Baseball MVP QUESTIONS

Before I forget yet again, Paul McCartney: The Space Within Us® on A&E
Saturday, October 28 @ 10pm/9C (TONIGHT!)
Sunday, October 29 @ 2am/1C (which is, in fact, 1 am EST, according to my DVR)
Saturday, November 04 @ 12pm/11C

Quote from Fred Hembeck: “Brief observation: I’ve never been much of a fan of Yoko Ono, but I can now state this unequivocally: Heather Mills McCartney–WORST BEATLES WIFE EVER!” Given that there have been eight Beatle wives, I’d put her as #8 as well.

Beatles Songs from Worst to First
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If you have access to the Wall Street Journal of October 26, check out “This World Series Has Huge Following, 38 Years After Fact; ’68 Tigers-Cardinals Games To Get Fantasy Replay; Denny McLain Weighs In”, a front page article:

The Detroit Tigers this week made a crucial decision about the team’s player lineup… The team’s decision had nothing to do with the current World Series battle with the St. Louis Cardinals. Instead it harks back to the legendary 1968 World Series between the same teams. The lineup is for a reunion of sorts at a fantasy-baseball camp, where fans and former players will celebrate the 40th anniversary of that matchup. But for the event to succeed, the Tigers will have to sort out some complicated logistics, still-simmering personality clashes, and how to deal with the criminal record of its erstwhile superstar, Mr. McLain, who has served time in prison for extortion and embezzlement.

“We’ve decided that every living member of the ’68 team should be invited,” says Jerry Lewis, director of Detroit Tigers Fantasy Camp. He knows that will cause a stir.
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The questions this week are straight-forward enough: Who would you choose for the major baseball awards? Probably my last baseball post this year. (But as the Mets are saying, “Wait until next year!”) Remember these are regular season awards, and the postseason doesn’t factor in.

They’ve already named the 2006 Major League Baseball Comeback Player of the Year Award, presented (naturally) by Viagra.

AL Most Valuable Player: If David Ortiz who led the league in homers and RBI hadn’t had some medical issues, the Red Sox would have at least contended for a wild card slot; he’ll get some consideration. I’m fond of the Twins’ Justin Morneau, although another Twins player, Joe Mauer, led the league in hitting. A catcher, no less. And Derek Jeter? Yes, he was second in batting average, and scored a bunch of runs, and plays a decent shortstop. I’m just not convinced that his “intangibles” should put him over the top.

NL Most Valuable Player: Who lead the major league in homers and RBI, batted over .300, and has a slugging percentage over .650? Ryan Howard. Who came in second in the league and third in the majors in homers and RBI, and had even a better slugging percentage? Albert Pujols. They should, and will finish 1-2.

AL Cy Young. Easily, Johan Santana, another Twins player – this will make my father-in-law happy. He lead the majors in ERA and strikeouts – an overvalued stat, the latter is, I think- and tied for the lead in wins with Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees. No 20-game winners this season, which used to be a standard for excellence in pitching.

NL Cy Young. Six pitchers won 16 games. The one with the best ERA by far is Brandon Webb of the Arizona Diamondbacks, a mediocre team. The only people with a better ERA both won 15 games: Roy Oswalt and Chris Carpenter of the NL-winning (BOO!) St. Louis Cardinals.

There are other awards, but I don’t know enough about any of them to comment, except that the Tigers’ Tom Verlander is likely to be the AL Rookie of the Year. But you can comment further with your vast knowledge.

Election of 2006

I have no expectations that things will be better from “Day One” on when Eliot Spitzer is elected governor, as his ads state. Note that I didn’t say if. It’s the damn polls.

Alan Hevesi had a walk in the park in his run for re-election as State Comptroller until the Driving Mrs. Hevesi scandal, which has led to Spitzer withdrawing his support. Suddenly, and I mean in the last three days, signs for Callaghan, the Republican opponent, have popped up everywhere, and Hevesi’s numbers are way down.

Here’s a paragraph I swiped from the October 12 Metroland about the Green Party candidate for Attorney General:
[Rachel] Treichler had petitioned weeks earlier to be included in the League of Women Voters’ proposed three attorney-general debates. In a letter, she argued her qualifications: ballot access, financial compliance with New York State Board of Elections, voter interest and serious media coverage. The league, in turn, commissioned a Zogby poll in which Treichler polled 17 percent of the vote among independent voters. It was decided that she was a viable candidate.
So, if you’re not a Democrat or Republican, you have to be proven debate-worthy, including showing up in the polls. It’s not enough to go through the machinations of getting on the ballot; if your candidacy isn’t already strong enough, you won’t be invited to the debates. The story continues:
At the last minute, however, Treichler learned that she wasn’t going to be included in any of the debates. [Democraticic candidate Andrew] Cuomo wasn’t interested, she says, in debating a third-party candidate, and his camp put the pressure on to not include her.

It’s polling that will allow me to vote for a third-party candidate against Hillary Clinton and whoever her Republican opponent is this year It was polling that allowed me to vote for Ralph Nader for President in 2000, knowing that Al Gore would still win the state In fact, I could easily vote for third-party candidates for every position; Spitzer is cross-endorsed by the Working Families Party. New York is one of those peculiar states that actually allows that sort of thing.

I certainly would not be in favor of a ban on polling, but it has WAY too much influence on voter activity, including voter apathy, when a candidate is so far behind and a citizen says, “Why bother?”
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WTEN-TV clips for the races in the local Congressional District in the Albany area.
In the 21st, the Democratic incumbent is a lock for re-election.
In the 22nd, incumbent Republican Sweeney, who, BTW, was one of those folks who ran down to Florida to get Bush 43 selected President, is in a suddenly competitive race with Gillabrand, who Bill Clinton came to town to endorse this week.
In the 23rd, Republican incumbent McHugh’s position on Iraq on the link above is particularly entertaining.

President Bush on Iraq: It’s Never Been “Stay The Course”. Goodness, why did I think otherwise?

A ten minute version of the DVD “Bought and Sold– Electronic Voting in New York” is now posted on YouTube.
The EBay link for purchase of the full version of “Bought and Sold”

CNN: Should e-voting machines be outlawed?

FOX News (of all people) Exposes Princeton / Diebold Vote-Reversal Story

The Princeton report of computer virus susceptibility of the DieboldAccuVote machine .

RFK Jr on Hardball on November Elections

Want to Vote on Paper on November, 2006? because you don’t trust the machines?

The Lydster, Part 31: Useful


These are some of the 30 month retrospective pics I was going to use last month, but the Blogger was acting up.

You DO realize the real reason I write these, don’t you? Because, while they are fresh in my mind NOW, they’ll be a point when I’ll say to the wife, “Wife, when did Lydia…?” and she won’t know, either.


Lydia has become very helpful. She finds glasses, keys, shoes, TV remotes and other items. The fact that she may have misplaced some of these items is irrelevant.

She helps with the laundry. I brought a bunch of bottles to the return section of the supermarket, and without being asked, she hands me bottles to put in the machine; interestingly, she never gave me the can that was also in the bag, and which went in another machine.

She’s very quick to let me know I should be brushing my teeth in the bathroom, or that certain socks just don’t go with her outfit.

Apparently, day care centers all over the country teach kids how to put on their coats by lying them on the ground then flipping the coats over their heads. Or something like that. She’s also figured out the left shoe on the left foot thing, which saves time in the morning.

She’s very good at taking her liquid medicine all by herself, after we put it in the vial. Alas, she’s not so crazy about her nose spray.

Sure she washes her hands, but she’s also figured out which faucet is hot and which is cold in the bathroom, and to turn on the cold one first, lest she burn herself, at least most of the time.

Oh, there’s other stuff to brag about, I’m sure, but it’ll keep.

Next month, new pics for sure. (Yes, Claire, I’m still having them DEVELOPED.)

Lovin’ the child.
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Happy birthday, Becky, my eldest niece.

My #1 Favorite Sports Moment

It occurs to me that the Mets’ Endy Chavez’s catch in the NLCS this month might have made the Top 10 list had the Mets beaten the Cardinals in Game 7. Alas, they did not. Fred must be still in mourning, because he hasn’t posted since then.

So, OK, my #1 favorite sports moment is probably obvious. It happened 20 years ago tomorrow. It was Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. But it wasn’t just the game, it was the atmosphere.

My high school friend Cecily was having her annual Halloween party in Binghamton, so I took the bus from Albany that Saturday morning. At the party, Cecily was dressed as Gary Carter, the Mets catcher, a fairly good likeness, actually. So while we were partying, it was with one eye on the game until about the 9th inning, when we just stood and waited in vain for a Mets victory. Then the Boston Red Sox went up in the top of the 10th, but the Mets tied and then won. Except for Ralph Branca and Bobby Thompson, few opponents are so paired in the mind of the sports affectionado than Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner. Seldom have I been in a room with so much jumping up and down with excitement.

The next day, I took a bus home. It was a dark and stormy night. The bus drivers had been on strike for some months – I thought it was Greyhound, though research suggests they weren’t striking at the time. In any case, they had replacement drivers. We got out of Binghamton OK, but then the driver got off on Exit 13 of I-88, rather than Exit 15, which involved tooling around Oneonta until a group of passengers, including myself, directed him to the station, and importantly, back to the highway. There was further confusion at the college at Cobleskill when the driver took us to places on campus we had never seen before.

One of the great disappointments was that I’d be missing Game 7 of the Series. But, wait – I discovered the next morning that I hadn’t. The rain that pounded the area from Binghamton to Albany also caused the game in Queens to be postponed until the next day, when the Mets took the title. Game 7 was televised opposite a Monday Night Football game between Washington… and the New York Giants at the Meadowlands. NBC received a national Nielsen rating of 38.9 for Game 7 versus an 8.8 for ABC’s football telecast.
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Watched no football this weekend, though I’m thrilled the Giants beat the Cowboys. Still haven’t watched a single out of the World Series. I’ll probably catch part of Game 5 on Thursday after choir.
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I’m missing the endorphin rush of playing racquetball 4 or 5 times a week. My wrist and my knee are healing VERY slowly, and it makes me cranky.
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That sporting event participatory activity known as the Wave started 25 years ago this month. Maybe.

My favorite sports moments

A post nearly guaranteed to confound this fellow from across the pond.

Greg did his Top 10 Sports Moments last month. I thought to do the same. Of course, there are moments I loved at the time but have faded into memory, including many of the exciting NCAA men’s basketball finals.

I was flicking through the channels last month and came onto women’s volleyball. The game is to 30, win by two, and in the second game of the match Siena (a college near Albany) beat Binghamton (my hometown) 40-38. It was exciting, but the memory will fade.

The rules Greg laid out is that I have had to actually witness it, not seen it on ESPN Sportscenter later.

10. I know how Greg hates Brett Favre, but even he must admit that the game Favre played on December 22, 2003, right after his father died was magnificent.

9. Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run on September 8, 1998. Yeah, the steroid controversy taints this record. But I still think that the home run race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa that season energized the fans in the way they hadn’t been since the 1994 strike. In fact, this was Labor Day weekend, and I saw three Cardinals games in a row on FOX, who were looking to capture the historic moment. I loved all of it, Sosa running in from right field, McGwire’s graciousness to the family of Roger Maris.

8. Magic Johnson plays center during the NBA Finals. The rookie point guard replaces an injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the middle, scores 42 points, and creates a legend.

7. “Villanova beats Georgetown 66-64 to win the 1985 NCAA Basketball Championship … on April Fools’ Day.” It seems like most of the finals were thrilling games during that period. I was watching the game with mixed emotions. On one hand, I liked Georgetown coach John Thompson. On the other hand, ‘Nova was SUCH an underdog. This is on Greg’s list (item 3), so you can read his description.

6. I was never a big Reggie Jackson fan, but I was rooting for the Yankees against the Dodgers in the 1977 World Series. The Yankees had made it to the Series the year before, but were swept by the Big Red Machine. Before that, they hadn’t been in the World Series since 1964 and hadn’t won since 1962. When Reggie hit a homer in Game 6 on the first pitch, I nodded approvingly. When he hit a second home run, also on the first pitch, I was very happy. But when he hit a third home run, again on the first pitch, I involuntarily jumped out of my seat.

5. August 27, 1991, The U.S. Open. Like Andre Agassi this year, Jimmy Connors in 1991 was in the twilight of his career. I watched most of this match, including the very end. Described in a NY Times article entitled “TENNIS; Not Too Late for Connors” By ROBIN FINN:
“As the twilight melted into the witching hour and beyond, the crowd dwindled to 4,000 of the faithful, but those who stayed last night got to watch a resurgent legend outdistance another legend’s younger brother in the first round of the United States Open. On the buggy and humid stadium court, the legend played with the persistence of a gnat, a bionic gnat. Jimmy Connors, making his case for the eternal reprise and perpetual histrionics, swatted, stung, and swore his way past a quavery Patrick McEnroe, 4-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, to move into the second round of his 21st Open. The marathon took 4 hours 20 minutes and marked the seventh career comeback from a two-set deficit for Connors, who erased a 0-40 deficit and ended things at 1:35 this morning with a service winner on his third match point.”

4. Sarah Hughes winning Olympic gold in figure skating in 2002. Mostly, it was because I didn’t think she had a chance after finishing fourth in the short program. In the stupid ordinal scoring system they had until fairly recently, if any of the top three leaders (Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, and I think Sasha Cohen) won the free skate, they would have won the medal. But Hughes skated flawlessly, Michelle Kwan (my wife’s favorite skater) slipped to third, and the upset was complete.

3. The January 3, 1993 NFL playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and the Houston Oilers. I must admit that I didn’t see the first half; I was grocery shopping with my then-wife, who slipped on the black ice on the way home. We turned on the game in time for the second half kickoff, and almost turned off the TV when Buffalo’s Frank Reich threw the interception early in the third quarter to make it 35-3, Houston. But we’re talking about the only team in the NFL that actually plays in New York State, so I stuck with it and was richly rewarded with an unprecedented Bills win. Sometimes, when I’m watching a sporting event and am getting excited by the events, I stand up. I stood up a LOT in that game.

2. For a few years in the 1990s, Central Park in Schenectady, NY, was home to a recognized tennis tournament. In 1991, Michael Stich won Wimbledon singles championship. He then went to Schenectady, and won. The next year, Michael Stich returned to defend his title in Schenectady, but lost in the second round to a tournament wild card named Andrei Olhovskiy, in straight sets, no less. I was in the stands, and I was as shocked as anyone. This ranks so high because it’s the only one I saw in person.

I’m saving my #1 for tomorrow.

I should also make mention of Tiger Woods winning the 2006 British Open. I wasn’t even watching it, but 60 Minutes (or something) was supposed to be on, so I saw the ending. And he cried because his dad had died. For some reason, so did I.
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A new study, Immigrants, Baseball and the Contributions of Foreign-Born Players to America’s Pastime from The National Foundation for American Policy.

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