Babe Ruth In The Papers

Click here to open the story in the Washington Post in a new window. You may have to register a username and password but it is not a big deal.

This is the photo that is currently on the front page of the Washington Post’s Sunday Metro section:

Before I go any further, let me make sure that I take time to thank the staff at the Gaylord National Hotel inWashington, DC for their tremendous professionalism and attention to every detail. These people are the standard for their industry. I have, in all honesty, never seen such elan in my life. It was a real treat. With the hotel slated to open in a few days, you could ride on the energy of these folks as they readied their jewel of a hotel.

I would also like to thank Michael Hudson of Gaylord Hotels. He is a throwback to a more civil time in America and in business. He is a true gentleman and a visionary in his field. You don’t run into too many people like him and it was my good fortune to have done so. Thanks Michael, for everything.

This is a shot someone took for me with my camera during the installation.

The Babe Ruth statue is now permanently on display at the Gaylord National Hotel & Resort in Washington, DC at the new National Harbor area.

I went down there on Tuesday and stayed until Thursday and The Babe was installed and well received. The Washington Post came by and did a story on the hotel opening and included a fair amount of interest on the statue. I was not sure how much would run on the statue but I was pleased to have folks in Washington DC call and tell me the good news.

The full story of the statue and everything surrounding it is on the Birrerart.com website:

Click here to open the Birrerart.com website up in a new window

Other things that were noteworthy while I was down there was the fact that the Nationals has declared the sportsbar in the Gaylord as the official sportsbar of the team. Because of this, they had sent over the last home plate used at RFK stadium so it could be permanently installed at the entrance to the sportsbar. Here are a few shots of that and the Washington Post getting their story at the time:

That’s Michael Hudson, Director of Brands at Gaylord Hotels, with homeplate from RFK Stadium.

And here is the laying ceremony while the PR folks take photos.

***
The Gaylord National Hotel is so immense that it is difficult to photograph it all in one frame. The atrium that overlooks the Potomac River and Old Alexandria, Virginia, on the opposite bank, is 18 stories high. There is a village of little shops and fountains and trees and restaurants all inside the enclosure. It is so big that you mostly aren’t aware that you are inside.

Here is a view of the upper part of the atrium. These gaslights are 20 feet high. The scale is just hard to fathom.

On the 24th floor, there is a state of the art nightclub and one of the unique features is, believe it or not, the men’s room. Here are the fixtures and the view is outrageous. The Washington Monument can be seen while you are, well…ahem, you know. It’s just one of a myriad of details that make this hotel one of the most amazing in the world.

The Greatest Single Inning of Baseball

Just finished The Glory Of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. Probably my 3rd reading in 20 years or so. I’m glad I hung on to it.

How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Patented

I’m pretty sure that a lot of people have played “soccer-golf”. Yea, and, apparently, we owe this guy money now~

Actually, this is a real patent from the us patent office website. It’s fascinating reading, as you can see. What I don’t get it this: Patents cost a fair amount of money, no? A few thousand bucks? Why patent a schoolyard game? How are you ever going to “enforce” or generate revenue from this? Don’t people do this with Frisbees too? Does this guy hold that patent as well? Did he invent it? Or just lay out the cash to patent it? Too many questions…This reminds me of the time my wife talked me out of patenting Hopscotch.

United States Patent	6,200,234
Hannon	March 13, 2001

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Portable soccer golf game AbstractA portable soccer golf game in which the players arrange a course comprising a plurality of independent and successive stations each defined by a starting location and a goal location according to the available space and their particular skill level. The game is played by placing goals at the various goal locations, whereby a player kicks a soccer ball from the designated starting location along any desired path toward the given goal location with the intent of getting the ball in the goal. The player with the fewest number of kicks to complete the course is the winner.

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Inventors:	Hannon; Robert (Benton Harbor, MI)
Appl. No.:	09/396,601
Filed:	September 15, 1999

Detail Oriented Stadium Meister

Click here to open the site in a new window

http://www.majorleaguemodels.com/about.asp

This is something interesting I found while looking for the little plaster model of Yankee Stadium for 93-year-old-Max’s grandson. This man builds huge, tabletop scale models of old ballparks from scratch. You know, the exacto knife and the balsa wood and a thousand other things. I can relate to this man because of what I do with the wood products and all and will even admit to having built a cardboard model Shea Stadium in 1976 that was pretty darned good.

I love this kind of wacky, I’m-going-to-build-this-thing-in-my-cellar-and-sell-it-for-150k attitude. Take 5 minutes and visit the guy’s site. Look at the original wooden 1888 Polo Grounds model and see how baseball was just after the Civil War. It’s amazing work.

It also points out that I need to do better on my website. But now, we’re 7 minutes from the kickoff of Liverpool-Chelsea. The first league encounter of the year was way back in August, on the day we had our boy christened. I left for the church at half up 1-0 only to come home and find out that the ref called a silly PK and GIFTED the point to Chelsea. So strange was the call, that the next day, the ref PUBLICLY stated that he was wrong to point at the spot! I’ve never heard of such a thing but when taking points from the Reds, the refs have done some funny things. I think it’s because they all grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s when Liverpool won every darned thing and I think there is some lingering resentment. Kind of like if I worked the plate at a Yankee game.

To give you an idea of how big these things get (he does different scales), take a look at the Old Comiskey Park. Old Comiskey is my favorite of the 38 ballparks I’ve been to. It was a real timewarp to go there and the place just felt right. They say that Jimmy Foxx hit two homers completely over the roof in left between the two light towers. Double-X was the best hitter no one’s ever heard of.

If the first 10 minutes of Liverpool Chelsea are any indicator, then Chelsea will get the points. They seem a whole gear faster than Liverpool and more confident and more creative. Liverpool look slow and I think it’s only a matter of time. Chelsea’s defense is so fast and shuts everything down so tightly, that I don’t see Kuyt and Crouchy cracking it. What we need is the pace of Fernando Torres.

Well, at least ManU lost their derby to City today. No points for Alex. That’s what you get for ripping your boss, Sir. With United coming away with none…if Chelsea could be beaten…oh stop dreaming. Wake up!  And I have to say: After watching only 25 minutes: Dirk Kuyt shouldn’t be in the first team.  Really.  He looks slow and lost.  Zero confidence.  And his play on the right is atrocious.  He can’t beat his man deep and he can’t do anything on the cut inside–every posession that reaches him, goes awry.  Perhaps he can be productive in the middle, but Crouchy is there now.  Play another midfielder and let them go forward.  Kuyt should come off.  Caragher has more mojo going up the right wing than this guy.  Oy.  Rafa.  Help. (Of course Kuyt till make an a** of me and score the winner but I’ll take it and eat my words if that is so).

Antique Roadshow Appraisals

I love Phil Mushnick. This guy gets it like no other. I’ve read every word he’s written for a decade or more. No one is more on top of the ways that sports and television is hurting our society and our kids. He’s so right about so many things that it was with some surprise that I read this piece in the Sunday paper and just couldn’t believe how wrong he could get it. Because he reads and answers (most times) his email, I shot him the email you see below.

Click here to open a new window to Phil Mushnick’s column on Antiques Roadshow and the Unitas Jacket

Click here to open a new window to UK Roadshow

Click here to open a new window to Roadshow’s site

Mr. M–

It has finally happened! After years of agreeing with you, I totally disagree with a column. The Roadshow column. You were not close to being fair. Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

Roadshow is one of the few places on TV today where there is no crotch-material; the kind of material that you rightly point out is rampant on TV. Not only that, but you actually LEARN things on Roadshow and now how many shows can you say THAT about? So for that alone, I’m giving them a wide berth. You didn’t.

The show has experts in their field doing the appraisals. That’s what these people do for a living and it is big business. You undercut all of them in one shot and really only gave the Unitas jacket as an example–even though you didn’t follow up on it. You cited the fact that you never see the appraiser offer to buy the item from the layman. Did it occur to you that that may be borderline unethical? And does the fact that you don’t see it in the final edit mean that it can not happen? I’ve no doubt that the appraisers are passing out cards like crazy and doing some business, but it would be gauche to show it that way.

Many times the appraisers are giving a value for insurance. You didn’t do your homework as there are three different numbers you can put on any antique: Insurance value or replacement value, which is typically market value. Auction value, which is more like wholesale because it is net of the hammer premium and seller’s premium. Also, an antique dealer would sell something for retail value, which is 30 to 100% over cost, as they have overhead.

When you go to an auction or follow auctions, you’ll see in the catalog, a minimum bid and a range. The low number, or minimum, is the number where bidding will begin at. If there is no interest, the auctioneer will oftentimes drop below that figure to get the bidding started. If there is no interest at that lower figure, he may withdraw it to protect his consigner.

The range is the proffessioanl estimate of the auctioneer as to where he thinks that hammer price will fall. After looking at this in the glass realm for years and years, I’ve found that one third of the items land in this range; one third above it and one third below it or withdrawn. There’s no way to tell. The batting average of a lifetime expert, is STILL only .333.

Now you say that sports memorabilia is lousy with bad actors and sports stars like Pete Rose who flood their own market with product and depress the demand for their products–and you’re right. It is all so true. But Johnny Unitas is in rarified air as a footballer. He’s a figure of Yogi/Musial type stature at least. And no matter how many things he signs to depress the signature market, he probably only had one of these jackets and it’s a highly personal, life-used item perhaps. So it is possible that in the right room, on a given day, it could be bid up to that figure. And more importantly, as a professional, that appraiser is willing to put that in writing so that the item can be scheduled on home owner’s insurance at that replacement figure. It’s not an exact science.

Do the figures they talk about on that show seem too good to be true? Sure. I get it. But you have to do more homework before ripping that guy and certainly the show. That show is one of the sanest, calmest and learned shows on TV. History, culture, craftsmanship, artistry, engineering and audience participation and learing! Geez, Mushnick, whattayawant!!??

–Fog

Is it THAT bad?

Mrs. Pinetar hates the 1903 Gunner’s Coat.  Just hates it.  And I have found that it elicits strong comments both good and bad.  Not only that, but men seem to like it and women seem to mock it.  Just the other day, one of the nurse managers asked me, “…what’s up with the ZZ Top coat?”  The photo doesn’t render the color properly; it runs a lot more yellow than it looks.  But it’s a nice old-timey canvas that already looks a bit seasoned.  What’s not to like?  Help me out here.

***

McBean; I may not be going to LA and now it looks dead.  I would have needed to rope someone into going and that isn’t looking likely.  Now I find that it is more and more likely that I would go to Orlando myself in July with a kids baseball team in a tournament.  It’s not a done deal but likely.  So now, as anti-Disney as I am, I am facing up to the fact that I might be there nevertheless.

***

One last item on the steroids thing.  No one is talking of the corollary to the story and that is the owners complicity in this.  They knew and LOVED the homers flying out at softball rates.  They didn’t care if a guy’s liver exploded.  Oh, they care now, but only because they are worried about Congress and that anti-trust exemption that makes it all go.

During the roid era, they livened the ball several times.  I do not, for the life of me, understand why that is so hard to prove.  You drop the balls from a known height, say 30 feet.  And you record how high up they bounce.  This was done in 1942 by baseball to determine that the new synthetic rubber (the Japanese stopped the rubber trade to USA for war) was not as resilient as real rubber.  In 1942, the offense was down 25% and it hurt them at the gate.

They used the simple drop test on a batch of 1941 balls and the new ones and made a quick determination that led to the official livening of the ball back up to pre-war standards.  If they could do this simple thing 70 years ago, why aren’t they doing it every year?

If they did, I think they’d have “caught” MLB livening up the ball in 1987 for sure and a few times in the 1990’s to fuel the McGuire/Sosa/Bonds ridiculous homer tears.

My point is (1) The owners knew and contributed to it to enhance it and (2) we’re dopes because we could have easily busted them on the ball end of it.

–ofg 

Washington: First In War, First In Peace…ahead of the Wilpons

Since we were looking at the new parks that will be built in the next 5 years: Mets, Yanks, Twins, Oakland A’s, Tampa Bay Rays, Washington. In Washington’s case, they are open in April and here it is. It has the split upper deck that works so well in the newest yards like Philly and St. Louis but something about the joint leaves me thinking, “this is it?”

I mean, it’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but it lacks some character or defining attribute. My first reaction was, “why don’t they point it at the Potomac?”, but I know the answer to that. Major League diamonds are designed to be oriented so that the sun sets over the 3rd base stands. That’s because way, way back when, it was thought that there were fewer lefties and thus there’d be fewer fly balls to RF than LF. (Lefties are 10% of the population). The “Sun Field” is Right Field just about everywhere (except in domes). Even Babe Ruth was moved out of the sun field to protect his hung over assets.

Click here to open a graph of ballpark orientations in a new window

So if you have this plot of land on the banks of the Potomac, and you want to point the park AT the Potomac, you’d have to pretty much face it away from the setting sun, and they can’t do that. This is the same deal in Cincinnati, where they aim the park at the Ohio River and not the downtown skyline. ***

When you talk about orientation, you have to look at Shea. The wind at Shea is cold and blows very hard. If you go to a night game at Shea, even in the Summer, bring a jacket or a couple of sweatshirts because Shea is on a bay and it gets windy and cold. The wind blows from top to bottom in this diagram. I sat in the top row of the upper deck for the Beltran-homer-off-the-scoreboard game against Weaver in the 2006 playoffs (It was Game 2 on the ticket, but since Game 1 was a rainout, it was Game 1). The top row of Shea in late October, on the windy 3rd base side is un-f****n-believably cold and windy. I was sick for weeks after that game. With the little roof over our head and the grate behind us in that top row there, it was like we were in a big, giant harmonica.

So the new Mets yard is pointed more or less AT the wind. And the left field stands jut out and probably block some of it down the left field line but the center and right center areas are, I predict, NOT going to be kind to power hitters on these nights. Day game (there are a few) and you’re fine. Night game early, and you’re fine. 6th inning on 10pm+ and balls will not carry to Right and Right Center. And unless you put this thing in a wind tunnel like Mythbusters, I wouldn’t want to bet that it is good for right handers, either.

This stuff doesn’t stop the Mets brass (Wilpons and marketing people) from getting all lathered up that, [drumroll] “…It looks like Ebbet’s Field from the front”. Everyone: “ooh, ahh”. That’s it. The rest of it isn’t very noteworthy. But it looks like Ebbet’s Field from one angle and that’s why we’re all supposed to praise it. The Wilpons grew up in Brooklyn and Fred played ball with a young Koufax (really, not the made up Larry King story where Koufax claims he never met Larry King), so naturally, the Ebbet’s Field look is the big deal.

It’s a nice, new modern (expensive) ballpark that looks perhaps a bit like Coors in mirror image but it’s IN A PARKING LOT IN QUEENS OUT BY THE AIRPORT people! It’s a dump out there. Willet’s Point is a dump. That part of Queens is a dump. The planes are booming over head and it will never be ANYwhere you want to spend time after a game, ah-la the shangri-la of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. SUCKERS~! Now all bow to the Wilpons; Fred knew Koufax.

***

The last three shots are the New Yankee Stadium or Death Star, home of Hankenstein. Like all the others, it will be new and have all the bells, but it is a newer version of a stadium which is, itself, a newer version of a stadium in which guys like Ruth and Muesel abused lesser teams. The Yankees problem here is that they have to stay true to the old design, more or less, and so, they aren’t really free to do anything else. The park is oriented the same way and is just a block north. Pretty ho hum and as a building full of Yankee fans, isn’t a place I’d like to spend a lot of time anyhow. Yankee fans: The Haarlem Globetrotter fans of baseball.”…you better plug him again, Doc, just to make sure…”

Wooden Babe Ruth: The Hat Is Wood Too

Here he is on painting day (I’m sure he must have felt like this some days if the legends are true). A long day with the airbrush and things still aren’t right (to me). The eyes, of course, are not in yet. The eyeball paint, weighing perhaps a tenth of a gram on a 250 lb statue, is the  single most important thing on of all.

Not happy, probably horrified, really. It’s THIS late? And I have only done…? Before anyone asks: the hat is all basswood. Even the brim.  And any sheen you see will be sprayed with a window froster.  The top model guys online all fight about what is the best flattener out there on the market.  Hobby lines from Testors (Dullcoat) and Floquil (Figure flat) are debated endlessly (not kidding!), but I bought a spray can of window froster and it blows the rest away.  Fogs em.  No more Floquill for me.  And the beauty of it is it is half the price, maybe less.  Remember that all of these paints go on semi or satin and people’s skin, and certainly cloth is flatter than that.  It’s one of the last things I do however.  The eyes are also not right.  The balls are too small and there is no makeup in there.  That’s right, you use women’s makeup to darken the edges and corners of the eyes.  Adds 75% to the realism.  Look in the mirror: are your eyes a blinding white?  Not really.

George Herman, from the side. 3 views. A good looking guy? We’re getting there.

League Within A League

Glad to hear that major league baseball’s annual winter meetings (Dec 3-6) will be held at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, TN

After hearing that, I half wished that Babe were done and we could truck him out there and display him as a temporary exhibit in Nashville, before putting him in his permanent home in the Gaylord National On The Potomac, in Washington DC.

Various things that have come up recently:

The Discovery Channel’s Mount Everest show - History Channel and Discovery have really slipped. There are no more WWII footage shows. It’s all human combat and Dirty Jobs and UFO’s and Ghosts and nonsense. If I see one more show on bootleggers or Bonnie and Clyde I’ll scream. WHEN, as a society, are we going to stop glorifying a**h***s who robbed banks and shot up people who got in their way? What suckers we all are. This stuff gets ratings and sells books and newspapers or we would not keep seeing it. The Wild West stuff is just as bad. We just heap glory on, and romanticize these illiterates who played with guns. Great lesson for the kids. ***

The Everest show is one of the ones I will watch these days. It is year 2 for this one and there is a guy who has come back. He was very problematic for the expedition last year and almost got himself and a sherpa killed by being insubordinate. So of course he’s back. And I’m thinking that there’s no way Russell, the organizer, would ever take this guy back but then it dawns on me that the producers of the show probably paid for this guy to return and made it a condition of year 2. He’s the big antagonist. Otherwise, it’s pretty vanilla. Just goes to show you that 99% of what you see on TV is hooey. Maybe more.

The whole Everest game is creepy really when you look at it. The “climbers” pay a huge sum to have everything arranged so that they just turn up and climb. They go up with sherpas who will bail them out if they get into trouble and who also, schlep a lot of the food and Oxygen up to the camps so that they can make their run. All the climbing is on fixed ropes that are in place before any paying customer goes up. Are they really climbing? What ARE they doing? They are risking their health to bag the big peak but it’s all very “arranged”. And they say the climb is not technically difficult but is just so absurdly high and remote that it is more of an endurance/weather gamble than a climb. I think 11 people died last season doing the “climb”.

One guy was trying a double traverse. He wanted to be the first. That’s up and over and then back up and back over. He was with Purbah, a superman of a sherpa who has 14 summits of Everest under his belt. This guy did the first up and over with Purbah and then retired from moutaineering. He admitted that he realized that he wasn’t fit to shine Purbah’s crampons and to go back over the mountain and try and claim to be the first “double traverser” would be a joke because the guy with him, Purbah, could whip his butt in anything climbing, anytime. So here’s a guy who does actually “get” the absurdity of some of it, but only after he’s actually been in it up to his eyeballs. Strange world. ***

Capn Crunch - I bought the Crunchberry version recently and realize that they have added 3 other colors to the crunch berries. There is almost no original Capn Crunch in there. It’s all crunchberries. And they are dyed with some horrible green and blue food dye that I think, in large enough quantities, could actually kill you. I suggest to General Mills a spinoff cereal of all crunchberries, called: “Poison Cruchberries”; you’re almost there now. ***

Why would ANY Mets fan listen to Mike Francesa? That’s my question. His hatred and disdain for all things Mets just permeates all of his pompous comments. He’s not even good at hiding it. It’s an insult to your intelligence. Why does he feel so threatened? Why do Yankee fans seem to have a higher incidence of that “pile-on” nastiness? Their money has bought them 1 in about every 4.5 world champeenships and yet STILL they are insecure. ***

Only 5 or 6 teams can afford Santana - I keep reading & hearing that the only teams that can afford Santana and Tori Hunter and really any big Free Agents these days are the Mets/Yanks/Boston/Cubs/Dodgers and Angels. It’s becoming more and more clear to thinking fans that there are 2 leagues in MLB: those 6 clubs and the rest of the miserable, poor teams. I don’t want to hear that the Royals pocket the lousy 10 million in revenue share which never made any sense to me as the Yanks are paying their squad 220 million. I also don’t want to hear that more recently, each year a different team wins it. I ain’t buying it, no sir. No thanks. Baseball has a major problem with that IMO and really should just get it over with and spin off the rich clubs into their own “super-major-league” and stop blowing smoke up the fans behinds. It won’t happen because most fans are easily fooled or just all too willing to go head first into major, lifelong denial (See Yankees fans).

There’s plenty of room in this “space”, as they say in business, for a 3rd major circuit. I have half a mind to devote the rest of my life to putting it together. Not since 1959 has there been a credible threat of a 3rd major league circuit (Branch Rickey and Bill Shea’s “Continental League”). There is plenty of room for more teams. New York alone could support 5 or 6 teams but the Mets and Yanks don’t want ANY part of that noise. If I were starting up a league, I’d structure it from the ground up for “family-affordability”. No A-Rods making 30 million a year because if you have them, you need to charge me 100 per ticket and then I can’t afford to take my kids. And of course, if you don’t pay, the big players don’t play, and then they say you’re a “minor” league, but no matter, if the regular guy can take his family and it seems major enough, I think it could succeed. Just imagine: no long term contracts! Everyone paid on a formula for their actual production in the season just passed. Player movement could be handled in lottery form or with ordinals. It’s doable. I can dream, can’t I?

Did you know that Wrigley Field was built for the Federal League? That was a 2 year circuit that gave the NL-AL monopoly a good run in 1914-1915. There was an attempt in 1946 called the Mexican League and it folded but not before raiding a few players. The Continental League scared the NL and AL so much that New York (Mets) and Houston were granted expansion franchises. There is strong precedent. The AL, after all, is called “The Junior Circuit” because it was started from scratch in 1900 as a competitor to the National League. The NL didn’t take them seriously and even played the bad joke on them of making them wait outside their meeting and then slipping out the side door. In about 2 years, they were not laughing anymore. By 1903, the Boston Pilgrims were beating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first true Woil Serious. In 1904, John J. McGraw of the NY Giants refused to play the AL champs as he felt that it was beneath the National League’s dignity. He played the A’s in 1905 however, in one of the best series ever. Every game was a shutout by a Hall of Famer. Christy Mathewson pitched 3 shutouts. Iron Man Joe McGinnity, the other. Plank or Bender or Waddell may have tossed one for the A’s. 1905. The AL was there to stay. ***

The aoogah horn that I installed on my car has stopped working.  Need to get that fixed.  Aoogah horn: Not optional.