Should the Giants Be Buyers or Sellers?

Should the Giants be buying or selling as the trade deadline approaches? Buyers are typically teams that believe that they have a chance to win it all, while sellers are those who are throwing in the towel for current year in the hope of acquiring prospects that will yield a title in the future. So, should the Giants be buying or sellers?

They definitely shouldn't be buyers, and they might consider being sellers (for the right price), not because I think they should give up reaching the playoffs this year, but because so many of their younger players (Austin Slater, Alen Hanson, Steven Duggar, Andrew Suárez, and Dereck Rodríguez) are playing so well. The Giants have been forced to use these guys because of the numerous injuries they've had this year. But, instead of dragging the team down, they've helped keep the team afloat. As a result, not only are the Giants much "younger" than they were at the beginning of the season, they are also a lot faster ("Steven Duggar and Alen Hanson have really made a difference in team speed").

That's why I'd be inclined not to waste giving up young talent to acquire a player who may help them reach the playoffs (does anyone remember when the Giants traded for Carlos Beltran?). Instead, I'd roll the dice with their young talent and see if they can help the veterans on the team (Posey, Crawford, Belt, Panik, Hernandez, Sandoval, McCutcheon, Bumgarner, Holland) bring home the pennant (or at least reach a playoff spot). They may want to consider seeing what they can get for Mark Melancon and Hunter Strickland; the Giants' don't really need them given the emergence of Tony Watson and Will Smith. And they also might want to shop Evan Longoria but only give him up for a very good price.

The upside of such a strategy is that they will have a decent (not great) shot at reaching the playoffs this year, and they'll be well-positioned to make a run next year (and several years after that). And that strikes me (as a Giants fan) as a good thing.

The Outer Bay's Best Craft Breweries

Continuing my compilation of the Bay Area's best breweries ("The South Bay's Best Craft Breweries","The North Bay's Best Breweries"), here I present the rankings of craft breweries located in the "Outer Bay" (i.e., from Santa Cruz to Monterey). As before, the rankings are based on Untappd scores, which is probably the most popular app for rating a craft beers. It's not a perfect approach since successful breweries are more likely to experiment, which increases the probability that they'll brew a bad beer. And, the rankings are constantly in flux. Nevertheless, Untappd's ratings are probably the best available, so here are the rankings of the Outer Bay's craft breweries:

 1. Sante Adairius Rustic Ales, Capitola (4.25)

 2. Alvarado Street Brewing, Monterey (4.02)

 3. Humble Sea, Santa Cruz (4.01)

 4. Boulder Creek Brewing, Boulder Creek (3.65) -- closed

 4. Discretion Brewing, Soquel (3.65)

 6. New Bohemia Brewing, Santa Cruz (3.63)

 7. Craft Artisan Ales, Pacific Grove (3.59)

 8. East Cliff Brewing, Santa Cruz (3.56)

 8. Peter B’s Prewpub, Monterey (3.56)

10. Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing, Santa Cruz (3.47)

11. Seabright Brewery, Santa Cruz (3.44)

12. Santa Cruz Ale Works, Santa Cruz (3.43)

13. Uncommon Brewers, Santa Cruz (3.42)

14. English Ales Brewery, Marina (3.33)

15. Carmel Valley Brewing, Carmel Valley (3.23)

I have yet to visit Sante Adairius, but good friends assure me that it's a great place, one that offers a wide array of craft beers. It's rating is exceptionally high -- in fact, it's one of the highest in the country. Alvarado Street in Monterey and Humble Sea in Santa Cruz are two of my favorites. Alvarado Street also has an excellent restaurant, as well as a beer garden out back. Humble Sea is located not too far from Natural Bridges State Beach and around the corner from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing. Boulder Creek used to be a favorite, one that our family patronized annually after cutting down our Christmas tree at a nearby farm; however, it closed after a fire, and I don't think it ever reopened. New Bohemia differs from most of the other breweries in the Outer Bay in that it offers German style lagers. East Cliff Brewing is somewhat unique in that half of its beers are traditional English Ales, while the other half are "traditional" American craft brews. I've never been too wild about Seabright Brewery's beers, but its location is excellent. Enjoy!

Note: Those interested in starting a craft brewery will probably enjoy "An Inside Look at Humble Sea Brewing," which includes videos, interviews, and so on.

#DubNation's Thrilled That (at least for now) We're the Destination of Choice

Recently, the New England Patriots' SB Nation column "Pats Pulpit" posted a satirical article entitled, "Tom Brady opts out of contract with Patriots, will sign with Golden State Warriors." I guess that pretty much captures how much of the sports world views the Golden State Warriors. It seems that everyone everyone wants to sign with the Warriors, and people are apparently getting upset. For instance, a few days after the L.A. Lakers announced that LeBron James would join them for the 2018-19 season, the Warriors signed 4-time All-Star, DeMarcus Cousins, for not a whole lot of money (at least in NBA terms). And, of course, it was just two years ago (on July 4th) when the Warriors convinced Kevin Durant to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder to join them in Oakland.

I sorta get why people (i.e., non-Warriors fans) are a little upset. Sorta. For most of my life the NBA's best players either wanted and ended up playing for the Lakers or the Celtics. Since 1958 (when I was born), either the Celtics and/or the Lakers have reached the NBA finals 42 times, winning the championship 27 times (I didn't count the Celtics trip to the final in 1958 since I hadn't been born yet). Thus, while I get why people are a bit put out that top NBA players want to play for the Warriors, I don't remember them getting upset when they wanted to play for Boston or LA. I'm not sure why that is (or was), but it is what it is (or was), and I suspect that someday LA and Boston will once again become the destination of choice ("Go West, Big Man: The Logo on LeBron James and the Allure of Los Angeles"). But until then, non-Warriors fans will have to forgive me and others ("Save your outrage, Warriors haters") for not feeling (too much of) your pain, and why we plan to enjoy the Warriors' run while it lasts.

Networks and Religion: Which Congregations are the Most Politically Active?

In 2003 Kraig Beyerlein and Mark Chaves reported on the political activities of religious congregations. Drawing on a representative sample of religious congregations in the U.S. collected in 1998, they discovered that religious traditions tend to specialize when it comes to political activism. Conservative Protestants tend to do one thing, Mainline Protestants another, and Roman Catholics still another. A particular interesting result was that Black congregations are 7 times more likely than mainline Protestant churches, 24 times more likely than conservative Protestant churches, and 42 times more likely than Roman Catholic churches to invite a political candidate to speak at a worship service.

This led me (Everton 2007) to track where the 2004 candidates for President (and Vice-President) visited in the lead-up to the election in November. Consistent with Beyerlein and Chaves's findings, the Democratic candidates (John Kerry and John Edwards) visited and spoke at far more churches than the Republican candidates (George W. Bush and Dick Cheney). Specifically, Kerry and Edwards visited 19 churches; Bush and Cheney visited only one (see the figure above). Unsurprisingly, most of these appearances occurred at Black Churches. In fact, the one time that President Bush appeared and spoke at a church, it was an African-American one. Perhaps more interestingly, the only candidate to speak at a conservative Protestant church was John Edwards, who spoke at First Baptist Church, Canton, North Carolina.

Mark Chaves (Chaves and Anderson 2008, 2014) has conducted two additional surveys of religious congregations since 1998: one in 2006-07 and another in 2012. He is currently in the midst of a fourth, all of which raises the question if patterns of congregational activism have changed over the last 20 years. The short answer is, yes and no. The two most common forms of church activism are (1) telling people at worship about opportunities for political activity and (2) distributing voter guides. Both appear to be in decline, except among Roman Catholic churches. Voter registration drives and organizing groups to demonstrate or march are the next most common forms of political activism. The former were quite popular in 2006-07, but in 2012 this type of political activity fell back close to the 1998 level. There has been an increase in congregations organizing groups to march or demonstrate, but it largely reflects the efforts of Roman Catholic churches to express their concerns about abortion, same-sex marriage, and immigration (Everton 2015). Other forms of political activism are much less common. Less than 10 percent of congregations formed groups to discuss politics, lobby government officials, or invite elected officials or someone running for office as a visiting speaker. These low levels do not hold for all religious traditions, however. Black Protestant congregations still routinely invite individuals running for political office and government officials to speak at their worship services.

The graph below presents the percentage of politically active congregations (i.e., congregations that participated in at least one of the activities mentioned above) in 1998, 2006-07, and 2012. Although many assume that theologically conservative (i.e., evangelical) Christians are the most politically active religious group, that is not the case. Over the last decade and a half Roman Catholic and Black Protestant congregations have been the most active. In the late 1990s it was Black Protestant congregations, but since the mid 2000s, it has been Roman Catholic ones. Moreover, both Mainline and Evangelical Protestant church activism has declined in recent years although the drop in the latter’s has been more precipitous.

Why are some congregations more politically active than others? Beyerlein and Chaves identified a number of factors (e.g., size), as do I in my new book ("Networks and Religion: Ties that Bind, Loose, Build-up, and Tear Down"). Unsurprisingly ("Networks and Religion: Political Participation and Civic Engagement"), there's some evidence that the degree to which congregations are integrated into their local communities (that is, their congregational networks) is positively associated with their level of activism. For example, even after controlling for a number of factors, there's a strong positive correlation between the number of social services a congregation offers to the surrounding community and its level of political activism. Which way the causal arrow runs is difficult to discern, however. Sounds like an ideal topic for future research.

References

Beyerlein, Kraig and Mark Chaves. 2003. "The Political Activities of Religious Congregations in the United States." Journal For the Scientific Study of Religion 42:229-46.

Chaves, Mark and Shawna L. Anderson. 2008. "Continuity and Change in American Congregations: Introducing the Second Wave of the National Congregations Study." Sociology of Religion 69:415-40.

______. 2014. "Changing American Congregations: Findings from the Third Wave of the National Congregations Study." Journal for the Scientific of Religion 53:676-86.

Everton, Sean F. 2007. "Whose Faith-Based Initiative? How Kerry and Edwards Wooed African American Churchgoers." Books and Culture: A Christian Review, January/February, pp. 42-43.

______. 2015. "Church Activism." Pp. 368-71 in The Sage Encyclopedia of Economics and Society, Vol. 1, edited by F. F. Wherry and J. Schor. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Networks and Religion: Political Participation and Civic Engagement

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus and sat in the last seat open in the bus’s “colored section.” A few stops later, the white section filled up, and a white man was left standing in the aisle. The bus driver asked Parks and three other African Americans, who were sitting in the colored section’s front row, to move. All but Parks complied, and she was soon arrested.

It was not the first time she had refused to give up her seat; in fact, the driver who had her arrested in 1955 had kicked her off the bus twelve years before, but for various reasons, this time was different. Parks's arrest set in motion a series of events that helped give birth to the Civil Rights movement. A local African American leader, E. D. Nixon, first posted bail for Parks and then called Jo Ann Robinson, an English professor at Alabama State University (a historically black university) and a member of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, to tell her what happened. Robinson, who chaired the church’s political affairs committee, called several other women who were both on the committee and the faculty at Alabama State, and together they printed a leaflet protesting Parks’s arrest and called on Montgomery’s African American community to not to ride the city’s buses the following Monday. Robinson called E. D. Nixon back and told him what they were doing. Dixon thought a boycott was a great idea and agreed to organize a meeting at her church on Friday, but he called her new pastor, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just to make sure that it was okay.

News of the Parks’s arrest and the upcoming meeting spread quickly. King phoned several of the ministers in town, Nixon reached out to many of Montgomery’s civic leaders, and rank-and-file African Americans called family, friends, and neighbors. And,

by early [Friday] afternoon the arrest of Mrs. Parks was becoming public knowledge. Telephones began to ring in almost rhythmic succession. By two o’clock an enthusiastic group had mimeographed leaflets concerning the arrest and the proposed boycott, and by evening these had been widely circulated. (King 1958:37)

Approximately 50 African American leaders attended the meeting, and they adopted a resolution that was essentially a condensed version of the leaflet drafted by Robinson and her colleagues. It urged Montgomery’s African Americans on Monday to not “ride the bus to work, to town, to school, or any place,” and if they worked, “take a cab, or share a ride, or walk.” The resolution also invited them to “come a mass meeting on Monday at 7:00pm, at the Holt Street Baptist Church for further instruction” (Branch 1988: 133).

The Montgomery Bus boycott illustrates the importance that social ties play in connecting people to various types of collective action. News of Parks’s arrest and the boycott spread primarily through social ties, most of which were church ties. As Rodney Stark (2004: 600-601) notes:

Jo Ann Robinson and her associates, who launched the initial call for a bus boycott, not only were friends and members of the same faculty but belonged to the same church. All served on the same political affairs committee of that church—and their pastor was none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. When E. D. Nixon organized a meeting of African American clergy at King’s church, not only did he know all of them, but they all knew one another well. And every one of those mentioned above was well acquainted with the secretary of the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—Rosa Parks. Moreover, for most African Americans in Montgomery, the decision to join the boycott was not an individual act so much as it was a collective action by members of closely knit church groups.

Scholars have long recognized the important role that social networks play in connecting people to various types of civic engagement and collective action. For example, Beyerlein and Sikkink (2008) showed that individuals who attend church regularly were more likely to volunteer for 9/11 relief efforts than were those who did not. Similarly, Lewis, MacGregor, and Putnam (2013) found that after controlling for religious tradition, religious attendance, number of friends, and sociability, religious social networks have a positive effect on volunteering, informal giving, attending public meetings, participating in a political activity, and the number of political activities in which people participate.

References

Beyerlein, Kraig and David Sikkink. 2008. "Sorrow and Solidarity: Why Americans Volunteered for 9/11 Relief Efforts." Social Problems 55(2):190-215.

Branch, Taylor. 1988. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963. New York: Simon and Schuster.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1958. Strive toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Lewis, Valerie, Carol Ann MacGregor and Robert D. Putnam. 2013. "Religion, Networks, and Neighborliness: The Impact of Religious Social Networks on Civic Engagement." Social Science Research 42:331-46.

Stark, Rodney. 2004. Sociology: Internet Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

How MLK read Romans 13

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has, quite rightly, been criticized for using the 13th chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans as justification for the separation of children from parents at the Mexican border. Sessions equates Paul's admonition to "subject oneself to the governing authorities" with obeying the law. Keep in mind, however, that Paul was abused, imprisoned, and probably martyred by Roman authorities for, presumably, not obeying Roman laws. Thus, Paul must have had something very different in mind than Mr. Sessions seems to think he had, as did other early Christians, who from time-to-time were put to death for not "worshipping" the Roman emperor. And what of the Christians who helped smuggle African-Americans out of the South on the Underground Railroad? Or, the European Christians who resisted the Nazis after their countries were overrun by Hitler's armies? Surely, Mr. Sessions wouldn't argue that they should've have obeyed Hitler's decrees just because he was in charge.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had an interesting take on subjecting oneself to the governing authorities. He argued that when he and other broke various laws using direct, non-violent action, they did so with the understanding that they would willingly accept the consequences (i.e., subject themselves to the authorities and their laws). They believed that in doing so they would help expose the immorality of the laws they were breaking. As he wrote in his letter from the Birmingham Jail:

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Mennonites, who hail from the Anabaptist tradition which includes other traditions such as the Amish and Hutterites, hold a similar understanding to King's ("How Jeff Sessions reads Romans 13 and how my Mennonite Sunday school class does"). During the Protestant Reformation Anabaptists were persecuted by both Roman Catholics and Protestants for refusing to baptize their babies, insisting that they must undergo a conversion experience before becoming members. In today's world, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but back then, in a world where church and state were not separate, it was both a theological and political act. It was asserting that one's conscience was not the purview of either the church hierarchy or the state. Thus, it was seen as an act of rebellion. For good reason, although Anabaptists have been willing to subject themselves to the governing authorities, they had no intention of obeying them if asked to do something contrary to their beliefs.

The North Bay's Best Breweries

In a recent post, I posted rankings of craft breweries in the South Bay ("The South Bay's Best Craft Breweries") Here, I offer my rankings of the craft breweries in the North Bay. As before, the rankings are based on Untappd scores, which is probably the most popular app for rating a brewery's different beers. It's not a perfect approach since successful breweries are more likely to experiment, which increases the probability that they'll brew a bad beer. Still, Untappd's ratings are the best available, so below are the rankings of the North Bay's craft breweries. That Russian River sits atop of the rankings is no surprise. It's regularly ranked as one of the top breweries in the U.S., and its Blind Pig, Pliny the Elder, and Pliny the Younger are among the best IPAs, DIPAs, and TIPAs in the country. Not too far behind is Lagunitas, which has a great outdoor venue for enjoying good beer and food. And its tour of the facility can be quite entertaining:

1. Russian River Brewing, Santa Rosa (4.19)
2. Mad Fritz, St. Helena (3.96)
3. Cooperage Brewing Company, Santa Rosa (3.89) 
4. Lagunitas Brewing Company, Petaluma (3.86)
5. HenHouse Brewing, Santa Rosa (3.85) 
6. Bear Republic, Healdsburg (3.82)
7. Shady Oak Barrel House, Santa Rosa (3.79) 
8. Barrel Brothers, Windsor (3.77)
9. Grav South Brew Co., Cotati (3.74 )
10. Plow Brewing, Santa Rosa (3.73)
11. Crooked Goat Brewing, Sebastopol (3.72) 
12. Moonlight Brewing, Santa Rosa (3.71) 
13. Baeltane, Novato (3.68)
14. Fogbelt Brewing, Santa Rosa (3.68)
15. Iron Springs, Fairfax (3.68) 
16. Woodfour Brewery, Sebastopol (3.68) 
17. Moylan’s Brewing, Novato (3.67)
18. Sonoma Springs Brewing, Sonoma (3.66)
19. 101 North Brewing, Petaluma (3.65)
20. Mill Valley Beerworks, Mill Valley (3.64)
21. Old Redwood Brewing, Windsor (3.64)
22. Marin Brewing, Larkspur (3.63)
23. Bloodline Brewing, Santa Rosa (3.62) (closed)
24. St. Florians, Windsor (3.56)
25. Petaluma Hills Brewing, Petaluma (3.55)
26. Third Street Aleworks, Santa Rosa (3.49)
27. Napa Smith Brewing, Vallejo (3.48)
28. Warped Brewing Company, Sebastopol (3.47)
29. 2 Tread Brewing, Santa Rosa (3.46)
30. Dempsey’s, Petaluma (3.46)
31. Napa Point Brewing, Napa (3.45)
32. Calistoga Inn and Brewery, Calistoga (3.44)
33. Carneros Brewing, Sonoma (3.41)
34. Stumptown Brewery, Guerneville (3.38)
35. Right Eye Brewing, Suisun City (3.30)
36. Healdsburg Beer Company, Healdsburg (3.28)
37. Broken Drum, San Rafael (3.25)
38. Pizza Orgamisca, San Rafael (3.22)