Last Call for Alfred Manuel (Billy) Martin

About 150 feet from Babe Ruth’s grave is another Yankee who liked a beverage now and then: Alfred Manuel Martin, or, as he is known, Billy. I did not know that his real name was Alfred Manuel. So I learned something.

 

 

As with Babe’s grave, there were many, odd, “left” items there. I actually expected marshmallows or a whiskey bottle or two but I have to admit that there were none. I suppose that if I were Dan Rather or CNN I’d have just planted them and taken my pictures, but I had “journalistic integrity” [laughter]. The towel that commemorated Jack Kaiser’s Stadium Dedication was the oddest. I have NO IDEA what significance it had to Billy. Just an ordinary bar rag? Hmm… possibly.

 

 

As with the Maharishi of Mash, they left the odd baseball cards on the grave. Why Juan Pierre? Why Edwin Encarncion? And, as with Ruth, you see the rocks and religious icons left. That one looks to me like ancient Babylonian.

 

 

This one was great. This person obviously had hit both Ruth’s grave and Martin’s, because they left the same Hall of Fame induction stub on each.  Ruth’s had the ball point pen inscription that he was better than Hank Aaron.  Martin’s says, “…you were one of the best”.  Well if that ain’t damning with faint praise.  “One” of the best.  And again with the baseball cards: What is with Julian Tavarez?  People do funny things.  Like watch and enjoy “The Bronx is Burning”.  Read Sparky’s book.  Skip the hokey drama.  –fog

 

Beatles on Tonight Show, Johnny Carson, Joe Garagiola

There was a post recently and someone asked about the Beatles Lennon/McCartney appearance on The Tonight Show while Joe Garagiola was the guest host. I have never seen the bit and would guess that it doesn’t exist or it would have turned up somehow, somewhere. I seem to recall that much of the early Carson 1960’s era shows were not saved. That stuff always amazed me but I guess it was considered too expensive. You can buy every show Jack Benny ever did from 1938 to 1960 on ebay for about 10 dollars. Go figure.

But this had come up and I wrote the original post from memory and the memory was reading a book by Craig Tennis called “Johnny Tonight”, published in 1980. I was at my parent’s house last night and I found the book in a desk and opened it right to the Beatles page. Weird. So since I was photographing old family photo albums to digitize the shots, I took shots of the story from Tennis’ book. His words:

 

 

Louis Armstrong: Great. Posada? Lucky.

This is an interesting thread from Bugs and Cranks that I happen to agree with: Jorge Posada’s batting average on balls in play (or BABIP) in the last three years has been .312, .294., and .302. This year? .406. This stat says that basically, he’s lucky right now.

Is he exhibiting better plate discipline? No, his walk to strikeout ratio, 0.63, is in line with his career average, 0.66. Is he hitting more flyballs? No, his groundball to flyball ratio, 1.21, is a tick off his career average (1.20). So what IS he doing differently? Nothing. Balls are falling in freakishly more often this year than in the past.

Prediction: Posada’s average comes down with a vengeance. Now we’re deep into the year so it would be hard to offset all the early going, so he’ll have himself a great year for a 36 year old catcher with a career .275 average. And, of course, he hit .675 with 3 HR’s and a clutch of 2B’s to destroy my fantasy team this week, so he’s got that going for him.

***

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I didn’t do a real good job on the Louis Armstrong Hot Five post because I was hot and tired. Luis Castillo left the game at Wrigley Field in Chicago yesterday with “heat exhaustion”? Pulease, Looey, come on up in my attic and see how you like the heat. In fact, yesterday, with the fuse pulled so I could rewire things, the attic fan was out of action and it was inhuman up there.

I’ve been listening to the Hot Five recordings for many years. They are amazing. They are genius. A group of artists, absolutely peaking. It’s brilliancy on top of brilliancy and if you know the history at all, you know that like most genius stuff, at the time it came out, NO ONE else was doing anything of the sort and after it came out EVERYONE else was trying to catch up–and most couldn’t touch it.  Armstrong was 24 when the Hot Five sessions began.

In The Arts or Sports (also an art), there are a few eye-popping, legendary performances that live on and on. Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Series. Williams’ .406 season. The first 4 minute mile. And so on. Most of these things are now word-of-mouth, hearsay, so it’s hard to put yourself right there and understand maybe WHY those things are so special.

But with the Hot Five recordings, you can listen to them all, end to end, over and over. You can hear a guy who is so beyond his peers that it’s a joke. In this case, the hardest thing to imagine is the context of all the other music that came out around the same time. It’s hard to find any of that because it’s long ago just hopelessly dated and virtually unlistenable to modern tastes. You would have to hunt for it. It’s gone. But Louis work is still very much available and very listenable even today. And that is probably the truest test of a real subjective thing, which is, music, and which music is “good” or “great”.

People throw around that term too loosely for it to have any meaning anymore. A lot of words got written since Shakespeare’s time but very few of them are still being read. I would think that very little of the music that the Baby Boomers grew up listening to will be found in 80 years time anywhere other than the Library of Congress archives. Perhaps the Beatles will, but not all of their stuff by any means. The Rolling Stones? The Who? Led Zeppelin? Probably all their stuff will be 100% forgotten and dead by that time. You get my point. But in another 80 years time, in 2087, there will STILL be folks listening to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and it will still be as amazing as it was in 1926.

Now it’s “Dr.” Sheffield?

I knew it. I predicted it. Today, as predicted, people are bending over backwards to characterize Sheffield’s remarks as anything other than what they are: racist hate speech. They are being spun and reworked on various media outlets. On XM radio, both last night and this morning, I heard these disgusting racist views being turned into a veritable doctoral dissertation on baseball economics.

Really? I didn’t know that Sheffield was that deep. I didn’t know that he cared so. Because when I read the remarks, I got the distinct impression that I was hearing the raw anger of a bigot. But now I find out that I’m wrong. Gary was misunderstood. I’m told the situation he was remarking about is “complex”.

He was commenting on the economics of baseball player development. Yea, apparently, it’s cheaper to “develop” players in the West Indies than in the American inner cities. And this pains Dr. Sheffield.  Apparently he’s just “frustrated”. This twisted, second-guess, morning after logic says that racially insensitive Major League teams would rather “develop players” (whatever that means) overseas than “develop” them here in the USA, and while that doesn’t hurt the numbers of whites in the game, it somehow hurts AOAD. Ok, sure. Got it. And with that line of reasoning, does anyone care to comment that while 13.3% of America is AOAD, the NFL and NBA are way north of 60% AOAD? I guess Professor Sheffield will be coming out strong any day now, calling that “reverse racism”?

It’s funny, because I don’t see any of these deep socio-economic thoughts in his comments.  But like a very Liberal judge “finding” things in the US Constitution that no one else can see or has ever seen, people keep “finding” these nuggets in the text while I can’t for the life of me, see them.

There’s an elephant in the room and he might just as well be wearing a white sheet and a pointy hat. But no one will go NEAR it. That’s a big problem for baseball and for America. This garbage has to stop. It’s NOT OK. This guy needs to apologize fully as well as any print or broadcast “journalist” types who are blowing smoke up our collective bippy on this item.

I don’t recall anyone bending over backwards for John Rocker or Jimmy the Greek or Al Campanis. Those situations weren’t viewed as “complex”. It was real simple. Those people were eviscerated and hounded out of jobs and careers overnight. No explanations. No second chances. They apologized, in some cases groveled. They apologized over and over and over and over, but it was NEVER enough. The Liberal media and disingenuous Liberals everywhere needed a scalp and they would stop at nothing until they got it. And you may like that brand of harsh, Old West justice. That’s great.  Good for you. But then it should work both ways, no? And it CLEARLY doesn’t work both ways. And that’s wrong.

Ask yourself this question: If you made comments of this ilk, would you still have a job today? Would you have, at least, been called down to Human Resources for “further review”? Be honest.

One last thought: Why is it so important to your politics; your world view— that some people are allowed to talk like this and others are not? What greater good flows from that exactly? –fog

Wake Me When It’s Over

Well the Yanks have dodged a bullet as they got a nice game out of the kid and the Mets and Red Sox both played lackluster games. So now they’re on a modest 2-game winning streak and Torre and Cashman are safe for now. The Sunday night game was a big letdown. If you saw Reyes fan on the bounced curveball in the home first, then you could have turned it off right there. Foreshadowing.

I told people I would do this, so here I go:

The professor would build a studio out of a coconut

I have a great idea for a reality television show that is a sure fire hit if done correctly.  I’m throwing it out to the readers: How  do you go about pursuing your idea when you know almost zip about the biz?  Any thoughts on that one? –fog

Monty Hall Not Suing Deal Or No Deal

And as long as we’re calling out “American Idol”, let’s not stop there. The new hit show, “Deal or No Deal”, is really just a rehash of the Monty Hall classic, “Let’s Make A Deal”. They offer a chance at an unknown prize and then try to buy you out of it for some cash. Been there, done that. And re: Howie Mandel, may I paraphrase Sen Lloyd Benston (D): “Howie, you are no Monty Hall…”

Monty Hall was from Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada for you USA-educated folks). I did not know that. Monty AND Shatner…Canadians…wow.

Let’s Make a Deal was a quintessential 1970’s game show. I was always amazed at the stuff that the people could produce, on the spot, for Monty’s hundred dollar bills. I mean, there was no predicting it: hairdryers, radishes, crescent wrenches, pickles, lug nuts…these people, dressed in costumes would come up with it.

Remember the “zonks”? The bad prizes? Jay on a donkey? Who was Jay, anyway? And remember Carol Marol? She would sweep her arm in the air, just so, over the TV Set or Dishwasher…oooh.

Other 1970’s game shows? Well, Monty’s “other” show, “Split-Second” was pretty big. Match Game with Gene Rayburn (why would you NOT pick Richard Dawson to answer? Ever?), Joker’s wild, Concentration, Family Feud, Price is Right, Newlywed Game, Hollywood Squares.

And right now, everyone is humming the bass line to the Matchgame: boom, boom…bu-bu-bu– bu-bu-bu— bu-boom [repeat] and there was a wah-wah guitar in there somewhere. I can still taste the peanur butter and jelley sandwiches after school while watching that. –fog

Here’s the cheesey-looking set of Let’s Make A Deal. There they are: Those sevetnties icons, Door number one, Door number two and Door number three…As a kid, I always picked 3 in my mind.

Click: Here’s a related website that details a mathematical problem based on the 3-door, Monty Hall setup. I looked at it and with my sketchy, 12th grade + 1 yr of business calc ( no trig-whew!) mathematical education, I don’t get it. It should be a 50-50 deal after the first zonk is revealed. [JRV? You're my math idol--what gives with this?]

Gong Show Sues American Idol

American Idol is nothing more than The Gong Show with muscles.  It’s been done before.  They took out a lot of the silly and the MC (Chuck Barris) and the gong of course, but this is a retread.

You know, you felt bad for some of the acts that were shocked that they had been gonged,  but really, was it anything like the abuse they get now from the panel in the postmortem?  Everything is ramped up these days and this is no different.

–fog

*** For the kids out there, a little backgroud on The Gong Show:  ***

The Gong Show was a television variety show/game show spoof that was broadcast from 1976 until 1980. It was hosted by Chuck Barris.

Amateur performers would do vaudeville-like acts, while a panel of celebrity guests serving as the judges (among the most frequent of which were Jaye P. Morgan and Jamie Farr) would grade them. If any panel member wanted to end the act immediately, they could hit the gong and that was the end. 

If the act survived without being gonged, they were scored by the judges and the winning contestant earned a prize of $516.32.

Chuck Barris (an established game show producer), who was not a good game show host, had a nervous habit of clapping his hands together while speaking. This developed into a running gag during the show, as the audience members clapped their hands in unison with Barris.

The show had certain characters who appeared as regular performers, such as the Unknown Comic (Murray Langston–who told bad jokes while wearing a paper bag over his head) and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine (a middle-aged AOAD with a green warm-up suit who danced while members of the crew threw stuff at him).

Among the many talents that appeared on the show was an unknown Paul Reubens (later known as “Pee-Wee Herman”).

In 1980, a Gong Show movie was produced–considered to be among the worst ever made.