Lee Feiner
JO 307 Final Paper
Jayme Mask shot off of second base at the crack of the bat like a speed skater off of the start line. A coiled spring of potential energy packed into a muscle-bound 5’2’’ frame that turned kinetic in a flash. Right, left, right, left..right…left….right…and she was halfway home; her short choppy steps giving way to long powerful strides as she took a wide left turn before heading home. The ball screamed off the bat of Boston University’s star centerfielder April Setterlund and whizzed behind Mask, right over the second base bag.
She lifted her eyes to see Head Coach Sean Rychcik giving her the windmill with the left arm, and pointing towards home plate with the right. Christina Valdes, the right fielder, scored easily from third base and the Boston University softball team trailed the University of Alabama-Birmingham by a score of three to two in the bottom of the third inning. Sensing that this might be his best chance to tie the game, Rychcik was taking a risk on a ball scalded right at UAB’s fifth year senior centerfielder, Martina Landrum. Landrum delivered a one-hop strike to the plate and the ball was waiting for Mask as she entered a headfirst slide to avoid the tag. UAB catcher Mandy Lowman blocked the plate with her right shin guard and applied the tag. Rychcik knew she was going to be out as soon as he sent her, but as Mask kneeled on the ground holding her right arm in her left hand, the question now was for how long?
The 2009 BU Terriers enjoyed the most successful season in their 21-year history with 43 wins, and an America East conference championship as they came within one game of moving on to the NCAA Super Regional tournament. When that season came to an end, however, six seniors including five starters, every one of whom was an all-conference performer, graduated and left a gaping hole for the 2010 squad to fill. Rychcik brought in three freshmen on scholarship to start the rebuilding process, but everything began to unravel during the fall. If they were going to win, it would have to be with a patchwork line up full of players with vastly different styles and from all different backgrounds and walks of life. It would be a team pulled together by a desire to win no matter the circumstances.
Infielder Melanie Delgado, a Southern California product that contributed as a freshman in 2007 required season ending wrist surgery for the second time in two years. Emily Roesch, the Terriers heir apparent at shortstop, and America East Conference Rookie of the Year in 2009, subluxed her left shoulder in practice and badly damaged the cartilage around the joint. She first attempted to rehab the injury, but finally opted for what appeared to be season ending surgery. Chelsea Kehr, a power-hitting freshman first baseman brought in to replenish some of the departing offense, ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee during a weight-lifting session. The injury would require total reconstructive surgery, and with a six to eight month recovery looming, Kehr was given a red-shirt, which allowed her to retain freshman eligibility in 2011. This was not how Rychik’s first title defense as head coach of the Terriers was supposed to start.
The injury to Mask ended her season. A hairline fracture was discovered in a magnetic resonance image and doctors told her to shut it down. When BU hosted Holy Cross on March 27th for opening weekend at their home field, the Terriers were playing with nine able-bodied position players. Taylor Cowan a pitcher, and the lone freshman scholarship player remaining, was placed into the everyday lineup in left field and Whitney Tuthil, another pitcher and freshman walk-on became the designated hitter. Roesch was far enough along in her rehabilitation from shoulder surgery to consider a comeback if her team was going to contend, and despite the odds, the beat up Terriers were winning games.
The team entered the day with an 11-10 record, but they were 5-1 over the last six games. When it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, the Terriers’ best player decided she was not going to let that happen. Over that six-game stretch, April Setterlund went 12-18 at the plate. She was ready to put the team on her back, and her teammates were more than willing to go along for the ride.
The Superstar
March 27th, 2010 –Boston University v. Holy Cross (Double Header)
The best players are often said to make their job look effortless. That description is an insult to April Setterlund. She is the best player on the field, but every swing, every throw, every warm-up toss, every sprint to center field during pre-game introductions is oozing with effort. A year ago as a sophomore, Setterlund batted .396 and led the team in 4 offensive statistical categories. She also turned herself into a cult hero in the process.
She barely practiced last season because of multiple stress fractures in her foot, and was outfitted with a protective boot that she wore every waking minute of the day. She crutched to and from class, and everywhere else she went, including from the locker room to the dugout where she put them in a corner, undid the Velcro fastenings on the boot, and ran out to center field on game day, missing only two starts the entire season.
“It’s weird,” Setterlund said, “when I’m up at the plate I always use self-talk, and last year it was something along the lines of ‘they’re gonna be scared even if I can’t run fast,’ and I really tried to just be the hitter no pitcher wanted to face.”
Setterlund equates her love for the game to a puppy playing fetch. To almost anybody, the thought of playing on a broken foot is ludicrous. To April it’s as simple as chasing the ball down, and bringing it back, no matter how much pain is involved. It’s just what she does.
In 2010, with the leg healed, Setterlund was having her best season yet, but pitchers had no reservations about facing her. Despite hitting in a lineup decimated by injuries, she was getting pitches to hit, and she was hitting them. All of them.
In her first at-bat against Holy Cross she singled in a run to get BU on the board after Meghan Courier, a senior pitcher, had allowed Holy Cross to score three runs in the top of the first inning. Courier gave up two more runs in the second inning and was pulled in favor of Cassidi Hardy.
Trailing 5-1, Rachel Hebert singled in a run to cut the score to 5-2 and there were now two runners on. With two outs Setterlund ripped a double into the gap in right center field and drove in two more. The lead was 5-4, and Setterlund was 2-2.
After a two out RBI single by junior catcher Caitlin Rentler tied the game, both teams traded zeros until the bottom of the 4th inning when Setterlund launched the first pitch she saw deep into right-center field. The ball cleared the fence 220 feet away, the 30 feet of grass behind it, the 20-foot wall of high shrubs behind the grass, and made contact halfway up the trunk of a tree 20 feet farther. Setterlund was 3-3.
She was on fire, and it looked like the Holy Cross plan was to throw gasoline on the flame. She hit a three run home run in her next at bat. 4-4.
Between games a fan told her he was annoyed the opposing team finally walked her intentionally in her final at-bat of the game. Setterlund didn’t respond, she was locked in,
“They talk about ‘the zone’” Setterlund said during a recent interview, “and that’s where I was…I seriously can’t explain it.”
In the second game she hit a three-run home run in her first at-bat, a two-RBI single in her second, and stepped up to the plate in the third inning, against relief pitcher Caitlin Belanger, 6-6 on the day. Nicole Rau the Holy Cross catcher called time out and strolled to the mound. Finally, it seemed, they had come to their senses and would walk her intentionally.
Instead the first pitch buzzed right under Setterlund’s chin, missing her face by only a couple of inches. Belanger took the ball back from Rau and couldn’t conceal the big smile plastered across her face. Setterlund wasn’t laughing. The next pitch was a fastball on the inside corner, and the centerfielder hit a line drive that was gone before she left the batter’s box, as was Belanger’s grin. By days end she was 7-7 with four home runs and 13 RBI. By the time she finally recorded an out, April Setterlund had gotten a hit in 13 consecutive official at-bats, breaking the NCAA record set by Brooke Marnitz of Kentucky in 2007. Her coach said in all of his years around the game he had never seen anything like what his superstar was doing,
“its crazy though,” Setterlund said of the stretch that catapulted her team to eight consecutive wins, “because I didn't realize I was on that great of a hitting streak. I know the Holy Cross games with the homeruns, that was ridiculous, but I didn't realize I was stringing them together like I was, like, I just thought it was really cool that I kept hitting homeruns.”
As the late afternoon sunshine warmed the infield dirt of the Boston University Softball Field at the end of March, the old farmer’s cliché about the month coming ‘in like a lion and out like a lamb’ appeared to be holding true. Luckily for the Terriers, the same could not be said about April. She was named the NCAA Division I player of the week.
The Flash in the Pan
April 7th, 2010- Boston University at #22 UMass-Amherst
Cassidy Hardy paused behind the rubber for a moment as she watched UMass second-baseman Kyllie McGill’s two-run home run sail over the left field fence. The Minutewomen had forced Hardy to throw a ton of pitches in the first two innings, and by the third they had seen everything the Terriers’ ace had to offer. Hardy allowed another run to score before inducing a ground ball to get out of the inning. A three run deficit had been no problem for BU before, but today they were facing the best pitcher in the nation, and three runs would be more than enough of a cushion to end the Terrier’s win streak. Sarah Plourde went into the game with 320 strikeouts to lead the country by a wide margin. She dazzled hitters and spectators alike with 16 strikeouts, allowing only two hits. Cassidy Hardy was removed after the fourth inning and Whitney Tuthill, a freshman walk-on came in to finish up the game.
Tuthill was going to quit softball before her senior year of high school at Suffield Academy in Connecticut. During the league championship game against rival Westminster, Tuthill was hit with a rise ball on her pitching hand that badly bruised her thumb. The pitcher, a 14-year-old freshman named Brittany Sutton went on to win the game. The nail on her thumb turned black and fell off making it nearly impossible for Tuthill to grip any of her pitches. Tuthill still feels the pitch was intentional, and points out she also hit her sister in her pitching arm. Sutton told a third party right after it happened that she did not mean to do it.
Intentional or not, the pitch had a lasting effect. When the nail finally grew back by the end of the summer, it was ingrown, and extremely painful. Tuthill did finish up her high school ball, but the injury had derailed what was once a promising career, and she sent in her deposit to Boston University as a student with no intention of playing softball.
Whitney’s older sister and former high school teammate Kelsey, now a sophomore pitcher at Division III Emerson College, begged her to play on her travel team that summer as a fill in player. She had some success and her confidence began to return, so she emailed Sean Rychcik and asked if she could try out for the team at BU. He never responded. She tried again a few weeks later with the same result. She was playing some good softball, and having fun for the first time in years, but there did not appear to be a place for her. With a week left before the first day of school, Tuthill came home and saw her dad printing out forms she would need to try out for BU’s team. She sent Rychcik a third email telling the sixth year head coach that she would be trying out, and when her dad drove her to Boston at the end of August, her softball bag was in the trunk,
“I have no idea what made me try out,” Tuthill said, “I think my parents would have been heartbroken if I didn’t, and when it came down to it, I wanted to see how I could match up to a D1 player because i always thought i was good enough.”
It turned out she was more than good enough. Tuthill was an overnight sensation. During a fall game against Harvard she threw her first pitch against a Division I hitter, a drop ball that painted the outside corner at the knees. Tuthill’s once reluctant coach spun on his heel and mouthed, “wow” to no one in particular.
In her first start of the spring against Charlotte of the Atlantic-10, all she did was throw a complete game no-hitter. By the time the team came back to Boston at the end of March, the walk-on that couldn’t get an email back was solidly entrenched as the number two starter, and clearly a big part of BU’s future.
Before she came into the game against UMass, she watched Plourde dominate from the visitor’s dugout, and recalled a conversation the two had last summer,
“its so weird, the last tournament of the summer, I played with Sarah Plourde, and she was asking me if I had to go back [to BU] early to practice, and I was like oh I am not playing at BU…and here I was pitching against her in a college game.”
Tuthill put up two scoreless innings in relief but the Terriers lost 3-0. Tuthill’s thumbnail has healed perfectly, and she is on the fast track towards earning a scholarship at a Division I school, but still the conversation drifts back to her junior year of high school, and “this lame-o girl Brittany Sutton” time and time again. In fact, during an hour-long interview, Tuthill mentioned her name six times. Sutton is now being recruited by several Ivy League schools, but appears to be headed to Cornell in the fall. Tuthill joked about her nemesis’ choice of school,
“We play Brown and we play Harvard, I was like hoping she'd go to either one of those so that I can play her again,” Tuthill said with a laugh. Paul Valery the French philosopher was fond of saying that “only a fool thinks one cannot joke and be serious.” If this old vendetta was actually the main drive behind the shocking success of Whitney Tuthill, that statement could not be very far off.
BU dominated conference opponents in the month of April, but struggled with mid-week games against other teams, including three consecutive games to Boston College on April 20th, and Rhode Island on April 22nd. With conference foe Binghamton coming in for a three game series that weekend, the Terriers were looking for a spark. It came from an unlikely source.
The Wounded Warrior
April 24th, 2010- Boston University v. Binghamton University
The Terriers let a two-run lead slip away in the top of the seventh and final inning. They had gone ahead 3-1 after senior third-baseman Rachel Moeller hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the sixth, but Cassidy Hardy gave up two runs in the next frame and the score was tied at 3-3 with the eight, nine, and lead-off hitters due up for BU. Caitlin Rentler singled back up the middle to lead off the inning and was removed for a pinch runner, Kayla Kruper. Christina Valdes then popped up to the first baseman for the first out of the inning. On the first pitch to Rachel Hebert, Kruper watched the ball from Binghamton pitcher Rhoda Marsteller momentarily bounce away from the catcher Deanne Plemon. Kruper hesitated and then took off for second, and was gunned down easily, erasing the potential winning run. With two out and no body on base Rachel Hebert hit a ball into the right center field gap and slid in safely with a triple, and the winning run was on third base.
To the plate strode the Terriers second baseman Erica Casacci, a slap hitter known for her ability to beat out infield hits. For the first time in her life, Casacci says, she was walked intentionally. When the free pass was completed April Setterlund strode to the plate, and she too was walked intentionally, loading the bases. As the second walk in a row was finished, Emily Roesch did not know what to think.
A year ago she was named conference rookie of the year, driving in 28 runs on .278 hitting with five home runs. She moved from the bottom of the order to the clean-up spot, and by years end was one of the most feared hitters in America East, and she just watched a conference opponent walk two people to bring her up with the bases loaded.
Roesch’s decision to try and play was not easy, but then again it really was. Her grandfather took her to her cousin’s baseball game when she was seven-years-old and she picked up a foul ball and threw it back into play. The next day her grandfather signed her up for recreational league softball, and she never looked back.
“He really led me to it and pushed the hell out of me the whole time,” Roesch said of her first grandpa and first coach, “we would show up early to practice and he would hit groundballs for an hour every day, and do hitting drills after…if I messed up I had to run a lap, bad throw, sprints, missed a pitch, sprints, bobbled a ball, got yelled at, then ran.”
One time when she was twelve, Roesch says, she decided she was missing out on too much that her friends were doing, and her grandpa told her to take a full week off. If she still felt that way, he told her, then she should quit and that would be the end of it.
“So like five days in I was back at practice, I missed the atmosphere, the field itself, I grew up at the ball field, I like it there… softball is my grind, its what I do.”
Roesch also needed a place to go. Her junior year of high school, two days after the prom, she got into a heated argument with her mother. Their relationship had been strained for a while, but during this fight Emily was kicked out of the house.
“At that point,” Roesch explained, I realized that softball could take me away from there and get me somewhere in life... I wanted a scholarship from somewhere far, far away.”
One of Roesch’s teachers at Palm Beach Gardens High School, Renee Goodson, who was also one of Emily’s softball coaches, called her and said she had pictures from prom to give her and asked if she could swing by the house. Roesch responded matter-of-factly,
“No, I don’t live there any more.”
Because she was still in school Goodson insisted that she live with her while she figured out her home situation. But Roesch says she did not hear from her mother for three months afterwards, and reluctantly agreed to move in permanently,
“I felt rude encroaching on their space,” she said, “ but they were awesome about it and very welcoming... and at least they had a shower, electricity, and food all of the time.”
Roesch says that despite what others perceive as adversity, she has it easy compared to so many people, and she talked about her little brother who still lives with their mom. She was so accustomed to looking after him when she lived at home, and after accepting a scholarship to play softball at BU, her mother moved with her younger brother to Virginia. Roesch has not seen either one in two years and knows that the connections she made through softball got her out, but she couldn’t take her brother along,
“I could never say ‘hey thanks for driving me and feeding me, btw can you do the same for my brother?’ You can only ask so much from people while not asking at all.”
Softball was always the escape, and she says she was able to clear her mind of everything else when she stepped onto the field. So when she was medically cleared to play at the end of March, despite the potential risk of long term injury if she re-injured her shoulder, she decided that she would rather be on the field. But re-acclimating herself to Division I pitching was easier said than done, and her return had been coming along in fits and starts. She hit a couple of cheap home runs, self-described pop-ups that just cleared the fence, and was striking out frequently.
Her swing was starting to come around, however, and she was moved back into the clean-up spot, mostly to give BU’s catcher a break from hitting behind Setterlund. Roesch was 0-2 on the day with a weak ground out to second base and another ground out to the short stop. Rychcik called time out and called her over before she entered the batters box, and he didn’t mince words,
“I want you to hit this ball off the scoreboard.”
The scoreboard stands about 30 feet high out in left-center field about 230 feet away from home plate. The digital numbers showed a 3-3 score in the bottom of the seventh inning. Marsteller had no place to put Roesch, and she grooved a first pitch fastball right down the heart of the plate. Roesch did not hit the scoreboard, but she hit it over the scoreboard and off the bullpen fence another 30 feet behind. There was no doubt when it left the bat. No doubt about where the ball was going, and no doubt that she could still get the job done like she always had. The smile on her face was equal parts euphoria, relief, and middle finger to whoever made the decision to bring her up there in the first place.
Boston University won its next two games and is preparing to take on Providence College in a non-conference double header on Wednesday April 28th. They hold a 10-2 conference record and have sole possession of first place with a 26-18 overall record. A season that appeared lost in the dead of winter is not only alive, but it is thriving, and the cast of characters that remain healthy have made defending the America East Conference title a strong possibility.
Lee Feiner
Left Hander Story
For South-Paws, The Left Side Is The Strong Side
When David Feiner,50, locks in his eight-inch Festool circular saw to the metal guiding track, and pulls the trigger with his right index finger, a stream of hot saw dust and wooden shrapnel blow out the small plastic exhaust. Mr. Feiner, a cabinetmaker and someone who is left-hand dominant when it comes to many motor activities, must execute the cut with his right hand, or take the dust storm to his face.
In the world of construction, left-handedness can be an outright danger to one’s physical well being. In almost every walk of life, lefties have found it difficult to embrace left-handed life, but many wear their dexterity as a badge of courage.
The trait LRRTM1 is the first trait known to increase the likelihood of being left-handed. In a 2007 study, researchers found evidence that led them to believe this trait could select which parts of the brain take control of specific functions. It is a recessive trait and lefties only make up seven to ten percent of the population, which creates a unique challenge for schools and businesses that must decide whether or not to cater to such a small minority. The answer for most of human history has been a resounding no. Up until very recently, a left-handed child was forced to use his or her right hand as a matter of principle. The left hand is often associated with evil and sin, and parents and teachers would reprimand children for using it.
In a recent study by Diane Halpern, a professor of psychology at California State University at San Bernardino, and Stanley Coren, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, left-handed people were found to be more likely to die in accidents, and are expected to die younger. With the scorn, and possible health risks associated with left-handedness, there is surprisingly little concern among many young lefties.
“My grandpa is 86-years-old and he’s left handed, he’s lived a pretty long and exciting life, so I don’t know how big the sample size was for that study but it cant apply to everybody,” said Abby Feiner, 16, “plus lefties just have more fun.”
While in some parts of the world, using the left hand for actions like eating is considered vulgar and improper, modern American society has relaxed its stance on lefties and allowed them to use their naturally dominant side. The consumer market has been a bit slower catching up, which makes driving and operating machinery potentially dangerous.
When Feiner started out in carpentry, he never gave the orientation of his power tools a second thought,
“I guess I’m lucky I have pretty good dexterity with both hands, because there is no option in construction,” Feiner said, “especially starting out, you use the tools that are available and right handed tools are what’s available.”
Now with a business that operates out of his own shop in Union City, N.J. over 30 years later, he still feels the same way,
“And now running my shop I have to buy a $20,000 table saw to cut every cabinet we make, I need to buy something my foreman can use, something I can use, thinking about who’s left-handed and who’s not just does not cross your mind.”
Justin Rutherford, a 22-year-old Boston University student has struggled with this same issue his whole life. As a left-handed musician, turned commercial plumber, turned college student, and Rutherford has seen the bias in full force at every stop along the way. But just like Feiner he feels like there just isn’t much he can do about it,
“I taught myself guitar right handed because a lefty guitar cost $300 more, and I was 13 at the time with no money…sort of made the decision for me,” Rutherford said.
While Sam Ash, a major nation-wide chain of music stores, lists its left and right handed guitars at the same price, their left handed selection is extremely limited, with nearly a hundred different right handed options for Fender guitars, and only 9 for lefties, a percentage very much in tune with the ratio of left-handed to right-handed people. Rutherford had already learned the viola and the trumpet right handed, two instruments he says have an even worse selection of lefty options, so he says it wasn’t a stretch for him to pick up the guitar that way either. He eventually toured the country as the guitarist for Stick To Your Guns, a heavy metal group based in Orange County, California.
He has since put his rock and roll career on hold and after a stop in commercial plumbing, where he says he had to use right handed tools every day because using them with his left hand was extremely dangerous, he enrolled at BU. He says sitting at a righty desk and reaching awkwardly across his body, getting ink on his pinky knuckle when he writes, and rotating his paper a quarter turn to the right act as a “bat-sign” for other lefties in the room,
“I feel uniquely proud when I look around a crowded room and maybe 2 or 3 other people are left-handed,” Rutherford said.
While lefties are starting to be allowed to let their natural inclinations flourish, the market for left-handed products is still mired in the past. School, music, and construction supplies may reflect the actual number of lefties in the population, but that means the seven to ten percent of people have a tenth of the selection as well. Yet despite the inherent disadvantages in school and in the consumer market, lefties have a certain bond in their underdog status that is a point of pride in their battle against the masses,
“They see me using my left hand and they talk to me about it, it’s a conversation starter,” Rutherford said, “and I can’t tell you how many cute left-handed girls have started talking to me because they saw I was a lefty too.”
Massachusetts Special Election Story
By Lee Feiner
Edward M. Kennedy called the cause of health care reform his life’s work, and during his fifty years as senator for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, his dream has never been so close to reality. But Kennedy’s passing put his long held seat in the United States Senate of for grabs, and a little known state senator from Wrentham drove his pick-up over Martha Coakley’s campaign and won the seat.
Following Martha Coakley’s easy victory in the Democratic primary on November 24th, Ms. Coakley, the Attorney General of the state, was considered a prohibitive favorite to win the general election as well. In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republican’s three-to-one, and a Republican had not served as a United States Senator since Edward Brooke in 1972, this election was Ms. Coakley’s to lose.
Her opponent, on the other hand, embraced the under-dog role from his candidacy announcement on the 12th of September all the way through the general election. Scott Brown waged an old-fashioned campaign going into the streets and meeting people. He shook hands as skiers exited mountains, and he signed snowboards. He drove his pick-up truck to rallies and successfully painted himself as the Massachusetts everyman that his campaign believed voters would respond to. They responded by electing Brown by a sizable margin considering the odds stacked against a Republican candidate in the state.
The election was a topic of national interest due to a lack of bi-partisan support for a health-care reform bill that has been hung up in the Senate. The senate seat up for grabs was cast as either a 60th, and filibuster preventing, vote in favor of the reform bill, or a 41st vote that would likely derail the bill in its present form. Democrats and Republicans around the country poured support into Massachusetts, with President Obama even making a late appearance in support of Ms. Coakley. The special election took on the character of a political proxy war, but the voters of the Commonwealth would decide the crucial special election.
On a snowy Tuesday morning in Boston, Andrew Webb, 20, put his head down against the wind and walked east on Commonwealth Avenue, unsure if he would return to Danvers to cast a ballot,
“I haven’t followed the race too closely, and if this weather stays like this I cant see myself making the trip.”
Mr. Webb said he did not feel that the election would affect him all that much because of Massachusetts’ nearly universal health care already in place, but added that if the weather did break he would vote for Brown because he did not like the way Ms. Coakley had run her campaign,
“Who is she? What does she believe in? How can you run for Senate in Massachusetts and think Curt Schilling is a Yankee fan? I just feel like she’s not taking the race seriously.” Mr. Webb did end up making his way to Danvers and cast a vote for Mr. Brown after his final class of the day at Boston University.
Sarah Halle, a 19-year-old registered Democrat, and student at Boston University also took issue with the way Ms. Coakley’s campaign was run,
“I felt like her campaign just expected her to win,” said Halle, “and by the time they realized she was in trouble it was too late.”
Every day Ms. Coakley led the race, Mr. Brown chipped away at her lead by playing to the populist leanings of an electorate that was eager to accept his calls for an end to big government spending. Brown appealed to Independent voters despite being on record as being in support of water-boarding as an interrogation technique, and being opposed to a federal cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions. Brown began the election a distant second in popularity in his own family to his daughter Ayla Brown, a semi-finalist on American Idol and a senior guard on the Boston College Women’s basketball team. Mr. Brown was able to overcome relative obscurity and outwork his opponent to get his name and message to the masses.
As a result, Mr. Brown won the outlying suburbs handily, and despite Coakley victories in inner-city areas, the margins were not large enough to overcome a huge turnout of voters who were disenchanted with many of the issues plaguing the economy,
“I wasn’t going to miss voting in this election,” said Mike, 52, who did not provide his last name, “its too important, with the government spending and people still losing jobs, this health care deal, it was time to send a message.”
Now with Mr. Brown set to take his seat in the Senate and no bi-partisan support for the health care reform bill, the 41st vote on that issue now belongs to a man who has promised not to let it pass. In what became a battleground between Democrats and Republicans from across the nation, the Republican party may have dashed the last hopes of passing this health care reform bill in a state where it would have had a very small effect. Just a few months after the passing of Edward M. Kennedy, it appears that the lion’s share of votes for his life’s work was just taken away by his successor.
