baseball Archives - Page 21 of 23

Favorite sports (and version) QUESTION

It seems that half of the NBA gets into the playoffs anyway, making the regular season almost meaningless.

Simple query this time: what are your favorite sports? Are there versions or levels of the sport you enjoy more (or less)?

For instance, I like baseball. I like Major League Baseball, like watching it on TV, though I hate the fact that the National League has 16 teams and the American League has 14, for reasons Scott discussed here. But I really enjoy attending Minor League Baseball. College baseball’s interesting, but they still use those aluminum bats, which I find to be sacrilege at that age level. If the Little League World Series happens to be on, I’ll watch it.

I like football. I like the NFL, and particularly how the divisions are even. The league has found a way to distribute money more equitably so that there is more parity than in the college game. While I like the college game, I hate how it’s become a quasi-professional league, which in turn has caused several teams’ victories to be voided. Alabama and Ohio State (disgraced coach Jim Tressel, pictured), and several other teams have had their wins vacated in the past couple of seasons, with the expectations of it continuing in the future.

College basketball can also be subject to fraud. But the March Madness scheme, allowing teams from “weak” conferences to compete with the “major” conferences, unlike in football, makes the season more exciting. Meanwhile, it seems that half of the NBA gets into the playoffs anyway, making the regular season almost meaningless.

What are your sports favorites and dislikes?

Drop a Flag on that Barkeep

I became so incensed that, had I access to a baseball bat, I am afraid I might have started smashing the drinking glasses that hung over the barkeep’s head.

When I went to that conference I mentioned, there was some free time on the first two evenings. So I went to the bar to get a glass of wine. Somehow neither of the bartenders saw me initially, and I waited a bit longer than I should have, but eventually got served.

This sent me to a flashback to June 14, 1991. My Significant Other and I were in Boston to visit her mother and her brother. For reasons too complicated to describe here, we couldn’t stay at their house but had to stay at a hotel.

Since we were in town, we decided to see if, somehow, there were tickets to that night’s Red Sox-California Angels game. We seriously doubted it; Roger Clemens, the Red Sox ace hurler was on the mound against the one-handed pitching phenom Jim Abbott. Somehow, there were not only seats available, but we got to sit right behind home plate!

The game itself, which you can read about in this box score, was great. The Red Sox fell behind twice but came back to win 9-4. The play I remember most was in the 6th inning when Clemens threw over to 1st base several times to keep Dave Winfield from stealing; I don’t think he’d stolen a base all season. A throw gets past the first basemen, Winfield gets to second and eventually scores an unearned run.

So afterward, the SO and I check into a Holiday Inn not far from Fenway Park. We decide to go down to the bar to get drinks; she sat at a table, and I stood at the bar. And stood. And stood.

At least three times while I was standing there, the bartender acknowledged my presence with an index finger suggesting “Just a minute.” But people who came to the bar well after I did get served. And I became so incensed that, had I access to a baseball bat, I am afraid I might have started smashing the drinking glasses that hung over the barkeep’s head. (Probably not, but I DID envision it.)

Instead, livid, I complained to hotel management and later to my credit card company, to no great satisfaction, since he never REFUSED to serve me. It was a very sour ending to what had been a great night.

It is why I HATE ordering drinks at a crowded bar to this day. It just doesn’t follow the queue.

Happy birthday, Willie Mays!

She got to meet a bunch of the players mentioned in the song at a media event, including Willie, Mickey and the Duke, but the true significance of these gentlemen’s accomplishments was lost on her because she knew baseball not at all.

My favorite baseball player as a kid was Willie Mays. I thought, and I still think that he was the greatest person who played in my lifetime. He could hit for average (.302 lifetime). He could hit for power; he was fifth all-time in extra-base hits, behind only Hank Aaron, Mays’ godson Barry Bonds, Stan Musial, and Babe Ruth, and 4th in home runs after Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth. He was a great fielder, with 12 Golden Gloves in a row (1957-1968).

Willie came up with the New York Giants in 1951, but his 1952 season was truncated and his ’53 season obliterated because of military service. In 1954, the Giants faced the powerful Cleveland team, a roster that won a record 111 out of 154 regular-season games, in the World Series. The Giants swept the Series in four games, in no small part due to Mays.

So when the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, the Bay City was expecting more pennants. But they lost the Series to the Yankees in 1962. I didn’t realize until I read this article that those Giants’ losses in the playoffs and the Series, even after Mays retired, pained him. So the Series win for the 2010 San Francisco Giants was a win for the Say Hey Kid, so dubbed because he was lousy with names.

There is a song by a guy named Terry Cashman called Talkin’ Baseball, which mentions “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” in the chorus, they being the three now Hall of Fame centerfielders who played in New York City in the 1950s: Mays, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Duke Snider of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It namechecks a bunch of other players as well and has been updated occasionally. Listen to it HERE or HERE or HERE.

I have a colleague who knew Terry Cashman because she was friends with Terry’s daughter. As a result, she got to meet a bunch of the players mentioned in the song at a media event, including Willie, Mickey, and the Duke, but the true significance of these gentlemen’s accomplishments was lost on her because she knew baseball not at all. She also met Rusty Staub, who she knew from his restaurants, not his ball playing. I am jealous.

Mickey died in 1995, and Duke Snider passed away in February of 2011, leaving only Willie from that triumvirate.

Happy 80th birthday, Willie! Listen to The Treniers singing Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song).
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The 2010 World Series trophy was in Troy, NY yesterday, for a good historic reason.

Halls of Fame QUESTIONS

The Baseball Hall of Fame votes were announced this week. I totally agree with the choices of Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven; I wanted Blyleven years ago. If I had had a ballot, I would have probably voted for the people who came in 1-7, plus 11: Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Mark McGwire.

Yes, I’d be voting for Mark McGwire, who, assuming he was taking steroids during his career – OK, he was – took them when they were not effectively banned by Major League Baseball. Rafael Palmiero, he of the finger-wagging to Congress that he was clean, then later suffers a suspension over the use of a banned substance, did much worse in the voting than a 500-HR/3000-hit batter would have in a pre-steroid era. I have publicly theorized that his performance in DC definitely cost him; he was not going to make it in his first chance.

Why can’t reliever Lee Smith get more love?

Eventually, I’d vote for Edgar Martinez; it’s difficult for me to pick a pure Designated Hitter, mostly because STILL hate the DH rule. And now that Alan Trammell has only five more years, I would likely start selecting him too. Rafy too, in a couple of years. My working theory is that once a bunch of steroid-era players are on the ballot, McGwire and Palmiero will get inducted, maybe in years 12 to 15 of their 15-year window of eligibility.

Meanwhile, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction list was released a last month, with the ceremony to be held in March. I was really happy to see Neil Diamond on the list, and also Leon Russell as a sideman, or as they are now calling it, the “musical excellence award”; I should get that album Russell did with Elton John. But, of the nominees for this year, the most disappointing omission was the late Laura Nyro. If not as a singer, then she ought to get as a songwriter. Through the pictured album, which is a bunch of cover songs, she’s deserving as a performer as well. -inductees
Alice Cooper, Beastie Boys, Bon Jovi, Chic, *Neil Diamond, Donovan, *Dr. John, J. Geils Band, LL Cool J, * Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, Donna Summer, Joe Tex, *Tom Waits, Chuck Willis

For either or both Halls of Fame, who would you have picked for this year?

November Ramblin’

This is almost as funny in Old Elizabethan as it is in contemporary English.

I’m watching this brief video Jaquandor posted, and it suddenly reminded me of an incident from when I was a teenager. Our next-door neighbors were taking down a tree on their property. I witnessed my father going over and telling the adult male, “Hey, the way you’re chopping that, the tree is going to hit your house.” The guy said to my dad, “Why don’t you mind your own business?” So, naturally, next thing you know, the tree topples into the house, with large branches penetrating the roof. I can’t help but think that if he’d just hired someone who knew what he/she was doing – or actually LISTENED to my father – he could have saved himself a lot of money and grief.

(I blame Mike Sterling for getting the song Zoot Suit Riot stuck in my head.)

You may have heard about the woman on the game show Wheel of Fortune who solved a puzzle with only one letter revealed – see HERE. But I found it even more entertaining the way I initially viewed it, out of synch.

Actor and Author Steve Martin Will Be at a SOLD OUT Event at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City, Sunday, Dec. 5 at 11:30 a.m. I’m hoping it will be subsequently broadcast. Meanwhile, a couple of his recent musical performances, of Atheists Don’t Have No Songs and the classic King Tut.

A wonderful putdown by George Takei.

What the 2010 elections meant; a mandate, indeed.

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This is almost as funny in Old Elizabethan as it is in contemporary English:
Who’s on First works, especially after the first minute of setup. Of course, it maketh no sense unless you’re familiar with the original Abbott and Costello routine; I think the radio version works better than any of the video versions I found on YouTube, such as this one.

“Neil Young” and Bruce Springsteen

Harry Nillson on the Ghost and Mrs. Muir, a 1960s sitcom. A snippet of another 1960s TV show F Troop featuring future members of the band Little Feat.

The essence of Time magazine

Roger Ebert on loneliness. And, since he has an Eleanor Rigby video, how about, for no other discernable reason, its B-side, Yellow Submarine.

Death won’t stop this Democrat
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Beautiful and haunting music and video of a piece by Henryk Gorecki, who died this month.

A couple seasons ago, there was this nighttime soap opera called Dirty Sexy Money. It…wasn’t great, but I watched it for the cast, which included Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause. But most of all, I watched it for Jill Clayburgh (pictured), who I loved seeing in Semi-Tough, An Unmarried Woman, and Starting Over in the late 1970s, but not much after that – Ally McBeal’s mom, a couple of episodes of The Practice – before DSM. I was surprisingly sad to note her passing at the age of 66 from cancer.
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Ken Levine did a couple of great obits this month, one for George “Sparky” Anderson, baseball’s first manager to lead teams from both the National and American leagues to World Series titles. When Sparky Anderson was 30 he looked 75. And now that he’s passed away at 76 I still think of him as 30.

Levine’s sometimes partner announcing Seattle Mariners games, Dave Niehaus: He became the second most treasured icon in Seattle, right behind Mt. Rainier… Dave had something that so few announcers have today – SHOWMANSHIP. You were not just getting play-by-play, you were being told a tale by a master storyteller. Name me a better way of spending a warm summer night sitting out on the front porch.

An Open Letter to Andrew Carnegie from Ted Sorensen about libraries. Sorensen, JFK adviser, died this fall.

Publisher of Classique magazine Albany Annette DeLavallade died suddenly this month, a loss to the community.
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DO NOT LEAVE ALCOHOL NEAR PUMPKINS!