“Full count; runner on 2nd, 1 out. Cubs lead 3-0 in the top of the 8th. Prior delivers. Castillo swings. High fly drifting towards the left field wall. Alou reaches over. But wait! A fan knocks the ball out of his hand”.
The rest, of course, is history. It was the 8th inning of the 2003 NL Championship Series between the Cubs and the Marlins. Marlin Castillo drew a walk, Prior (who up to that point had been delivering a 3-hit shutout gem) fell apart, and when the dust settled for the inning, the Cubs (who were seeking to clinch the Pennant that night) were down 8-3. They lost the game, and then booted Game 7. The Billy Goat Curse, which had kept them out of the World Series since 1945 and denied them the Championship since 1908, remained intact.
Everyone blamed the misanthropic, over-reaching fan: one Steve Bartman. And he was an easy target, sitting in the front row, committing the unpardonable (for purists at any rate) sin of wearing big, honking head phones to a playoff game, and, through his unwitting actions, denying the Cubs their destiny. He became a pariah in Chicago – so much so that the Governor at the time: Philosopher/Moralist Rod Blagojevich, suggested he enter the Witness Protection Program. It would take another Baker’s Dozen-13 years, and 3 changes of ownership, before The Curse ended and the Cubs grabbed their rings. Bartman was persona non grata for the entire intervening period, but then, last week, the Chicago National League team did something classy: it awarded him a World Series ring.
Across these troubled times, the gesture was nothing if not a welcome act of Redemption, but it wasn’t the only one. Contemporaneously, a Nevada Parole Board granted to inmate 1027820: one Orenthal James Simpson, and I want everyone to be aware that I am OK with this. I mean, we all know that did Goldman and Brown, but way he was set up for the 8 year stretch he served was nothing short of epic. Some Vegas players take his memorabilia and let him know that the boodle is lying in an adjacent hotel room. They get him drunk, put a gun in his hand and break in. Within a matter of minutes, the cops arrive on the scene, and whammo! Open and shut case for armed robbery.
So Juice did his time, and now he can reorient his self-proclaimed “conflict-free life” to his solemn quest to find the “real” killer of his wife and the signally unlucky Goldman. Who knows? Maybe he’ll succeed. But one way or another, it’s time to move on. So let’s remember the Juice for his singular exploits on the gridiron.
Oh yeah, and for one more thing: in a very real sense, we owe O.J. a deep debt of gratitude for inadvertently giving us the Kardashians.
On the whole, we’re on something of a feel-good run, and nowhere is this more evident than in the investment universe. Our equity indices continue their climb to heretofore un-breached elevations, Q2 earnings have been, on balance, a blowout affair, and I’m assuming y’all saw (or in any event, read Trump’s Triumphant Tweets about) Friday’s Jobs Report. If one casts an eye beyond the Equity Complex, what is visible is a global bid on bonds, and even some love of the recently forsaken USD:
The recently “en fuego” grain markets have backed off, but let me ask you this: how bad is it if you pay a little bit less for that corn on the cob scheduled to grace the BBQs teed up as summer winds down?
However, in a widely reported and indisputably odd turn of events, perhaps the biggest recipient of heavenly and earthly Redemption is European High Yield debt complex. Continental “Junk” (apologies for descending into the decorum of the vernacular) bonds have been bid so strongly that somehow, improbably, they are trading at identical yields to those of the 10 year notes issued from our own gallant Treasury Department, for many generations considered the world’s most reliable borrower:
I will admit to having stared at this chart to the point of obsession. Among other matters, so desperate for this paper have investors become that from a point contemporaneous to the teeth of the crash till the present day, Euro Junk yields have dropped by an astounding 90%. Call me crazy (it’s been done before) but I have just the most sneaking hunch that these securities are a tad, shall we say, overvalued. This decade, we’ve been treated to multiple handwringing cycles of speculation about the prospects for an Uncle Sam default, but I’m here to tell you that: a) such an outcome is unlikely; and b) as a final line of defense, our paper is backed up not only by the full faith and credit of our federal custodians, but the considerable firepower of our military machine. By contrast, I’m pretty sure that some of these Euro obligors are living on little more than time that they borrowed as part of the lending package, and that when this precious but fleeting asset runs out, their lenders are likely to be left holding little more than an empty bag.
That strange days have found us is a matter of scant dispute; however, during this transient interval of Redemption, I am hesitant to press the point. Yes, market multiple metrics continue to soar to the arguably unsustainable elevations. In Washington, new Grand Juries are being convened at a point when the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body has adjourned to meet angry constituents, with little or nothing to show for its efforts. Our potential foes in Eurasia continue to join us in the language of brinksmanship. The domestic legislative agenda is stuck in either neutral or reverse, and we’re hurtling next month towards a debt ceiling/budget showdown that – come what may, is likely to please no one.
In short, there are many imponderables out there that threaten to kill our current buzz, and again, I believe that conventional risk measures of virtually every stripe are understating the true exposure — from a market and an economic perspective.
But on this bucolic summer weekend, as the sunny seasons slips inexorably away from us, I choose to focus instead on our Redemption theme. I hope Juice uses his freedom wisely, and I’m glad that the Cubs and the City of Chicago have, at long last, let Bartman off the hook. After all, he presumably paid for his ticket, and going for a foul ball that appears to be within your grasp is part of the decidedly limited appeal associated with the price of admission to a baseball game. He wasn’t looking at the left fielder; his eyes were squarely on the souvenir that gravity was sending directly towards him.
And there’s one other sin associated with this incident that wants atonement. On the following February 26th, amid much national (and indeed global) hype, the team gathered at Harry Carey’s downtown restaurant to ritualize the destruction of the offending baseball. They kept their precise methods a solemn secret, so, like everyone else, I tuned in to watch the spectacle. I had envisioned the launching of it from a cannon, to explode in mid-air, its debris scattered into the icy waters of Lake Michigan. Instead, they stuck it in a transparent box, pushed a button and it disintegrated. I found this disappointingly anti-climactic. Further, published reports (I’m not making this up) indicate that the restaurant then took a portion of the particlized remains and mixed it into the evening’s pasta sauce. Helluva shame. To my thinking at any rate, the infamous ball plainly deserved a more spectacular exit.
But that’s the way it goes – in baseball and in life. In more cases that we would wish, our hopes, dreams and even our nightmares end up dissolving into dust. There’s a lesson in there somewhere for the investor class, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to expend my energy attempting to ferret it out. Instead…
…I’ll leave this task to you. Give it some thought. You may come up with a suitable answer, and the exercise itself will do you no harm.
TIMSHEL