Chosee Lose Again at Stamford Bridge

Jack-in-the-Hood

What’s the edge in baseball for Home team?

Everyone knows that in baseball, the home team has an advantage.  They have “last licks” which is an advantage of sorts and they are home, which we all know in sports, gives us an edge.  But how much?  You ever wonder that? What is the exact number?  In 100 games, will the home team win 65 of them?  More?  Less?

Gerrard Sends Reds Through

Steven Gerrard’s 30th goal in Europe sent his side into the last 16 knockout stages of the Champions League.

Gerrard returned after a torn groin muscle to score a first-half header, giving him his eighth goal of the season, and fifth in Europe, but it was not a convincing Liverpool victory.  Marseille were the better side after the break and it needed the considerable defiance of Jamie Carragher and Daniel Agger to keep them out.

This game was Benitez’s 66th European game for Liverpool and his 39th victory equalled Bob Paisley’s record.

As for Gerrard, there is no doubt about his love for European competition–he has 104 goals, 30 of those in Europe in only 98 games, roughly one in three matches. His league ratio is one in six matches.

And this from a man how has/had a “torn” groin muscle.

This guy could be the greatest footballer I’ve ever seen.  I loved Beckenbauer, but I don’t remember Beckenbauer playing with torn leg muscles.  My goodness, this guy is one of the best athletes to ever get dressed.

Jackie Robinson Radio

Work the Face? Or the Body?

Many hours were spent yesterday working the face of Jackie Robinson.  Faces are very frustrating and very hard, yet, they are the single thing that makes or breaks the peice for the viewer.  If the face isn’t right, the piece is not going anywhere.  I found that out the hard way with my Mickey Mantle statue.  After Jackie, before I can do Satchell Paige or Three Fingered Brown, I am re-furbishing The Mick before putting him up for sale.  This will be the 3rd head I’ve done for him.  This time, it will be done right!  Determination is the first thing that you need to do this stuff.

The other crucial element is photos.  When you are doing a likeness of man that is not in the room with you, you need photos; lots of them.  You need them to be clear to see the wrinkles and nuances in a person’s face.  You need several of them and from various angles.  A good full on shot is a must.  A good profile is a must.  Click here to see a photo that I would have killed for when I did my DiMaggio statue back in 1995. Then you need some 3/4 angles.  Some from up underneath, so you can see the underside of the nose and the eye bone ridge.  Some from above.

The trouble with Mantle is that he smiled in almost EVERY one of his photos that were published.  Smiling changes your face and renders about 60% of the face unusable for my sculpting purposes.  It’s no good.

So it’s a challenge to get all of the photos.  For very famous people like Babe Ruth, entire photo books will be published JUST for them.  You buy one, and you cut it up and you’re done.  Then there’s the guys who don’t have the single book, but many.  You buy more books and cut them up.

If you can’t get anything beyond that, and it was pre-internet, as 4 of my big statues were, you have to drive up to upstate NY, and go to the library at the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY.  It’s in the back.  You just walk right in and ask for a player’s folder and they hand you the folder and you go through it and you can have copies made for a small fee or have prints made for a large fee.

Now, with the internet, that’s mostly antique stuff.  Now you can use google images to pull up a few dozen shots and then print them and cut them and off you go.

But the really big boost to a guy like me happened last week!  Life magazine put their whole photo collection out on the web via google.  It’s phenomenal. Now, all you do is go to http://images.google.com/hosted/life

And type in “Jackie Robinson” and in 5 minutes, you have better photos (and better by FAR) than all the photos you had in cutting up books and ordering 8×10′s.  Just a huge shot in the arm for this project.

And it will help for Mickey Mantle right behind it.  Trouble is, if you are doing a guy like Miner Brown aka Mordecai, Centennial Peter (Miner) Three-Fingered Brown, you realize that his ascendency as a celebrity was in the oughts and teens and was pre-Life magazine.  Life is no help there.

But the photos there are amazing.  Just type in Patton or Nixon or Musial and off you go.  Enjoy, oh, and when you click on a photo to bring it up, click on it again and it will come in full-size.

It’s ridiculous how good these photos are.  If I ever do Ted Williams, you can bet I’ll start with this one: Click here

Hoodwinked!

Late to the ‘Mind Games’ Party

I’m removing this post.  DON’T go buy Mind Games, used or otherwise.  I got to near the end and found some gratuitous LeftWing politics in the narrative.  Some real mean-spirited stuff about Red Sox fans liking winning like Rush Limbaugh likes Oxycontin.  Now I don’t care who you support–that’s just mean-spirited, ignorant and wrong.  These guys are great, aren’t they?  They’re all sweetness and light until they meet someone they don’t agree with and then, instead of debating their points on their merits in the arena of ideas, they call them names and wish them harm.  Don’t be fooled.  This kind of stuff is common, and it’s who they are.

The book went in the garbage.  Don’t buy it.  The author of the offending chapter was Dayn Perry.

15 miles on the Root Canal

Depressed about the stock market?  Me too.  And tonight, I get a last minute dentist appointment and find out that I’m probably looking at 5,000 of dental work in the next month or two.  Coverage?  Bah!  That was maxed out for the year already.  Thankfully, the Alleve just kicked in and I can eat soup now.  Clam chowder out of a can.  Woo hoo.  And, and, as you may have heard, XM-(not) Serious just canceled my favorite morning drive radio show.  Yea, just like that.  No warning.  No explanation.  Did they think we wouldn’t notice?  Dontcha hate being taken as a fool?  Well, I guess I’ll just take my business to the candy store across the…oh.

Say It Ain’t So! Mark Patrick Leaving The Big Chair?

Just got the sad news, which is “unofficial”, that Mark Patrick is leaving the XM Radio 175 Baseball This Morning Show.  No details were given but I suspect that it might not have been totally amicable on both sides.  According to XM sources, Buck Martinez is still under K and will return to that show and format with some one or more as yet, un-named co-hosts.

My take on the show is thus: In year 1, with Mark Patrick, Buck Martinez and Larry F. Bowa, the show redefined good sports radio.  They had unbelievable rapport and chemistry and weaved in and out of serious and silly with little trouble.  It was as if you were evesdropping in a big league clubhouse when the guys were coming in and getting their coffee and talking about the games of the night before.  It was fantastic radio.  The humor was superb.  The proof that it was great was evident in the fact that EVERYONE that year in baseball, was using the show’s catchphrase “stay hot”.  You heard “stay hot” popping up everywhere.  You KNEW that all of baseball was tuning these guys in every morning–and you loved it.

Year 2 saw Orestes DeStrada substrituted in for Bowa, who left to coach for the Yankees.  DeStrada was chosen most likely for his attributes, unfortunately for the listener, he had absolutely NO sense of humor or appreciation for what they had built the show into, the previous season.  It was a tough listen for that year and a half.  The suits at XM did a lot of damage to a very valuable property by casting DeStrada and then by refusing to rectify their obvious error in doing so.

Year 3 was the same lineup as Year 2, until Orestes was let go or left; they never really made that clear.  What was clear was the spring in Mark and Buck’s step when the decision was made.  Clearly, they were unhappy with the year 2-3 cast.

The decision to stick with just Patrick and Buck was decent.  You were always hoping that they’d find the “magic guy” like Bowa was, but you knew that would be a tall order.  After the debacle of Orestes, you were just happy that they didn’t go plugging just any old baseball fringe-lifer in there in order to have 3 guys.  It worked for the most part and Mark Patrick was again able to do his silly schtick.

The forays into Bill Ripken weren’t real good listens.  Bill Ripken has a sense of humor, but I don’t think it jelled well with Buck and The Big Chair.  They needed to look back to when it was great: with Bowa; and look to recreate that atmosphere, if at all possible.

***

Now that Patrick is gone, we need to complain long and loud and bitterly to XM to do the right thing and give us back The Big Chair.  So here it is.

This is the petition.  Leave a comment below and leave a short message and when it hits 500 or 1000, we’ll pass it along to XM.  Whattayasay?

The phone number for XM 175 is 866-MLB-ONXM.

Beyond that, this is the email address for XM radio comments.

Listnercare@xmradio