Paul Waner: “Let the pitcher move first, then, as he draws his arm back, you draw the bat back and you are ready.”
Honus Wagner: “I won’t play for a penny less than fifteen hundred dollars.”
Roberto Clemente: “Baseball has been very good to me.”
Manager Chuck Tanner, mid-1970s: : “Having Willie Stargell on your ball club is like having a diamond ring on your finger.” –
Willie Stargell: “I’m always amazed when a pitcher becomes angry at a hitter for hitting a home run off him. When I strike out, I don’t get angry at the pitcher, I get angry at myself. I would think that if a pitcher threw up a home run ball, he should be angry at himself.” More Willie Stargell quotes here.
Doug Mientkiewicz, 2008: “I didn’t deliberately smack at him (Cardinals’ 2B Aaron Miles). I just kept running and tried to hit the glove. That’s what you’re supposed to do (to break up the double play). I didn’t try to hurt him. We talked about it, and he said he’d do the same thing … if the game was close. And I said, ‘Well, it’s not like we’re up 12.’ We were up five, and I think we all know that a five-run lead for us is not exactly insurmountable.” It was the 8th inning and it led to a benches-clearing fight.
Manager John Russell, 2008: “It’s going to be a lot of fun someday. I know the city of Pittsburgh is dying for a winner and we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen.” 2008 is the franchise’s 16th consecutive losing season, which ties the major-league record set by the 1933-48 Philadelphia Phillies.
And I went to this site and realized that I had once again misunderstood the concept of the celebration. It’s more like this:
The first time I had a chance to vote for Ed Koch, the 1977 Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, I voted against him, and in favor of some guy named Mario Cuomo. Koch won and was easily re-elected mayor that fall. The second time I had a chance to vote for Ed Koch, the 1982 Democratic primary for governor of New York State, I voted against him, and in favor of some guy named Mario Cuomo. Cuomo won and was easily elected governor of New York. In 2004, Koch, ostensibly a Democrat, supported the re-election of GW Bush. So, I’m not a big fan of Edward I. Koch. And yet… When Ed Koch says that a Sarah Palin presidency ‘scares’ him, that resonates with me.
But I didn’t need the word of the former New York City mayor to tip me off. Frankly, her responses in the Gibson/ABC News interview were often troubling. Is it that she really WANTS to go to war with Russia AND Iran? Does she assume that Israel should have carte blanche? A scary interview.
Even the resident conservative of The View, Elisabeth Hasselback thought that Obama’s “lipstick on a pig”, a phrase used by John McCain regarding Hillary Clinton’s health care policies, was a non-issue. Ah, politics of distraction. The handlers at least are on script as they play the gender card. I will say this – Sarah Palin does snark well – and are community organizers, which would have included my late father, ticked.
Having said all that, I’ve pretty much tired of talking about Palin – well, maybe not this Palin. Until Sarah does something else totally outrageous, I’ll let others carry that ball. I’d rather discuss about the top of the ticket, John McCain. If I were a Republican in 2000 and voting in the primary, I likely would have gone for John McCain, certainly over George W. Bush. While I was mildly troubled by that Keating Five thing involving the Savings & Loan disaster of the 1980s, he seemed like an honorable guy. In this lengthy (30 minute) piece, Joe Biden talks, among other things, how badly he felt when the forces of W. vilified McCain before the South Carolina primary that year:
Since he had been tortured himself, he was sensitive to a strong anti-torture policy for the United States, and I applauded that.
A raspberry to the MSM here. It took Comedy Central’s the Daily Show, FCOL, to show how McCain’s 2008 talking points about working with Democrats, et al was almost verbatim what W said in 2000 – anyone have that link? – and we all know how well THAT worked. Obama gets knocked for wanting to talk to Iran, but – surprise – five former U.S. Secretaries of State are saying the same thing.
McCain’s self-declared lack of strength in the economic side is problematic. His economic policy, deemed ‘incomplete’ by the hardly liberal US News makes the rich richer. He declares that fundamentals of the economy are strong even as Wall Street collapses. McCain, the computer illiterate is the one I find “out of touch”. And it saddens me. Earlier this year, Wesley Clark, that is, General Wesley Clark, got in trouble for suggesting that John McCain’s war record was not an automatic qualifier for the Presidency; he wasn’t wrong, merely impolitic. America is guns AND butter.
I had an a-ha! moment in Chicago after attending a workshop on family-owned businesses at the ASBDC conference. Family-owned businesses are often dysfunctional, because the role in the family is not made distinct from the role in the family-owned business. The instructor used the example of the business owned by dad and/or mom with the children/employees expected to come to Sunday dinner every week, where the conversation would inevitably devolve into talking shop. The people providing the jobs and the people providing the meal are exactly the same, so the family dynamic interferes with the business dynamic, and disaster often follows.
It occurred to me that two of my favorite TV shows involve family-owned businesses, and the dysfunction that it brings, both on ABC: Brothers & Sisters and Dirty Sexy Money. The former is about a guy who owns a produce business; he dies in the first episode, and the succession plan doesn’t always go as he planned, with his elder daughter in charge, much to the resentment of at least one of his sons and his brother-in-law. In DSM, the protagonist tries and fails to stay out of the family businss that his late father worked in but gets sucked into the bizarre family/business dynamic. One conversation that was taking place at the conference was whether Bill Clinton, supposedly insightful politician, regardless of your political view of him, intentionally sabotaged his wife’s campaign for President, One woman said, “How could he not have?” Here’s my theory; there is this company called Billary. Going back to the late 1970s, its mission was to elect Bill Clinton governor of Arkansas, then later, POTUS. So, by necessity, Bill was CEO of Billary, Inc.
Then it was Hillary’s turn to run things. Except that Bill was used to being the CEO of Billary. Heck, he was used to being “leader of the free world”. So while he may have really tried to cede authority to her, the old business dynamic, mixed with their…complicated family dynamic, got in the way. In an ABC interview in August, Bill Clinton said as much, responding to attacks on his wife as a husband, rather than as a surrogate for the candidate.
In many situations, such as when a new department head is chosen at a university, what the former chair does affects the outcome. When the retired one sticks around in some emeritus status, some of the staff will continue to him or her. Whereas when the older one slips quietly into the sunset, that issue doesn’t arise.
So, I’m convinced that Billary didn’t work in its quest to nominate Hillary as President because it was a dysfunctional business. Moreover, I think Barack Obama did not choose Hillary to be his running mate because he did not want to be tied down to that broken dynamic.
I had gotten this e-mail from SiteMeter last week and gave me the impression that I was supposed to do something, so I did and lost about 15 hours of data (2 pm Sunday-5 am Monday). Ah well. *** Albany airport weather Time EDT(UTC);Temp.F(C);Dew Pt F(C);Pressure Inches (hPa); Wind MPH
10 AM (14) Sep 15 71.1 (21.7) 57.0 (13.9) 29.72 (1006) WNW 17 9 AM (13) Sep 15 73.0 (22.8) 57.9 (14.4) 29.68 (1005) WNW 13 8 AM (12) Sep 15 73.0 (22.8) 57.0 (13.9) 29.65 (1004) WNW 9 7 AM (11) Sep 15 73.9 (23.3) 57.0 (13.9) 29.59 (1002) W 13 6 AM (10) Sep 15 77.0 (25.0) 57.0 (13.9) 29.54 (1000) W 23 5 AM (9) Sep 15 81.0 (27.2) 61.0 (16.1) 29.48 (998) W 20 4 AM (8) Sep 15 79.0 (26.1) 68.0 (20.0) 29.42 (996) SW 15 3 AM (7) Sep 15 79.0 (26.1) 70.0 (21.1) 29.41 (995) S 16 2 AM (6) Sep 15 80.1 (26.7) 71.1 (21.7) 29.44 (996) S 17 1 AM (5) Sep 15 80.1 (26.7) 71.1 (21.7) 29.45 (997) S 18 It never got above 85 all the day before, but it was so muggy that I turned the air conditioner on for the first time in nearly a month and still couldn’t sleep past 3 a.m.
The wind knocked out power for about 15,000 customers locally. It was out in Saratoga County, primarily in the town of Wilton; Warren County; and in Rensselaer County, mostly in Troy. But in Albany, avoiding the branches on the bike was all I had to deal with. *** I was pleased to see that Bike Accidents Decline As Ridership Rises. But I had one of those bike moments last week. I’m riding over a land bridge across Henry Johnson Blvd. in Albany, going with traffic as I should. Another bicyclist is crossing the bridge toward me and he waves me to go left. Not a chance. The universal rule, at least in the United States (as opposed to, say the United Kingdom) is for everyone to stay right. Besides 1) he’s in the wrong AND 2) HE can see oncoming traffic without turning around. So I kept coming, yelling “no” and shaking my head. He went around. *** The widely distributed SNL opening, Tina Fey as Sarah Palin; Fey does a GREAT Palin. *** Yesterday morning, I’m remembering this commercial from some years back. Certain elements I recall quite well: the voice of the woman saying “daywear, eveningwear, swimwear” actually it was more like “swinvear”. I know that the point of the commercial was about making choices or the lack thereof. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the commercial was FOR. My wife remembered it too, but she thought from just a few seasons ago, and doesn’t recall the product either. You probably remember, though: it was one of the creative ads from Wendy’s, “Soviet Fashion Show”, from 1985. The mind goes strange places at 4 a.m.
Patty tagged me. I swear I’ve done this before, but since the answer to at least the first question is changeable, and moreover, I am changeable, what the heck.
1. Where was I 10 years ago?
Ten years ago this very week, I traveled to Boston to appear on the TV show JEOPARDY! It did not air until November 9, so it was a royal pain in the whatever to fend off the questions about how well I did.
2. What was on my to-do list today?
The usual: take the daughter to day care. Go to the Y, riding my bike if the weather allows, riding the bus otherwise. Play racquetball, shower. Bus to work, eat shredded wheat. Work, home fpor dinner, try to squeeze in the news before bed.
The other stuff: call church so I can publicize an event (the visit of a theologian to our church next month) in another blog. Publicize the fact that a fellow board member of the Friends of the Albany Public Library Association is getting a prestigious award from the New York Library Association, something I nominated Dennis Mosley for. Try to write a blog post.
3. What would I do if I were a billionaire?
The first thing I’d do is hire a general contractor to get all the things in my house fixed all at once- the roof, the porch, the kitchen cabinets, the extra insulation. The one extravagence – some reasonably large TV with stero speakers. and a deck because my wife wants one. We’d move out until it was all done. Money for college for Lydia. Pay off the houses of my sisters and my wife’s brothers. Contributions to church and various causes. Travel to six continents. Hire someone to organize papers and other “stuff”.
4. Five places I’ve lived
Binghamton, NY Kingston, NY New Paltz, NY Charlotte, NC Jamaica (Queens), NY
5. Bad Habits
My ability to misplace things My tendency to be late Emotional eating Impatience with smokers; I understand they are people, too My trending towards the melancholy
Oh, I’m not going to tag anyone. Wait, I will, for nefarious reasons:
Gordon, because the last time I tagged people I DIDN’T tag him and he seemed upset Uthaclena, because it might increase his output Jaquandor, in hope that it jump-starts him from his blogging lethargy. Ditto for Librarian 2008 Kelly Brown, just because. ROG
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