baseball Archives - Page 13 of 23

May rambling #1: The Case Against Reality

I had a terrible blogging April, but because I work ahead, it wasn’t always evident.

1965 edition of “Our New Age”[/caption]

The Case Against Reality. A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

Song Of My Self-Help: Follow Walt Whitman’s ‘Manly Health’ Tips, appearing in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. It was uncovered by a University of Houston student, and includes: “The beard is a great sanitary protection to the throat.”

The Neverending Workday – A pervasive cultural norm of work devotion leaves many employees with little time for family, friends, or sleep.

In rural Maine, a life of solitude and larceny. Police say the hermit stole to survive 27 years in the woods.

What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight. “Contestants lost hundreds of pounds during Season 8, but gained them back. A study of their struggles helps explain why so many people fail to keep off the weight they lose.”

United Methodist Church Requires Removal of Reference to LGBTQI Christians from Worship Greetings, and, reported the next day, United Methodist clergy come out as church conference begins.

Transcending ignorance. Plus AmeriNZ weighs in, as does Funny or Die.

This isn’t just for me. It’s for everybody who needs a pep talk.

The smug style in American liberalism.

John Oliver: science reporting and Puerto Rico debt and cicadas.

Russian Insider Says State-Run Doping Fueled Olympic Gold.

Someone Put Bartolo Colon’s First Homer In The Natural, Where It Belongs.

Boston Globe: As great as David Ortiz is, Teddy Ballgame is still No. 1.

Free Comic Book Day isn’t free for everybody.

Morley Safer Stepping Down From ’60 Minutes’ After 46 Years.

President Obama delivered a commencement speech at Howard University.

WHCD: Barack Obama and Larry Wilmore. Plus An Obama Blooper Reel, from The White House Correspondents’ Association.

America operates under a crazy quilt of voting requirements, “with each state making its own laws for different populations and with challenges to those laws whipping back and forth through the courts. But if the primaries have frustrated the candidates, try being a voter in November.” Including New York.

Former NY State Assembly Speaker Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison. And former NY State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos sentenced to five years for corruption. Those were two of the three most powerful people in state government, along with Governor Andrew Cuomo.

MUSIC

First Listen: Bob Dylan, ‘Fallen Angels’.

Great audio/visual presentation of Billboard Top 10 songs from 1956 – 2016 (22,000 songs!)

Jaquandor: Music to write swashbucklers by.

Happy birthday to Reverend Gary Davis (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) and James Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006).

K Chuck Radio: Rare tracks.

Return of the Monkees and remembering Harry the Hipster Gibson.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? – Pet Shop Boys, with Dusty Springfield.

What does Becky mean? Here’s the history behind Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ lyric that sparked a firestorm. (And me, nearly oblivious to it all.)

Keef cartoon: Nina Simone.

Local legend Ruth Pelham to close Music Mobile. Lack of funds leads the musician to close her beloved program.

Minnesota’s Broad Publicity Rights Law, The PRINCE Act, Is So Broad That It May Violate Itself.

GOOGLE alerts (me)

TWC Question Time #36: I Love You, But… Moments from your favorite comics characters you consider particularly embarrassing.

Arthur on the blog balance. I too had a terrible blogging April, but because I work ahead, it wasn’t always as evident. So we may be Blogging Twins™.

Dustbury is blogging. Chaz is my blogging hero.

AmeriNZ on Kasich dropping out of the presidential race and the REAL May Day.

Shooting Parrots is a grammar nerd.

Ted Cruz solicits me; no, that doesn’t sound right…

I goose Jaquandor; it was not painful.

Baseball Hall of Fame 2016: if I had a ballot

Once again, time for me to think about the baseball players, who will be voted on by the baseball writers to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The results 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, four players were inducted: pitchers Randy Johnson, Pedro Martínez, and John Smoltz, all in their first year of eligibility, and catcher/second baseman Craig Biggio. Still, there are a lot 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. 14th year on the ballot. He got 30.2% of the vote last year, only marginally better than the year before, and much worse than before then. I’ve supported his selection for years.

2. Mark McGwire, one of those PED (performance-enhancing drugs) guys. But Major League Baseball really hadn’t addressed the issue until 2004, well after his record-breaking 1998 season. Moreover, because of a change in the rules a couple of years ago, he is not in the 10th of 15 years of eligibility, but the 10th of 10 years, which seems like an unfortunate bait-and-switch. With 10% of the vote, it’s incredibly unlikely he’ll make it this year.

3. Alan Trammel, solid Tigers shortstop in his last (15th) year of eligibility. With only 25.1% of the vote last year, if he’s ever to make it into Cooperstown, it’ll be by some Veterans Committee down the road.

4. Barry Bonds remains the best position player on the ballot, and in fact, one of the best players ever, even factoring out the theoretical benefits of PEDs. From the start of his career in 1986 until the end of 1998 season, after which he bulked up and had the astronomical numbers, Bonds accumulated a .289 BA, 411 HR, 445 SB, 4 MVPs, 8 Gold Gloves, and only a 15% strikeout rate. Last year, he got 36.8% of the vote, and in his fourth year, he may do incrementally better.

5. Pretty much ditto for pitcher Roger Clemens, a dominant player, with 37.5% of the vote last year.

6. Ken Griffey, Jr. (pictured). Clearly the best of the first-time nominees, with 630 home runs, a fine fielder, and a decent fellow to boot.

7. Mike Piazza. A good hitting catcher, who was never specifically accused of taking 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 69.9% of the vote, and I’m guardedly hopeful he’ll get in this year.

8. Curt Schilling, a stellar pitcher in a couple of World Series. For some reason, don’t much like him much, but I’d support him. He got 39.2% of the vote last year, up 10 percentage points in year three.

9. Trevor Hoffman. With 601 saves, the relief pitcher is almost a certain first-year lock.

10. Tim Raines, in his ninth year of eligibility. He had 55% of the votes last year. Hope he gets in.

Left off

The number of qualified choices meant I passed on: Mike Mussina, Jeff Bagwell, Sammy Sosa, Gary Sheffield, Edgar Martinez, and Larry Walker. The logjam in the ballot is in large part a result of the 2013 balloting when NO one got into the Hall through the traditional balloting.

“In addition, BBWAA members who were otherwise eligible to cast ballots were required to complete a registration form and sign a code of conduct before receiving their ballots, and the Hall will make public the names of all members who cast ballots (but not their individual votes) when it announces the election results.” This is to try to get people who can vote to actually cast a ballot.
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Someone’s list of 9 Biggest MLB Hall of Fame Snubs.

Baseball by the (uniform) numbers

Only three players each have worn numbers 78, 79, 81, 91 and 94.

This is a picture of Ed Glynn. You probably never heard of him, and I barely remember him myself. He was a journeyman pitcher, for the New York Mets in 1979-1980, and other teams over a ten-year career.

I mention him only because my friend Walter is Glynn’s cousin, and he mentioned that the current #48 for the Mets is the great young pitcher Jacob deGrom. If one goes to the page about the Mets at baseball-reference.com, one finds all sorts of information about the team’s history, including the fact that they’ve retired the number of only one Mets player in its history, Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, #41.

Further into the minutia hole, one can discover the name of every single player who ever donned a Mets uniform. I’m using the Mets as an example here, but this is true of every team in Major League Baseball, past, and present, though some of those very early teams didn’t use numbered uniforms.

And, one can find out how many people in all of MLB have worn a particular uniform number. 862 players have worn #22 over the years, and 839 have had #27. Glynn and deGrom are two of 506 players to wear #48.

The higher numbers are not as well regarded. Only three players each have worn numbers 78, 79, 81, 91, and 94. Two each have donned 83, 84, 85, and 96. There has only been one person to have worn, as a regular player, not just spring training, the numbers 80, 82, 87, 95, 97, and 98. And NO one has had 86, 89, 90, 92, or 93.

This means that, if you’re going to be a Major League Baseball player, pick a high uniform number. You’ll have a better chance at being the best #89 ever!
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For the First Time in History, the World Series Is Between 2 Teams That Were Never Segregated.

Twenty-Five Fun Facts About the 2015 Mets.

Act like a pirate day 2015

A heart condition hasn’t gotten in the way of Sean Campbell’s love of baseball. “He gets a day full of surprises from his favorite player, Andrew McCutchen.” The Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder “has worked with Make-A-Wish previously, having teamed up with them to give 12-year-old Matthew Beichner a tour of the team’s home field last year, after he signed a one-day contract with the team.”

BTW, the Pirates have a very good chance of making it to the playoffs this year.

ARRRR at Saratoga

From Daily Kos, June 2015:

Iceland has long been one of the more right-leaning Nordic countries… [In 2013], the right-leaning Independence and Progressive parties regained power in a landslide.

So it comes as a massive shock that the last few months of polling has shown the incumbent coalition hemorrhaging support not to the center-left Social Democrats or to the left-wing Left-Green Movement, but to the nascent Pirate Party, which has surged into the lead in public opinion polls due to dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties…

Even though Iceland is a tiny country, if just one nation changes its copyright laws and tries to fight the international copyright regime, it could have significant consequences given the ways that the Internet has worn down national borders. This election isn’t until April of 2017 at the latest…
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Muppet dramatic reading of A Pirate’s Life for Me.

Dear diary, my short summer staycation

I’ve come to the conclusion that people dis blogging, even when they don’t read blogs, because they believe it’s just a bunch of personal entries, as though it were some sort of public diary. While, I’ve usually attempted to give you a much more diverse and eclectic record, every once in a while, I need a journal entry, if only for ME to keep track of my activities six or sixteen months from now.

July 23: After work, I met The Wife and The Daughter at Albany’s Washington Park at for a free Park Playhouse presentation of the musical Singin’ in the Rain. The family didn’t get there until close to 6 p.m. for a 7:30 performance, and that’s too late. We found probably the last seats in the amphitheater, in the last row, far to the right, with some obstruction from one of the light poles. This was the antepenultimate performance, and it had reviewed well.

That said, the performance of the musical was quite fine. Great singing and dancing, even though only the guy playing Donald (the Gene Kelly role in the movie) was an Equity union actor. And, as advertised, there was actual singing, in the controlled “rain.” BTW, in case of real rain, the show might be postponed or even canceled. My friend Susan, who plays the oboe in the orchestra, and who the Daughter and I happened across at intermission, said only one show was canceled, though a couple were delayed over the four-week run.

The problem is that, because the stage gets wet, and has to get mopped up during the break, there’s not much story left afterward; a small complaint.

July 24: I took a day off from work, and we headed for the Albany Institute of History and Art. The baseball exhibit was also on its antepenultimate day on display. While the info on the major league teams was interesting, I was most intrigued by the local history. It showed the Capital District from our now-defunct minor league Yankees showcasing future stars such as Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams to the Albany Senators playing an exhibition game against Babe Ruth to the 1880s team in Troy that was a precursor to the San Francisco Giants.

After lunch, we went to the New York State Museum. There was an exhibit of art from students from the 64 education campuses comprising the State University of New York. There was also a fine display of photos and tools of the Shaker communities, several of which were around the area back in the religious organization’s heyday.

July 25: The folks putting on Park Playhouse had also produced a two-day run of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, with child and teen actors, at Albany’s Palace Theatre. This is the iteration in which Cinderella was played at various times by Julie Andrews, Lesley Ann Warren, and Brandy. I love this show, and this version was quite good, especially the title actress and the girl playing the herald.

However, because it was for free, and was presumably kid-friendly, parents brought their infants and toddlers, who couldn’t be still, or QUIET, for a 55-minute presentation, so it was occasionally difficult to hear. Outdoors, the noise may have been more diffused. Indoors, in the 2800-seat theater, at least 2/3s full, it was amplified.

July 26: I’ve previously touted the amazing work that happens on the very small stage of the Mac-Haydn Theatre, in Chatham, 45 minutes from Albany, where the entrances and exits become part of the set. My love for West Side Story is even more well established. This combination did not disappoint, from the very athletic mixing between the Sharks and the Jets, to the fine use of space to show Maria’s balcony.

The Wife thought the guy playing Tony was too pretty, though I disagreed. The problem with theater in the round, though, is that it may take a few seconds to find the highlighted action, such as when Maria and Tony first meet, and Tony is, for us, briefly obscured by the crowd at the dance.

What particularly worked for me was the Somewhere dance. Often a ballet that stops the action, it was quite effective with, e.g., “Anybodies”, the “tomboy” Jet dancing with Bernardo, the now slain Shark leader. Hey, maybe there IS “a place for us.”

And to nail that down, as we found our way to our car, we saw the actors playing Tony and Bernardo get in their vehicle and drive away together.