baseball Archives - Page 16 of 25

Baseball bans, Edward Snowden, and other things

Geoffrey Lewis was the classic character actor.

The new Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is revisiting Pete Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball. Clearly one of the greatest players in the game, with more base hits than anyone, Rose was banished from the sport by the late Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti for wagering on baseball.

But as the Wall Street Journal noted: “The rules were put in place to prevent cheating, not betting. And cheating is something that no thinking person, then or now, has suggested Pete Rose would do.”

While he’s at it, I’d like the commissioner to reexamine the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson (pictured), who batted .375 with perfect fielding in the 1919 Chicago White Sox in World Series, yet was caught up in the “Black Sox” scandal.

“In 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted Jackson of helping to fix the Series, but Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball, went against the ruling and banned all eight players including Joe Jackson from baseball for life.” I have never been convinced of his guilt. In other words, I say it AIN’T so, Joe.

If either one of those happens, I would suggest that the Steroid Era players, prior to 2004, when the baseball policy was quite unclear, ought to get due consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and the others.

“Where do we strike the balance between personal freedom and national security — and how do we even get people to care?” Watch John Oliver Meets Edward Snowden. The folks at Politifact fact-checked what Snowden said and they gave it a rating of Mostly True. And speaking of whom, NYC officials removed a Snowden statue secretly installed in Brooklyn park, but it was replaced by a Snowden hologram.

Stan Freberg was a comedy legend, a skilled voice actor, a genius of American advertising, and more. Just go to Mark Evanier’s site, and search for Freberg; you’ll find several articles, plus links to even more. Also, listen to Wun’erful, Wun’erful. Stan Freberg died on April 7.
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Geoffrey Lewis was the classic character actor. If you look at the massive list of his TV and movie appearances, you might say, “Oh, he’s THAT guy.” This is telling: he played two DIFFERENT characters on the series Mannix, Mission: Impossible, Cannon, Police Woman, Lou Grant, Little House on the Prairie, and The A-Team; three on Alias Smith and Jones, and Barnaby Jones; and FOUR separate characters on Murder, She Wrote.

The only show I ever watched where he was a regular was Flo, a spinoff of Alice, and that was 35 years ago. Jaquandor linked to a spoken word performance. Father of 10 children, including actress Juliette Lewis, Geoffrey Lewis also died on April 7.
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Richard Dysart was a star of the TV show L.A. Law, which I watched religiously. But he had a string of other notable performances on stage and in the movies, as well as TV. He died on April 5.

March Rambling: a quintillion or a trillion?

Fred Hembeck talks about a compilation of his Marvel work, House of Hem.

Delayed exoneration of a death row inmate, after 30 years.

9 Things Many Americans Just Don’t Grasp (Compared to the Rest of the World).

“The phone rang. It was my college rapist.”

What Happens When Mein Kampf’s Copyright Expires?

Building Equity: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Protected Bike Lanes.

Giving Homes to the Homeless is Cheaper Than Leaving them on the Street.

Man vs. Machine. A guy walks into a bar. He finds a video poker machine – run by the Oregon state lottery – which dealt him a strange hand.

Re: NCAA men’s basketball March Madness, the odds of a perfect bracket? It’s not 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Not incidentally, 10^18, or one followed by 18 zeroes is in the English system, one trillion. In any case, 9.2 quintillion is NOT 9.20000000000000000000, as NBC Nightly News showed earlier this month; THAT number is equal to a number smaller than 10.

Dustbury explained +/- (plus/minus) in basketball to me: “It’s based on the changing score during a player’s actual time: if, during a six-minute period in which he plays, if his team scores three points more than the opposition, he is +3. This of course varies greatly with substitutions, but electronic box scores update every minute or so.”

John Oliver won’t be your therapist: How he torpedoed the reassuring tropes of fake news.

Selma: the tragic anniversary of the death of Viola Liuzzo and Underground Railroad Project remembers the March.

Joseph Skulan on Wisconsin Mining Bill AB486 (2.17.12).

Major League Baseball’s Dirty Little Secret and Through the No-Looking Glass and Professional Ice Cream Taster.

25 maps that explain the English language.

Jaquandor: Writing Outside the Lines: on outlines. Plus the beer-drinking, 1970s sitcom DVD-watching Hank Speaks: How I Edit.

Dustbury hears voices; I’ve experienced this, too.

Gordon’s eight years in Chicago.

For all you lovers of the dance: here is an explanation of the influence of Africa on modern dance – if you have three hours to spare.

The Beatles or the Stones: Which Side Are You On? “If the Stones resented the Beatles’ cultural primacy, the Beatles resented the Stones’ unassailable coolness and sexual heat.” The Beatles themselves were like other men, but the music and lyrics channeled through them contained magic and messages from beyond the mind.

“Back when L.A.’s recording scene was a hit-minting machine that ruled the airwaves,” the Wrecking Crew worked up to four three-hour sessions a day. Here’s a review of a film about them.

Not only Diana Ross but also Mary Wilson turned 71 this month. 10 underrated Supremes songs.

SamuraiFrog ranks the Weird Al Yankovic songs: 165-151 and 150-136 and 135-126 and 125-116.

Art Spiegelman and jazz composer Phillip Johnston: “Wordless!”

Swamp Thing music.

The cover art on your favorite band’s album is awesome. It’s even better with cats. Must show the Daughter.

My friend Fred Hembeck is interviewed, and talks about a compilation of his Marvel work, House of Hem.

Irwin Hasen, R.I.P., the artist of the comic strip Dondi. Here’s the New York Times obit.

Trailers for 2015: The Best Animated Short nominees.

Muppets: Jim Henson Company and the ‘Into the Woods’ Movie that Could’ve Been and the message of “Rainbow Connection’ and Cookie Monster, Life Coach and Cookie Monster is making unboxing videos and Animal’s Whiplash.

How To Make The IDEAL Chocolate Chip Cookie: Add A Pinch of Science.

Getting more mayonnaise and toothpaste out of the container.

Dominoes and Etch-A-Sketch.

Srinivasa Ramanujan’s Magic Square.

Welcome to the Inauthentic Paper Detector. “Paste any text in the textbox. The chance that your submission is a human-written authentic scientific document will be output. Text over 50% chance will be classified as authentic.” Here’s the paper about it. Everything I write is inauthentic.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

Chuck Miller: Welcome to the club, Roger Green!! Apparently, I have posted 1000 times on my Times Union blog. I had no idea. Also, Another win for the TU Community Bloggers.

My blog post re: the Barber Adagio was linked to EvilGeniusVic’s Capital Region.

Sharp Little Pencil: Outhouses and Holes We Dig, for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Jaquandor’s Sentential Links (the Leonard Nimoy edition).

Baseball Hall of Fame: if I had a ballot

My final Hall of Fame vote was going to to Roger Clemens. But there’s a recent rule change.

Recently, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Golden Era Committee failed to select anyone to the Hall, with Dick Allen and Tony Oliva coming tantalizingly close, much to my chagrin, especially for Tony O., who was my favorite American League player not on the Yankees when I was growing up.

Once again, time for me to think about the players, who will be voted on by the baseball writers, the results of which will be announced on January 6. “To be enshrined, players must be named on at least 75% of the Committee members’ ballots.”

Here are the players on the ballot. Last year, three players were inducted – Tom Glavine, and Greg Maddux, pitchers for the Atlanta Braves, and Frank Thomas, first baseman for the Chicago White Sox. Still, there are lots of quality picks available. The sportswriters who vote can select up to 10 players, though, clearly, most do not.

These are my picks if I had a ballot:

1. Lee Smith, who had more saves than anyone when he retired in an era when relievers often pitched more than one inning. 13th year on the ballot. He got 29.9% of the vote last year, much worse than the year before. I’ve supported his selection for years.

2. Craig Biggio. Second basemen aren’t usually expected to be selected for power, but for defense. Yet thrice he won both the Gold Glove (for fielding) and the Silver Slugger (for hitting) in the same season. 3rd year on the ballot. Last year, he got 74.8% of the vote, when 75% was the threshold.

3. And if you put in one of the Astros’ B-boys, why not power-hitting first baseman Jeff Bagwell. Last year, he got 54.3% of the vote; this will be his fifth year on the ballot.

4. Mike Piazza. A good hitting catcher, who was never specifically accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs (PED), but everyone who bulked up in that period was suspected by some. There’s no reason to believe it so. Last year, in his second year of eligibility, he got 62.2% of the vote.

5. Randy Johnson, along with Roger Clemens, THE dominant pitcher of his era, mostly with the Seattle Mariners and Arizona Diamondbacks. Definitely should be elected on his first year on the ballot.

6. What the heck, his pitching com-padre with the Diamondbacks, Curt Shilling, who also won the World Series with the Boston Red Sox. For some reason, don’t much like him much, but it does not cause me not to support him. He got 29.2% of the vote last year, but I’m wondering if Johnson on the ballot will help him the third time out.

7. Pedro Martinez is another first-timer I’d support, a pitcher with the Expos, Red Sox, and Mets, among others. Usually the ace of the staff.

8. If he had been eligible last year, first-timer John Smoltz might have been picked with his pitching teammates Glavine and Maddux.

9. Now, we get to the Steroid Era players. No one would argue that Barry Bonds wasn’t the best position player on the ballot and in fact one of the best players ever. The steroids weren’t specifically banned at the time he probably took them. Last year, he got 34.7% of the vote, and in his third year, he’s likely to do no better.

10. My final vote was going to Roger Clemens. But there’s a recent rule change:

On July 26, 2014, the Hall announced changes to the rules for election for recently retired players, reducing the number of years a player will be eligible to be on the ballot from fifteen years to ten. Three candidates presently on the BBWAA ballot (Lee Smith, Don Mattingly, Alan Trammell) in years 10-15 will be grandfathered into this system and remain under consideration by the BBWAA for up to the full 15 years.

So, now Mark McGwire is not in the 9th of 15 years, but the 9th of 10, which seems like an unfortunate bait-and-switch. With 11% of the vote, it’s incredibly unlikely he’ll make it this year or next.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t vote for suspected PED user Gary Sheffield in his first year.

So I’ve left off Tim Raines (in his eighth year, who I supported last year), Jeff Kent and Mike Mussina (both in their second years), as well as PED-tainted Clemens and Sammy Sosa (both in their 3rd year).

Who would you pick?

Baseball legend Hal Trosky

Hal Trosky suffered from migraines for a number of years, before retiring in 1941,

There’s this guy playing for the Chicago White Sox this season named Jose Abreu. After being a star for the Cuban team, he defected and is now tearing up Major League Baseball. I read that he’s become the fourth rookie in major league history to record at least 30 doubles, 30 home runs and 100 RBIs, joining Hal Trosky (1934), Ted Williams (1939), and Albert Pujols (2001).

I know who Pujols is, a likely Hall of Famer, long with the Cardinals, now with the Angels. Williams IS a Hall of Famer who I saw at the end of his splendid career, all with the Boston Red Sox.

But who was Hal Trosky? He was a fine first baseman who came up with Cleveland at the end of the 1933 season. But 1934 was his official rookie season, and, as noted, he did well. He never made it to an All-Star Game, however, because he played in the era of Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg.

Unfortunately, he suffered from migraines for a number of years, before retiring in 1941, though he returned to baseball with less successful stints in 1944 and 1946 with the Chicago White Sox. Still, he finished as a career .302 hitter, which is impressive. Save for those nasty headaches, he might have been more than a baseball footnote.
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Looking at Ted Williams’ record, it’s amazing how well he played both before and after WWII, as though he hadn’t missed a day, let alone three seasons. He also lost time during the Korean War.

Teevee; remembering Dee, Gwynn, Kasem, Noll

I always regretted the 1994 baseball strike, in part because I wanted to know if Tony Gwynn would hit .400.

I was watching JEOPARDY! per usual. But this was strange: in the six days between June 6 and June 13, inclusive, none of the contestants got the Final correct in five of them, whereas I KNEW four of them, and guessed correctly on the fifth. The one question I got wrong, two of them got right.

These are the six final answers:

20th CENTURY AMERICANS: In 1911 Glenn Curtiss received this document Number 1.
THE MEDITERRANEAN: It’s the only U.N. member country in the Mediterranean where English is an official national language.
SCIENTISTS: As a humorous tribute, an astronomical term equivalent to at least 4 billion has been named for him.
CAPITAL CITY WORDPLAY: Ending in the same 2 letters, these 2 are capitals of a nation that covers a continent & of a nation reaching onto 2 continents.
CURRENT TELEVISION: George Romero declined to direct a few episodes of this series, calling it “basically…just a soap opera”
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: William Sullivan retired from the Foreign Service in 1979; he was the last U.S. Ambassador to this country.

Which one did I get wrong? If you guessed CURRENT TV, you’d be right. Not only don’t I watch that much TV, even when I read about it, it generally doesn’t stick. Even though I knew who George Romero was – creator of Night of the Living Dead – I had no recollection of what the TV show was called.

This is not a complaint. It’s just an observation that, for someone who used to be able to quickly fill out the TV Guide crossword puzzle, I doubt I’d get it half-finished, especially since I’m not reading TV Guide (pretty much since it changed the size to standard magazine format) or Entertainment Weekly (in the last 18 months), I’m pretty much out of the loop unless it’s a big story.

The truth of the matter is that the stuff that’s REALLY interesting to me shows up on YouTube. I don’t even seek it out; it’s either in a newsfeed or occasionally, on someone’s Facebook.

For instance, John Oliver’s show is on HBO. I don’t have HBO, and I don’t WANT HBO; don’t have time to watch it, even if it weren’t an extra charge. But I get to see him bash the owner of the Washington, DC American football team and note the importance of net neutrality.

Jaquandor was ranting about a current Apple commercial. I fully understand his sentiment; as the fat kid who couldn’t climb the rope or do a chin-up, I found gym a humiliating experience, and Mr. Lewis, my gym teacher for five years, a sadistic schmuck. What surprises me is that, somehow, I managed to miss the original Chicken Fat campaign from the 1960s, when I watched LOTS of TV.
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How does one develop sports rooting interests, or antipathy? Beyond geographic proximity, it can be a number of factors. I was rooting for the New York Rangers to beat the LA Kings for the Stanley Cup (NHL hockey), but it was not to be; NYC is only 150 miles away. My rooting for the San Antonio Spurs over the Miami Heat in the NBA (basketball), who had won the previous two years, was based more on disdain for Miami, who stacked the deck pretty much the way the New York Yankees did in when George Steinbrenner owned the team. Yet, I never hated the Yankees; proximity, and the fact that the very first major league baseball game I saw was at Yankee Stadium (NYY beat the Washington Senators, 4-3), won out.

One of my favorite American football teams not playing in New York or New Jersey was/is the Pittsburgh Steelers. Even when they won four Super Bowls in the 1970s, I still liked them. It couldn’t have been because two of their players, Franco Harris (1950) and Lynn Swann (1952) shared my birthday, as I didn’t know that at the time. Maybe it was because they were rather mediocre before that run. I was sorry to read that Chuck Noll, coach of those SB wins, died last Friday at the age of 82.

But I was REALLY sad to read that baseball player Tony Gwynn died Monday of salivary gland cancer at the age of only 54. He was a class act, playing his whole career with one club, the San Diego Padres. He was a model of consistency as a hitter, which got him into the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot and was apparently a terrific guy. I actually saw him play a few times when I would visit my sister in San Diego, and we would catch a game; I’ve been to the San Diego stadium more times than any other major league facility. I always regretted the 1994 baseball strike, in part because I wanted to know if Tony would hit .400; he ended the shortened season at .394. Here’s Ken Levine’s great tribute to Tony Gwynn.

I listened to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 radio program/Top 10 TV show, on and off, for decades. It was fun because he really seemed to enjoy his work. I think I actually got subscriptions to Billboard in the 1980s partly because of him. Another Ken Levine tribute.

I loved Ruby Dee in the movies A Raisin in the Sun and Do The Right Thing, the TV miniseries Roots, and a whole lot more. But it was also the leadership of Ruby and her late husband Ossie Davis in the civil rights struggle that had a great impact on me. They both received Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
Here’s Ruby Dee on the Psyche of Black America. Also, a PBS program called With Ossie and Ruby, an episode featuring the late Gil Scott-Heron (circa 1981) – Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3.

Oh, those JEOPARDY! solutions:
A pilot’s license
Malta
Carl Sagan
Canberra (Australia) and Ankara (Turkey)
The Walking Dead – that one I got wrong
Iran