn't grind up Christopher's corpse -- as Christopher (at Tony's direction) did Richie Aprile's after Janice shot and killed Richie -- and then dine on diced Christopher in the form of sausage.

Good question. Yale retains the rights to do a paperback edition, I believe, but I'll have to look at the contract to see when and if those rights expire if not exercised.

Clem -- Actually I wondered about that a lot, but I was handicapped because the terrific veteran acquisitions editor at Yale who asked me to do the book left the press in middle of the process, in part because he was unhappy with recent management trends at Yale, and I was left in the hands of a young editor (this was her first book) who couldn't have cared less about the book or me, who knew nothing about jazz, and seemed eager to act like a professional hardass as a kind of management exercise and/or just to prove to herself that she could throw her weight around. On the other hand, the production people at Yale -- cover and type design, etc. -- were very good and couldn't have been more cooperative.

http://baseballcrank.com/archives2/2005/01...ball_yes_st.php January 4, 2005 BASEBALL: Yes, Steroids Help Unless you take the strong libertarian position - that there should be no restrictions on what ballplayers can ingest regardless of the impact on themselves or the game - the debate about what to do about steroids in baseball really revolves around three questions: 1. Does taking steroids help make you a better baseball player? (If not, there's no point in banning them). 2. Is taking steroids harmful to your health? (Again, if not, there's no reason to ban them) 3. Is there a feasible way to test for steroid use or otherwise enforce a ban? I recognize that there are serious people who disagree about the second and third questions. But I submit that, if you think about it honestly, what we do know about the first point is quite clear: steroids* can and do help performance in baseball, and specifically help in hitting for power. * - I refer here colloquially to "steroids" to include other hormone-altering performance-enhancers like human growth hormone. As often happens in debates about drugs, precise definition of the substances involved is itself a whole sub-field of debate. The Available Types of Evidence Part of the confusion over the link between steroids and performance derives from the different types of evidence we use to answer these types of questions. To illustrate, let's compare this question to one with a settled answer: whether throwing the ball faster will help a pitcher strike out more batters. Direct Evidence One sometimes hears the argument made that we can't and don't have direct evidence of how steroids help performance. This is true enough, as far as it goes. For example, we can show directly how velocity helps a pitcher get strikeouts: you can measure batters' reaction times and show how increasing velocity makes it harder to make contact. Or, you can simply watch a guy who throws 95+ blow pitches even past guys who are looking for them. That kind of "see the causation with your own eyes" evidence doesn't exist for steroids and performance in baseball. Statistical Proof Where direct evidence of causation isn't available, of course, statistical proof of correlation can be good enough. A classic example of this from the intersection of law and medicine is the fact that we still don't have direct evidence that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer (i.e., scientists can't show how it happens), but the statistical evidence shows a fairly overwhelming connection between smoking and increased likelihood of getting lung cancer. Statistical proofs of correlation are pervasive in baseball - to use our example above, it would be easy to do a study showing that pitchers who regularly throw above 95 mph get a lot more strikeouts, and are much more likely to generate large numbers of strikeouts, than pitchers who rarely or never crack 90+ mph. That correlation is so powerful that it will show up in almost any study. Other correlations are trickier, which is why a reliable study has to use a large enough sample size to be able to generalize, and has to ensure that truly comparable players are being compared, so that different outcomes can't be explained away by some other factor. Here, there are two problems with studying steroid use. One is finding large and otherwise truly comparable sets of players (comparing the same player before and after isn't useful because of the interfering factor of age, which ordinarily is, of course, very powerfully correlated with declining performance after about age 28 or so). But the bigger problem is that steroid use, by virtue of being illegal, is done in secret; we have so little reliable information about who uses what, when and in what amounts that for the foreseeable future, it will be impossible to do statistical comparisons with any degree of confidence. Circumstantial/Inferential Evidence The fallacy in many arguments over steroids in baseball is to note the lack of direct or reliable statistical evidence and declare the question unresolved. But this is not consistent with how human beings make decisions in everyday life, in law, medicine, politics or in baseball. When the best forms of evidence are unavailable, we look at what remains: at circumstantial evidence, and logical connections to be drawn therefrom. For example, even if we couldn't see fast pitches going by hitters and read the evidence of the same in box scores, what we do know about hitting a baseball - you have to time your swing to make contact - is itself strongly suggestive of the fact that a faster pitch will be harder to hit. I would submit that that evidence is more than sufficient to persuade us that steroids help performance in baseball. Let's once again break this down to a few questions: A. Do Steroids Help Build Strength? This much is not seriously disputed, which is one reason why steroids are banned in the NFL and the Olympics, where physical strength and speed can be shown to connect directly to performance. There are certainly debates about precisely how and to what extent steroids help, but few serious people would debate that taking them helps build stronger muscles. B. Does Strength Help In Hitting A Baseball? This is really the crux of the argument. It is often said that you can't take a drug to help you hit a curveball, which is true but totally beside the point. The issue isn't whether steroids will help you or me become a major league ballplayer; the issue is whether guys with the pre-existing skills to play professional baseball will have those skills enhanced. To deny that, among other things, you have to argue that strength has no impact on the ability to hit for power. Of course, this is ridiculous. Since the introduction of the home run as a regular part of the game in the 1920s, it has always been the case that big, strong guys with powerful chests and arms have tended to be home run hitters, and skinny little guys have not. To deny that steroids have an impact on hitting for power in particular, you have to look at all the home runs hit by the Gehrigs and Foxxes and Mantles and Kluzewskis and Killebrews and all the singles hit by the Willie McGees and Vince Colemans and Nellie Foxes of the world, and argue that it is just a coincidence that physical strength has always been so strongly correlated with home run power. You have to not only look at Bonds and Giambi and all the other guys who have been placed under one sort of cloud or other and say that whatever they took or were given didn't matter; you actually have to say that all the muscle Barry Bonds has added has had nothing to do with his power surge, that Jason Giambi's increased power production as he gained muscle was just a coincidence. Sorry, I'm not buying that. Basic physics: force equals mass times velocity acceleration. The force you hit a baseball with is affected by the weight and speed of the bat. Stronger players can generate greater bat speed, or generate the same bat speed with a heavier bat. Yes, bat speed is a variable affected by other factors - the arc of your swing, reflexes/reaction times . . . and yes, it's true that muscle mass sometimes gets in the way of greater bat speed. But again: if strength has nothing to do with power, why have stronger players always, as a class, hit for more power? C. Do Steroids Help In Conditioning? Strength is the core of the debate. But correct me if I'm wrong here - I believe most of the analyses I've seen have similarly shown that steroids can assist more broadly in conditioning - beyond pure muscle mass - by assisting in the ability to train at greater length without injury, at least in the short run. D. Does Superior Conditioning Help In Baseball? The question, again, essentially answers itself, and doubly so for aging players seeking to stave off declining bat speed (or declining velocity, for pitchers, but pitchers and steroids are another day's debate). Honus Wagner lifted weights; Ty Cobb was a conditioning fanatic. It could be a coincidence that they lasted into their 40s in a day when few others did. The Bonds Issue I would stress, again, that I don't have anything but the sketchy information in the public record on what Barry Bonds took and when, and how it helped him. And it's true: Bonds' late career surge has had other causes, from better bats to a greater uppercut in his swing. But I've been disappointed at some of the efforts from otherwise reasonable people to obscure the fact that Bonds' increased strength has had an impact on his unprecedented late-30s power surge. I meant to get to this when it ran in mid-December: the New York Times editorial by Will Carroll of the Baseball Prospectus (discussed here on his blog). I like and respect Carroll from his work at BP, but the Times piece has some serious issues. One is the point I make above: Carroll essentially implies that he is agnostic on whether strength helps with power hitting, contrary to 85 years' experience: [W]e have little or no idea what these drugs accomplish. Do stronger players hit the ball farther, swing the bat quicker or throw the ball harder? Does using steroids reduce fatigue so that they can do any of those things more effectively than "clean" players? While there is no doubt that these chemicals are effective at their stated goal, albeit with significant complications, the question of how their effects manifest themselves in a baseball game has not been answered. There are no credible studies that connect drug use to improved performance, nor any that determine what cost these athletes may be paying. Much more problematically, Carroll uses some seriously misguided examples to imply to the Times' readers that Bonds' power surge is not so unprecedented: It is true that Bonds's performance over what many would expect to be the twilight of his career has been incredible. Instead of a slow decline as he approached 40, Bonds has done what can only now be described as superhuman. . . . The raw numbers, however, only reflect his increased home-run production; they do not say whether he hits more homers that fly significantly farther. What of this late-career surge? Certainly we can point to that with an accusing finger, sure that Bonds's numbers in the record books have been written with some "cream" or "clear" substance. It's much easier to point than to find facts. According to Clay Davenport, a researcher at Baseball Prospectus, Hank Aaron's best year for home runs - when he had the most homers per at bat - was 1973, when he was 39. His second best was in 1971, at age 37. Willie Stargell had his best seasons after age 37. Carlton Fisk put his best rate in the books when he was 40. Even Ty Cobb had his best home run rate at age 38, though the end of the dead-ball era helped that. It is not uncommon, according to Mr. Davenport, for a slugger to change his mechanics as he ages, swinging for the fences as his ability to run the bases declines. These are terribly bad examples. First of all, Aaron in 1973, Stargell in 1978 and 1979 and Fisk in 1988 all had one thing in common: none of them were full-time, 500+ at bat players any longer, as they'd been in their primes. It's a lot easier for an older player to improve his production if he has a third to half of the season to rest as opposed to the years when he was playing every day, a fact that has absolutely zero to do with Barry Bonds. Let's take Stargell first, as he's the most egregious example. Willie Stargell's career best slugging percentages, both absolutely and relative to the league, came at the ages of 26, 31, and 33, well within the normal range. Stargell's home run rate improved slightly in 1978-79, at age 38 and 39, but his doubles - also a key power stat - dropped off sharply from 43 in 1973 to 18 and 19 in 1978 and 1979. Was he really hitting for more power? Also, Stargell had another thing going for him: while he wasn't, strictly speaking, platooned (his backup, John Milner, was also lefthanded), the decline in his playing time allowed him to see a much more favorable mix of pitchers: Stargell had 30.5% of his at bats against lefties in 1978 and 30.7% in 1979, as opposed to 39.5% in 1971 and 33.1% in 1973. For a guy with Stargell's big platoon splits, that's a significant advantage. Then there's Aaron. If you know the game's history, you already know that Aaron's late-career power surge was an illusion created by the improved offensive conditions of the 1970s as opposed to the 1960s, combined with his move in 1966 into homer-friendly Fulton County Stadium and out of pitcher-friendly Milwaukee County. Aaron hit 52 homers on the road and 37 at home in 1962-63; in 1971 and 1973, those figures were more than reversed to 55 at home and 32 on the road. But it doesn't stop there; with just 392 at bats in 1973 at age 39, the right-handed Aaron saw 44.4% of his at bats against left-handed pitching, up from 30.9% in 1971 and 26.5% as a full-time player in 1969. Then there's Fisk, whose "best" home run season was 253 at bats in 1988. Do I really need to explain why a catcher might hit better playing half the time? And yes, the right-handed Fisk faced lefties 36.5% of the time in 1988, compared to 22.9% in his actual best season, 1977. (Ty Cobb, whose career high in home runs was 12 but whose career high in slugging average was at age 24, is not even worthy of discussing at length). None of these guys - indeed, no other player in baseball history - compares remotely to what Barry Bonds has done, and it does no service to the debate to pretend otherwise. Prior to 2000, Bonds was 34 years old and had a career slugging percentage of .559, with his two best slugging percentages (.677 and .647) coming at age 28 and 29. Since then, he has slugged .781, a 40% improvement on his career average and a 15% improvement over a five-year stretch compared to his career best season. Neither Carroll nor Davenport could find an example anywhere, certainly not outside of guys who straddled the arrival of the lively ball in the 1920s, of an established player who had anything like a 40% improvement in his power numbers from age 35 to 39. (Bonds has also batted .358 over the past three years, compared to batting above .320 just once through age 35, also nothing like a normal aging pattern). Carroll's argument would have been better served by recognizing the fact that what Bonds has done is totally unprecedented and clearly not unrelated to his dramatic improvement in physical strength in his late 30s. Pretending otherwise does no one any good.