Kluber to the pen, the A's may have a deal, a Cubs prospect may have killed a guy, someone thinks baseball is not gay, Target caves to bigots, The “Revolutionaries," Jimmy Carter and Tina Turner
The entire hit vs error distinction is a weird historical anomaly. In what other sports do we can about reason rather than results? Same issue with SF and SH and, to a lesser degree, IBB. Running back goes to the wrong hole and gets stuffed, QB doesn’t see the safety drop into coverage, the free throw shooter tosses an airball, the hurdler smacks into the barrier ... all uncounted “errors.”
But the ball off the glove homer is pretty consistently called an HR not E at least for the last 40 years. See, eg, Dave Henderson in the 1986 postseason.
I hear you, but ... My very life is an homage to inconsistency! Caring about whether some random 20-35 year old does with a ball being high on that list.
That pitcher damn sure cares about errors and his ERA. Similarly, they care about quality starts. I don't get the "but so what" side of it. Errors matter.
It's consistent with precedence that plays where an outfielder knocks a fly ball over the fence -- almost always after a long run or going backwards -- is scored a home run the same way a ball deep in the SS hole is always scored a hit even if SS bobbles it or makes a bad throw on what should have been an out.
I agree these are bad precedents -- I'd lean toward a double and a two-base error -- but it's why anyone who is serious about evaluating defense doesn't care (much) about errors. Though a minor league SS who makes 50 errors probably has a problem.
Didn't see the play (suddenly no longer get the baseball package and it's driving me crazy). That aside, based upon your explanation it should have been a four base error.
I wanted to get out of my high school graduation because I didn't want to make a speech (valedictorian) but my parents didn't let me. And I did go to my first college graduation. I'm glad I did because seeing how proud my parents were was the best part.
I didn't care much either way about my high school one, but seeing all the kids where graduation was not just the automatic next step in the road going nuts with their families changed my perspective pretty quickly.
The Orioles have been the doormat of the AL East for so long, I thought their success was a fluky year. But I guess it’s time to recognize they’ve actually put together a good team. Hope people in Baltimore recognize it.
They won the most games in the AL from 2012-2016. That wasn't THAT long ago! And the Red Sox have finished in last as many times as the Orioles since 2019.
Marcus Stroman remains at the top of my list of pitchers I wish the Mets had kept. Though let's be honest. If they'd kept him, his spleen would have imploded or something. The Mets are now 0-8 in Great Lakes cities this season. Good thing there's no team in Buffalo.
About three years ago, DC Comics introduced a team of heroes called the Revolutionaries. Maybe DC will sue GWU?
You know how the Washington Nationals have that Presidents' Race?
I would definitely watch a GWU game of anything if they had a Revolutionaries' Race with, say, Che Guevara competing against Fidel Castro and Stalin and Mao and Trotsky and Ho Chi Minh. Too many great possibilities.
To make it more authentic they could give the racers access to weapons, an ice-pick say, to give it a Death Race 2000 ethos.
Does Marx just sit and point out the absurdity of people being forced to compete against each other instead of just taking the prize money from the Nats and dividing it up?
My son's law school alma mater went from Geo Mason Law School to Antonin Scalia School of Law (donation involved) until they realized ASSoL might be pronounced ... well then they went with Antonin Scalia Law School. A rose by any other name and all.
Godspeed, Tina Turner. It really made me happy that she enjoyed another boost recently with new fans thanks to Schitt’s Creek. She might be the best example ever of “the best revenge is living well.“
PS Great job on the Nats recap; 10/10, no notes. I choose to believe my steady oversight was the key. Keep up the good work. (How are we feeling today, Padres fans?)
PPS Your diploma story reminds me of something I have had to confront recently: what to do with my collection of lovingly (and expensively) framed degrees and bar admissions. The combination of advancing age, leaving law practice, and working remotely makes that wall of educational attainment totally superfluous. It’s getting to the point where I am thinking about taking out the degrees and simply donating the frames. Has anyone else done something like this? Any guidance? My kids all have theirs propped up on shelves in the same commemorative plastic folder they were handed at graduation and I think that’s the way to go. I think the only thing that ended up getting framed was my oldest daughter’s; she earned honors as an undergraduate and they were still inscribing her degree, so she was handed a piece of parchment with the words “this document intentionally left blank.“ It now hangs in her bathroom.
i, like you, declined going to my graduation, more so to avoid family drama over allocating the limited # of available tickets. With grandparents, brothers et al at the time - i decided i didn't care enough and they'd mail the diploma home. I do kinda regret it only for the social aspects of not being there w/my friends, but I actually did not care one iota about the ceremony. No regrets on missing that. My wife and her brother graduated from my college so I attended those, so i got to see what I missed - no big deal.
You can actually order those nice padded diploma covers individually. I found that out when years after I lost my high school yearbooks and diploma and collegr diploma to water damage, I got a second BS degree and wanted to put my other BS degree with it. So I contacted my first college and they sent me a new diploma, I bought a separate cover for it, and now they sit neatly on my bookshelf.
I don't pull them out and look at them or anything, but I like knowing they are there and they take up very little physical space. I've never hung anything on the wall except my certification at work and that's because all of the employees have their certifications on one wall. I had nothing to do with that.
No idea what became of my BS and MS diplomas. I had my Professional Engineer license framed, but for the next 30 years it resided in an otherwise empty drawer in my office filing cabinet. I remembered to take it with me when I retired, and it’s now in a cardboard box down in the basement.
My wife and I still have our BS and BA in the covers that were mailed to us after the ceremony. Neither has ever been framed. I think they might even still be in the envelopes they arrived in. They now live in a bankers box on the top shelf of our guest bedroom.
That's where I am; my folks (and then my wife) always had them framed as gifts. It made (some) sense when I was working in an office because that's what people did; now it just seems wasteful. I even offered to swap in my kids' degrees and they were basically "nah - we're good." They are smarter at their age than I was.
I paid for them to frame mine and all that and, like Craig, they shipped them to my parents' house, where they have remained since I graduated in 2012.
I’m confused: bar admissions? I’ve been admitted to a lot of bars in my life with no paperwork to show for it, other than the large bills. Not sure I want to frame those.
Mine is on my closet only the original envelope. But a few years ago I needed to scan it for an employer. Made me wonder if diplomas as a physical object are obsolete, to be replaced by a qr code that lives in your phone.
Every time I read an obit with stuff like, "Anna Mae Bullock was born in 1939. She spent her earliest years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, an unincorporated area nearby, and still grew up to become Tina F'ing Turner," I think to myself, "and what have you done with your life, smart guy?"
A little off base, but this being graduation reception time, I was stuck at an in-laws reception recently and the trope of some old dude being proud of "never having been further away than Mankato" (about 90 miles) happened. He'll have a real short obit.
For me, nothing even close to that greatness. But I will have a legacy after I am gone — I’ve won a few international awards, I’ve preserved memories of people who were famous in their fields. I’ve shepherded a multinational organization which is working on promoting new technologies for carbon capture and storage. I’ve led an interesting life.
But, damn it, I never did reach my childhood goal of playing baseball in the bigs.
High School science project: The Ecology of Cemeteries / Golf Courses
Get in touch with the head groundskeepers. What do they use to maintain the place? How "environmentally friendly" are the materials? What sort of trees and shrubs grow there? What species of birds hang out there?
I've had a hard time finding time and attention to actually read books as much as I once loved to do, so I'm trying the app my local library uses for audiobooks Just a week ago I finished the audiobook of "Stiff" by Mary Roach, about cadavers. It was actually very interesting to learn about the ways cadavers have contributed to different fields and there was indeed a chapter on the body farm, as well as various other ways of burial such as human composting that people are trying to work on as more ecological and to some meaningful ways of dealing with the physical remains of loved ones. Morbid subject material but a fascinating book.
Her books are great! I think there's one I haven't gotten to yet, but this was the first of hers I read. She can make the weirdest stuff sound really interesting.
I'd been meaning to buy it and put it on the same stack of books that I plan to read "when I have time" but it was available as an audiobook and I figured why not, it's free to check out so costs me nothing. Good book and my mind didn't wander nearly as much as I thought it might while listening.
I loved that book. The scene where the doctors are at some beachfront conference center and there are like 50 tables and on each table is a human body part (it’s a head, I think).
All that's missing is a catchy name for such a feat. An opportunity for our resident wordsmith to make a contribution to the baseball vocabulary in case "Manfred Man" doesn't end up catching on.
No more stupid than my two comments! And not really stupid at all...just imagining scenarios not anticipated by the rulesmakers. Some team might do something like these (perhaps in an exhibition) just to make a point--perhaps protesting wearing hats they think are too "woke"?
Is going into hospice and then not dying in a timely manner kind of awkward? Reminds me of Monty Python. “I’m not dead!” “Im feeling better”. “I’d like to go for a walk”.
It’s actually not all that unusual; shifting into hospice – which focuses on the patient’s comfort, as opposed to medical interventions - is often such a relief, physically and emotionally, that some patients almost thrive for a while. It’s not really a “waiting room“ as much as it is a shift in philosophy. I had the good fortune to meet and work with President Carter as part of some election work, and I am not surprised at all that his combination of strength and good humor is keeping him alive for the time being.
In 1990 or 91 we were at The Varsity in Atlanta eating chili dogs and onion rings for dinner. 4 feet to our right, sitting in the plastic chairs with a wobbly table, just like us, was President and Mrs. Carter, eating chili dogs and onion rings for dinner.
DMCj has this correct. I have been in the hospice business (the finance side) for 34 years. We have many patients that pass away quickly, but many live for many months once entering hospice care.
Dennis Eckersley had gone 9 years without a relief appearance before going to the pen and it worked out well for him. Maybe it will work out for Kluber too. (OK, I don't believe that either)
The entire hit vs error distinction is a weird historical anomaly. In what other sports do we can about reason rather than results? Same issue with SF and SH and, to a lesser degree, IBB. Running back goes to the wrong hole and gets stuffed, QB doesn’t see the safety drop into coverage, the free throw shooter tosses an airball, the hurdler smacks into the barrier ... all uncounted “errors.”
But the ball off the glove homer is pretty consistently called an HR not E at least for the last 40 years. See, eg, Dave Henderson in the 1986 postseason.
I hear you, but ... My very life is an homage to inconsistency! Caring about whether some random 20-35 year old does with a ball being high on that list.
That pitcher damn sure cares about errors and his ERA. Similarly, they care about quality starts. I don't get the "but so what" side of it. Errors matter.
It's consistent with precedence that plays where an outfielder knocks a fly ball over the fence -- almost always after a long run or going backwards -- is scored a home run the same way a ball deep in the SS hole is always scored a hit even if SS bobbles it or makes a bad throw on what should have been an out.
I agree these are bad precedents -- I'd lean toward a double and a two-base error -- but it's why anyone who is serious about evaluating defense doesn't care (much) about errors. Though a minor league SS who makes 50 errors probably has a problem.
Didn't see the play (suddenly no longer get the baseball package and it's driving me crazy). That aside, based upon your explanation it should have been a four base error.
Just curious, who was the OF'er?
If I had to guess...he was going to be it. Listened to a bit of it on KMOX and he seemed to be struggling mightily.
What a sweet memory, thanks for sharing.
I wanted to get out of my high school graduation because I didn't want to make a speech (valedictorian) but my parents didn't let me. And I did go to my first college graduation. I'm glad I did because seeing how proud my parents were was the best part.
I didn't care much either way about my high school one, but seeing all the kids where graduation was not just the automatic next step in the road going nuts with their families changed my perspective pretty quickly.
Indeed. (At some point we need to start explaining all our nerdy references.)
It's like a secret handshake. If you get our references you know you belong here.
You noted that the O's just won their 32nd game of the season.
In 2021 and 2019, they didn't get win 32 until July 23. In 2018, it took until July 29.
Love to see things back on the upswing in Baltimore.
The Orioles have been the doormat of the AL East for so long, I thought their success was a fluky year. But I guess it’s time to recognize they’ve actually put together a good team. Hope people in Baltimore recognize it.
They won the most games in the AL from 2012-2016. That wasn't THAT long ago! And the Red Sox have finished in last as many times as the Orioles since 2019.
Fair enough. The depth of their failures-- 108, 110, and 115 (!) losses -- makes it seem longer than it was.
The O's should match their 2018 win total before the Fourth of July at this rate. Already have 32 wins, just need 15 more to match all of 2018.
The O's have the second best record in baseball and are 3 games back. Get rid of divisions already.
Gave you a like because of the comment, but also because of the username.
Marcus Stroman remains at the top of my list of pitchers I wish the Mets had kept. Though let's be honest. If they'd kept him, his spleen would have imploded or something. The Mets are now 0-8 in Great Lakes cities this season. Good thing there's no team in Buffalo.
About three years ago, DC Comics introduced a team of heroes called the Revolutionaries. Maybe DC will sue GWU?
Good thing their upcoming series against the Blue Jays is at home then.
Good pitcher, but too thin skinned and ‘me first’. He can stay in Chicago as far as I am concerned, regardless of the Mets issues at this point.
You know how the Washington Nationals have that Presidents' Race?
I would definitely watch a GWU game of anything if they had a Revolutionaries' Race with, say, Che Guevara competing against Fidel Castro and Stalin and Mao and Trotsky and Ho Chi Minh. Too many great possibilities.
To make it more authentic they could give the racers access to weapons, an ice-pick say, to give it a Death Race 2000 ethos.
Does Marx just sit and point out the absurdity of people being forced to compete against each other instead of just taking the prize money from the Nats and dividing it up?
My son's law school alma mater went from Geo Mason Law School to Antonin Scalia School of Law (donation involved) until they realized ASSoL might be pronounced ... well then they went with Antonin Scalia Law School. A rose by any other name and all.
That name change is decidedly a lateral move, going from a slave owner to an outright racist.
Godspeed, Tina Turner. It really made me happy that she enjoyed another boost recently with new fans thanks to Schitt’s Creek. She might be the best example ever of “the best revenge is living well.“
PS Great job on the Nats recap; 10/10, no notes. I choose to believe my steady oversight was the key. Keep up the good work. (How are we feeling today, Padres fans?)
PPS Your diploma story reminds me of something I have had to confront recently: what to do with my collection of lovingly (and expensively) framed degrees and bar admissions. The combination of advancing age, leaving law practice, and working remotely makes that wall of educational attainment totally superfluous. It’s getting to the point where I am thinking about taking out the degrees and simply donating the frames. Has anyone else done something like this? Any guidance? My kids all have theirs propped up on shelves in the same commemorative plastic folder they were handed at graduation and I think that’s the way to go. I think the only thing that ended up getting framed was my oldest daughter’s; she earned honors as an undergraduate and they were still inscribing her degree, so she was handed a piece of parchment with the words “this document intentionally left blank.“ It now hangs in her bathroom.
i, like you, declined going to my graduation, more so to avoid family drama over allocating the limited # of available tickets. With grandparents, brothers et al at the time - i decided i didn't care enough and they'd mail the diploma home. I do kinda regret it only for the social aspects of not being there w/my friends, but I actually did not care one iota about the ceremony. No regrets on missing that. My wife and her brother graduated from my college so I attended those, so i got to see what I missed - no big deal.
You can actually order those nice padded diploma covers individually. I found that out when years after I lost my high school yearbooks and diploma and collegr diploma to water damage, I got a second BS degree and wanted to put my other BS degree with it. So I contacted my first college and they sent me a new diploma, I bought a separate cover for it, and now they sit neatly on my bookshelf.
I don't pull them out and look at them or anything, but I like knowing they are there and they take up very little physical space. I've never hung anything on the wall except my certification at work and that's because all of the employees have their certifications on one wall. I had nothing to do with that.
Our undergraduate diplomas are in $2 black frames on the wall. My MBA is rolled up on the bookshelf in the home office.
No idea what became of my BS and MS diplomas. I had my Professional Engineer license framed, but for the next 30 years it resided in an otherwise empty drawer in my office filing cabinet. I remembered to take it with me when I retired, and it’s now in a cardboard box down in the basement.
My wife and I still have our BS and BA in the covers that were mailed to us after the ceremony. Neither has ever been framed. I think they might even still be in the envelopes they arrived in. They now live in a bankers box on the top shelf of our guest bedroom.
We are such sentimentalists.
Mine never got hung up and are still in a file cabinet somewhere. My wife has hers on the wall. She had a better GPA.
My mom had my diplomas professionally lacquered into an overpriced frame, because….that’s what you do?
They’re currently in a storage bin in my basement.
That's where I am; my folks (and then my wife) always had them framed as gifts. It made (some) sense when I was working in an office because that's what people did; now it just seems wasteful. I even offered to swap in my kids' degrees and they were basically "nah - we're good." They are smarter at their age than I was.
Scorch the edges with a blow torch and carry them around with you like a crusty prospector with a treasure map.
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I paid for them to frame mine and all that and, like Craig, they shipped them to my parents' house, where they have remained since I graduated in 2012.
I’m confused: bar admissions? I’ve been admitted to a lot of bars in my life with no paperwork to show for it, other than the large bills. Not sure I want to frame those.
Mine is on my closet only the original envelope. But a few years ago I needed to scan it for an employer. Made me wonder if diplomas as a physical object are obsolete, to be replaced by a qr code that lives in your phone.
Stunned that your Tina Turner obit didn’t include the baseball connection: Detroit Tigers catcher Lance Parrish once served as her bodyguard! (Although the NYT article it originally was noted downplays it a lot: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/26/sports/lance-parrish-a-budding-star.html)
”You can’t make stuff like this up.”
Every time I read an obit with stuff like, "Anna Mae Bullock was born in 1939. She spent her earliest years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, an unincorporated area nearby, and still grew up to become Tina F'ing Turner," I think to myself, "and what have you done with your life, smart guy?"
A little off base, but this being graduation reception time, I was stuck at an in-laws reception recently and the trope of some old dude being proud of "never having been further away than Mankato" (about 90 miles) happened. He'll have a real short obit.
Sure, but I’ll bet he’s been in the Hardee’s drive-through Keith Millard wrecked in ‘91.
That’s like Oprah being from Kosciusko, MS and living the life she does now. And let’s remember both of Oprah and Turner were born under segregation.
For me, nothing even close to that greatness. But I will have a legacy after I am gone — I’ve won a few international awards, I’ve preserved memories of people who were famous in their fields. I’ve shepherded a multinational organization which is working on promoting new technologies for carbon capture and storage. I’ve led an interesting life.
But, damn it, I never did reach my childhood goal of playing baseball in the bigs.
Artist Jae Rhim Lee came up with the mushroom burial suite quite some time ago.
I feel the same way about golf courses, and long ago I realized combining the two would probably be a decent money-making idea
"A tradition like no other......The Masters Golf Course and Cemetery."
People would pay A LOT to be buried at Augusta
What do you suppose the course would charge people to visit their parent's graves?
Cost of club membership plus greens fees, naturally. Wanna see grandpa? Go play a round.
That is taken into account in the artist’s project. Non-traditional burials, etc.
High School science project: The Ecology of Cemeteries / Golf Courses
Get in touch with the head groundskeepers. What do they use to maintain the place? How "environmentally friendly" are the materials? What sort of trees and shrubs grow there? What species of birds hang out there?
I want to get myself taxidermied and animatronic. My family will keep me propped up in the living room and it will be like I never left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMiEFyTuuh8
I've had a hard time finding time and attention to actually read books as much as I once loved to do, so I'm trying the app my local library uses for audiobooks Just a week ago I finished the audiobook of "Stiff" by Mary Roach, about cadavers. It was actually very interesting to learn about the ways cadavers have contributed to different fields and there was indeed a chapter on the body farm, as well as various other ways of burial such as human composting that people are trying to work on as more ecological and to some meaningful ways of dealing with the physical remains of loved ones. Morbid subject material but a fascinating book.
Her books are great! I think there's one I haven't gotten to yet, but this was the first of hers I read. She can make the weirdest stuff sound really interesting.
I'd been meaning to buy it and put it on the same stack of books that I plan to read "when I have time" but it was available as an audiobook and I figured why not, it's free to check out so costs me nothing. Good book and my mind didn't wander nearly as much as I thought it might while listening.
I loved that book. The scene where the doctors are at some beachfront conference center and there are like 50 tables and on each table is a human body part (it’s a head, I think).
Yes, heads for plastic surgery practice.
Read that book when it came out. Loved it.
"Stiff" is a wonderful book.
I also recommend the "Ask a Mortician" Youtube channel for videos on the business, and politics, and general societal feelings toward death.
Baseball Almanac has a list of 3 pitch innings, separated into an AL list and an NL list for no discernible reason.
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/3_pitch_inning.shtml
All that's missing is a catchy name for such a feat. An opportunity for our resident wordsmith to make a contribution to the baseball vocabulary in case "Manfred Man" doesn't end up catching on.
Conceivably, we could see a zero-pitch half-inning if 3 batters in a row disregard the 8 second rule.
I guess that could be possible if a pitcher ignored the clock enough to walk guys without pitches!
Yeah, I realized it was a stupid comment and deleted it before you responded.
(I had said they could get outs via pickoff too)
No more stupid than my two comments! And not really stupid at all...just imagining scenarios not anticipated by the rulesmakers. Some team might do something like these (perhaps in an exhibition) just to make a point--perhaps protesting wearing hats they think are too "woke"?
How many pitches were thrown in the infamous inning when Tippy (?) Martinez picked off three runners?
Which leads to the technical possibility of an entire 9-inning game happening without a single pitch being thrown......
Have we had a two-pitch inning yet in extra innings?
I guess a no pitch inning is now possible, thanks to the Manfred Man.
Is going into hospice and then not dying in a timely manner kind of awkward? Reminds me of Monty Python. “I’m not dead!” “Im feeling better”. “I’d like to go for a walk”.
It’s actually not all that unusual; shifting into hospice – which focuses on the patient’s comfort, as opposed to medical interventions - is often such a relief, physically and emotionally, that some patients almost thrive for a while. It’s not really a “waiting room“ as much as it is a shift in philosophy. I had the good fortune to meet and work with President Carter as part of some election work, and I am not surprised at all that his combination of strength and good humor is keeping him alive for the time being.
In 1990 or 91 we were at The Varsity in Atlanta eating chili dogs and onion rings for dinner. 4 feet to our right, sitting in the plastic chairs with a wobbly table, just like us, was President and Mrs. Carter, eating chili dogs and onion rings for dinner.
DMCj has this correct. I have been in the hospice business (the finance side) for 34 years. We have many patients that pass away quickly, but many live for many months once entering hospice care.
Dennis Eckersley had gone 9 years without a relief appearance before going to the pen and it worked out well for him. Maybe it will work out for Kluber too. (OK, I don't believe that either)
Kluber did appear in relief in game 2 of the 2022 AL Wild Card Series. It didn't go well.
Spot the error in this phrase… offenses like the Guardians and the Royals, who he faced in his previous start,
Should be ‘offensives’