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.

Taped in front of a live audience

Taping and striping goes on and on. And on. And then touching up

The question comes up: Why do you keep the tape? Why not throw it out? Well, a couple of reasons. One, it is simply easier to unstick it from your hands if you can just pass it over the other tape and pull away. Functional. Two, it is a nice visual cue that I have done some work when I see all the tape. Psychological.

I’m finally (yesterday) at the point where I’m at peace with the final statue. Is it done? No. But I no longer see more negative things (details that annoy me) than the overall positive impact. Make sense? There’s a point where the piece is 99% unchanging and you either accept it or get mad every time you look at it because, in the words of Tommy LaSorda, you “…swam 4 miles and drowned a yard offshore…” I’m not a big LaSorda fan, but I like the visual. It means you did a lot of work but quit right at the very finish and ruined it all. But you didn’t need me to tell you that.

***
I always thought it would be cool to build my own pool table. I’m not doing it, mind you. I don’t have the (1) space (2) time (3) money etc. But you think about it. And then you think, “…if I’m building it, I’m not limited to traditional shapes.” Why not round? What would that be like…hmm. Then you wonder, “Where would the pockets go?” Or would it be a pocketless billiard table (the way the game was originally invented, where points are scored for contact between cue and object ball and not sinking them in pockets)

Then I found this guy [Click here to launch the math-pool-guy in a new window]

I stole a few of his animated gifs here. My high school algebra teacher would be all over this…

Overstimulation

I really like the Clarinet (Bassinet) that Mrs. Pinetar bought (or was given) for the Tomster. It has these little controls on the side and it will play a little music (something they played at our wedding but I didn’t know that-was told) and it has a little “activity center” for Tommy’s “activity time”.

Anyway, it has these bears that hang on a little dry-cleaning rack and you press a button and the bears spin around over Tommy.

But you have to swing it into position first.

 So I’m admiring the thing and we put him down and I swing the thing into position and Mrs. Pinetar says, “…Wait! You can’t do that yet.”

“Why?”, I say.

“You’ll overstimulate him. It’s too much for him”, She replied.

“Oh”, I said.

How cute is it, that the three little flying stuffed bears will overstimulate him?

***

This clarinet has one other thing that I really, really love. The vibration button. You can even adjust the frequency (although not as low as I would like, but I’ll take it). It is like Tommy is at the belly of a big cat that is purring. It’s very soothing and pacifying.

There is some newer research that indicates that the vibrations that cats produce is very, very healing and beneficial to the cats themselves. They actually have been shown to HEAL faster from wounds for purring. This is verifiable data, not the global warming hooey that you see on CNN.

I went through a phase a few years ago where I read anything I could get my hands on re ‘after death experiences’ or, NDE (Near Death Experiences). They have gone on for all history but are more prevalent now due to advancing medical technology (the same amazing medical discovery and technology that Al Gore and Hillary say isn’t fair and needs to be curtailed by government intervention). What’s even more true today is that with medical tech being what it is, people are simply more inclined to entertain the POSSIBILITY that these folks come by some information that they really don’t or shouldn’t have access to, if you discount the “experience”.

The books are fascinating reading and they make you think plenty, especially about some of our downright silly religious customs and institutionalized hokum. The book, “Embraced by the Light” by Betty J. Eadie, is by far, the best book I’ve ever read in my life. I’ve read it over 10 times and it has influenced me far more than any other book, no question. There is a bookend book to it that is also amazing: “Beyond the Darkness” by Angie Fenimore. They compliment each other and should be read together, and read in the order listed. They are quite different so don’t assume…

Anyway, in the dozens of books I’ve read on this topic, one of the things that strikes you about these experiences is their diversity. All are different and highly personal. However, there are still many similarities. One is that many of these folks report on the “music” or “vibrations” that run through and permeate EVERYTHING on the spiritual side. Everything vibrates and resonates and all things are in vibrational/musical harmony “over there”. In this other dimension, these vibrations are described as “healing” and “loving” and “containing great intelligence”.

It is interesting that we are finding out that cats’ purring heals wounds. I predict that in the future, more money and effort will be spent looking into the effect of vibrations on living tissue. I don’t think enough is being done but the vibration gizmo on the clarinet is a good start.

***

We had Tommy outside a lot yesterday and like rookie parents, got him a little too warm in his fleece swaddling blanket. But on day 4, the jaundice is at maximun, so I insisted that we get him some light (indirect) to break down that bad old Billy Rueben. I also decided it was time to fly the Bunker Hill flag. You don’t see many outside of New England.

And this morning he was opening his eyes more than usual. I used a no-flash setting and it was dark so don’t worry about his color there. He is looking great. It’s just hard to get him to open the eyes. A lot of the time, he just opens one eye. It’s funny to see him fall off the feeding spout and then get mad. Unfortunately, it’s a family trait to quickly get pretty mad at something very simple in the scheme of things. Oh well.

We are baptizing him at about 1 month. This shocked the church down the street. They grilled my wife about it. That’s how it was done in the old days (25 years ago and before) but now it is wigging them out. Almost any time I have “official dealings” of any sort with a member of the church, I walk away shaking my head. I’m trying.

Since Mrs. Pinetar may not be able to make the baptism class, I will have to go alone. I told Mrs. Pinetar, “…wait until they get a load of me…”

And she basically said, “Don’t get excommunicated again!”

And that would be the second time this year! The odds on excommunication are currently running about 7-1. We’ll see.

***

For the record, Julio Franco is now 1 for 12 with the Atlanta Braves. I’ll say it again: Somewhere out there, there is a golf-course missing a guy. –fog

Proven! MLB Balls Juiced

Years ago, I had written this and submitted it to a couple of magazines. I recently came across it looking for things on some old hard drives I’ve saved. Have a look: –fog

***************

The article that Baseball fears most:
The ball is juiced and it can be proven!

I am tired of hearing that Major League Baseballs are juiced but that we can’t prove it. WRONG! They ARE juiced and we CAN prove it! We can prove it scientifically using the same simple method that Major League Baseball itself devised to determine that 1943 wartime baseballs were 25% less lively than 1942 balls.

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:

Francesa Wrong Again

I have written about it before but today I have to mention it again.  Most people that criticize Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball” are jealous and do NOT understand it.  Case in point.  While Imus is fired, Mike Francesa and Chris Russo have taken his time slot on WFAN in NY.  Today they were talking about the book and the big blowhard himself, Mike Francesa, opines that “Moneyball doesn’t work because all you have to do is look at the playoffs.”

It doesn’t matter to these idiots that RIGHT IN THE BOOK, it talks about how the playoffs are too small of a sample and that none of the principals apply.  It’s basic mathematics!  But to jacka**es like Francesa, who worships a team that spends over 200 million dollars a year on payroll, it’s a failed policy.  Memo to Mike: He takes a small payroll team into the playoffs year after relentless year.  It’s an enormous undertaking.  He has no control over the few games in the playoffs.  Look at the glutton Yankees: They have been eliminated JUST LIKE OAKLAND in 2002 Angels; 2003 Marlins; 2004 Red Sox; 2005 Angles; 2006 Detroit.  So if a 200 million dollar team can be brushed aside all those years I guess Billy Beane is an idiot because his team lose too?  Mike, you’re a disgrace.  WHAT, is your problem with “Moneyball”?  Why does it threaten you so?

Cortez the Killer

I thought of titling this piece: How kids learn. Then I thought of “How liberals teach”. Anyway, this is part of how really bad liberal revisionist history ends up being taken quite seriously. Have a look:

“Cortez The Killer”

Baseball Must Read List

I’ve said it before but in the past 30 years, I’ve read about 150 books on baseball. Most of them in the late 1980’s but a steady clip over the years. The last post with Eagle mentioning Bill Veeck made me think of cobbling together a list of all-time best reads. Here we go:

1) Moneyball - the single most influential book (Ball Four aside) and frankly, if you don’t understand this material, you don’t fully understand what you’re watching. Those that criticize it, don’t understand it.

2) The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence Ritter: Old time players interviewed on their era. Guys like Wahoo Sam Crawford and Goose Goslin. Great, great stuff. A window into Victorian and Edwardian baseball (and times) . Baseball When the Grass Was Real, does this same interview concept with the players of the 1920-1940 range. Also amazing.

3) Ball Four - This book might literally have saved my life when I read and then re-read it while extremely depressed at college many years ago. It seemed that several of the things that Jim Bouton was talking about, were EXACTLY what I was feeling at that time. There’s a lot of social stuff and group dynamics in this book that has NOTHING to do with baseball and you will learn things even if you are not at all, a fan of the game. This book was the first tell-all book from the locker room perspective and it made a 100 most influential books of the 20th century list not too long ago. No joke. It came out in 1970 and was a diary of the 1969 season.

4) Anything by Roger Angel, most notably, “The Summer Game” and “Late Innings”. They say that some catchers make catching look easy. They say that they look like they are “sitting in a rocking chair”. Well Roger Angel makes writing look like sitting in a rocking chair. Just to see how this guy structures paragraphs and sentences, it is worth it. The story telling too. All good. And, it’s BASEBALL!

5) Veeck as in Wreck, by Bill Veeck. Seminal book on the marketing and business of baseball. Great innovative mind on display and the kinds of roadblocks that all forward thinkers encounter. A man truly ahead of his peers and his time. He doesn’t get enough credit for shaping modern sports.

6) The Bronx Zoo by Sparky Lyle. Diary of the 1978 Yankee season. Parts of it will make you laugh out loud when you are all by yourself. A great take on a great era from the eye of the hurricane. Sparky is a funny man. If you like this and can’t get enough of this team and this style, check out Nettles’ book, “Bal|s”. It is as good as the Bronx Zoo but runs over a few years.

7) John McGraw by Charles Alexander. Great era to read about. There are many worthy titles that cover this era but this one for me is special because of John J. McGraw. I don’t think the modern fan understands how big the New York Giants were in the oughts and teens and early twenties. They were the “Yankees” of the day and McGraw was the Giants. His battles with Connie Mack and the Athletics are early baseball.

Ty Cobb by Charles Alexander. Cobb is such a highly functioning psychotic that you have to read an in depth book about this guy. I read this in 1985 when Rose-Cobb mania was sweeping the land and so there may be a newer, better version of Cobb’s story out but read one of them. The man was a razor. A fanatic. Very disliked. He would have been great at whatever he set his mind to–it just happened to be baseball.

9) Pure Baseball - Keith Hernandez. I had to include Mex on the list. Actually, the book isn’t an all-time great but it does tackle a topic that is hard to do well, and it does it well. Hernandez watches two games and takes them apart pitch-by-pitch and you know what? I learned a whole lot more than I thought. If you want to know what counts to look for certain things and most importantly, WHY, then this is for you. Guys like Joe Morgan just repeat the baseball platitudes that you always hear but Hernandez will tell you WHY it is so. For instance, if you peek on location and see the target in, you know it’s a fastball. Why? You never call a hook or slider in. You just don’t. And if you see one in there, it’s a mistake. It will enhance your enjoyment of the game 100% or your money back. You will find yourself tuning in meaningless games and looking for pitch selection or bunt and hit and run counts and just really WATCHING the game.

10) “Bums, an oral history of the Brooklyn Dodgers” I know, I know, “The Boys of Summer” is supposed to be THE Brooklyn Dodger book but to me, isn’t that good. And I think the author is a little to stuck on Jackie Robinson. The real book about the Bums is this one. It is all interview excerpts. The stuff from the MacPhail-Durocher era with Kirby-F***n-Higbe and Hugh Casey and Hemingway is just amazing stuff. You really feel like you know these guys and this zany, Damon Runyon time. Leo Durocher too, merits a book all by himself but there aren’t any, are there? His book “Nice Guys Finish Last” is so sanitized that it’s almost useless. This guy was a character. He was rehearsing the Jack Benny Show and he and Jack decided to play gin rummy. After Benny played four cards, Durocher recited every card in Benny’s hand. Benny says, “HOW do you KNOW?” and Leo says, “easy, if you’re playing it right, which I assume you are”. To that Benny said, “I don’t want to play with this guy!”

Or the time in Spring training, Leo found out that a guy beat several of the Dodgers out of $2000 at the hotel pool table. “Point him out to me”, Durocher said. They did and Leo walked up to him and said, “You are playing me for everything you have on you right now”. The guy said, “ahh, I don’t do that”, but Leo made him and Durocher beat him for $4,000 and gave back the players’ money and said, “That guy was a hustler from New York. I won’t bail you out next time”, and he walked away. He hadn’t picked up a cue in years!

11) “My Turn at Bat” and “Ted Williams” by Leigh Montville - Either one, or both really. I’ve read Montville’s book twice and My Turn at Bat about 4 times all the way through. Williams is just one of those amazing figures that was so single minded that he merits attention. Bigger than life. The anecdotes about this man are just fascinating. The batting titles, the .406 season, the WWII flying and then the jet crash landing that he walked away from in Korea flying with John Glenn. He’s what every kid wants to be. He’s a real life John Wayne.

The story I liked the best is when he came back from Korea and Sox owner Tom Yawkey begged him to go hit a few in the cage and finally he says, “ok” and he just picks up a bat and rips 10 straight balls into the seats, one after another. Everyone in the park is stopped dead, in awe. The batting practice pitcher is turning his head to see where they land and Williams is cursing him, “…just throw the gd ball over!”. After hitting the 10th bomb, his hands are one bloody blister (because they’re soft from not picking up a bat in a year) and he just tosses the bat and walks away. Everyone is thinking, “…did he just DO that?”. I mean, HOW can you not get into that?

And also, as you’re reading the Williams books, and he’s telling you the hitting theories in detail; especially the part where he can SEE the ball squishing flat against the bat on contact (Keith Hernandez also claimed this feat but ONLY when he was super hot–really only a week or two a season).  If you are reading this stuff, you WILL go down to the local batting cage and hit balls with relish.  You HAVE to.  No question.  And it will be the most fun hitting you ever did!   

–fog

A modern day DaVinci : Norm Saunders

Apparently, Wacky’s were painted mostly by

Norm Saunders (1907 -1989)

FROM WakckyPackages.org Bum Chex, along with Choke Wagon, was pulled early and replaced by Windhex, making it one of the toughest titles in a complete series 1 to 16. Bum Chex also has the distinction that it is the only one that artist Norm Saunders actually signed. He slipped his signature in by signing one of the checks, the green one. He was not allowed to sign the works because Topps wanted to keep their artists top secret, so as not to have them stolen by other companies. Norm slipped his intials in various other places, but this is the only one known where he got the full name in.

This is my favorite from series 2: Run Tony. The story goes that Italian Americans looked up from watching The Godfather and complained that this made light of their ethnicity so it was pulled early in the run, thus making it scarce.

I DO recall it being hard to get but I’m not sure if that is the answer. Unless a company’s legal department was sending in a “Cease & Desist” order, they probably wouldn’t have just pulled it.

If you come across this book in a garage sale, buy it! On Amazon, there is one used copy listed at $250.00

Reprint anyone? –fog

What Exit, Liberty?

 

Mrs. Pinetar and I went to Princeton, NJ today just to look around and shop and see what there was to see. It’s a unique and historic American town (and it’s in New Jersey–no “exit” jokes, please~) I liked this marker placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution.