A goose egg in Atlanta, an actual goose in L.A., a dead bird on The Big Unit's website, pigeons in the Cincinnati sportsbook, vultures surround Alex Jones, and non-bird words about Egypt and CDs
That show sounds great, what was the deal more specifically? I'm so fascinating by all those old songs and their evolution, eg "The Bloody Miller" into "Knoxville Girl" and also the whole history leading up to "Hard Rain." Historians think the events in the old songs likely actually happened!
Also, re the coaster, speaking as a guy who sells em and gets candy bar money every year from Spotify: HAHA uggghhh. Yup.
Thanks for the reminder. I saw it 20+ years ago when it came out, and was considering watching it with my kids in the off season. Maybe we'll wait a few years...
I thought that was universally seen as a good movie, at least among baseball fans. I’m betting it gets left off lists like this because it was a TV movie and not a theatrical release.
Billy Crystal annoys me but you can tell the movie was made by someone who loves baseball and the Yankees of that era.
Sugar is phenomenal & was years ahead of its time, as we've seen some recognition of how these young boys are exploited, as well as the conditions they face as minor leaguers.
I don't think most people know it's historically inaccurate, though. I wouldn't know if I hadn't been asked to review Gene Carney's book ~15 years ago.
There was no rally goose because the most famous goose in baseball played for the 1984 Padres team that came from 2-0 against the Cubs to make the World Series. All geese follow Goose Gossage's lead and root for San Diego.
As I’ve said before, the first CD I ever heard was Big Country in the autumn of 1982. I can still remember how astonished I was that the room went from absolute silence to a wall of sound. I’m sure my face looked like a caveman first experiencing fire.
PS I think the Nats are the first team to have had an onsite sports book… I guess when your on field product is unwatchable, you do whatever you can to get people in at least one of your doors.
PPS Can you imagine what they would’ve written about Judge if the Yankees had LOST Game One?
I had heard, vaguely, about the magical compact disc but our family didn’t have the money for such luxuries, so I kept on mowing lawns and dropping $7 on cassettes.
The first CD I ever saw with my own two eyes was owned by my friend Duane, and he showed it to me walking down the hall in school. It was Van Halen’s 5150. I didn’t get to hear it, but I was in awe of the thing, for some reason. We were just more easily amazed back then.
Then he told me he paid $25 for it and I almost tripped on my unlaced Nike high-tops. $25 bucks got me two newly-released cassettes, one older one, and five bucks for five gallons of gas for the old ‘Vette (Chevette, that is).
I got a Technics CD player and a $25 gift certificate for Christmas in 1985, my freshman year in college. I bought Dark Side of the Moon and Back in Black
That CD player was still working in the early 2000s.
I bought a CD player in the Fall of 1986. That week I got four CDs, but only remember three: Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Dire Straits’ self titled debut, and Pat Matheny’s Song X.
I'm not sure that $1,000 offer is worth it if it means I have to watch Trouble With the Curve. Maybe I can get $900 for watching the other nine movies and leave Trouble With the Curve on the sidelines.
The first CD's to enter our house were Kylie Minogue and Brother Beyond, when my dad proudly came home with his new stereo system, complete with wooden cabinet to hide it, in the same way the tv bench hid the betamax machine.
The only CD player I own now is the one in the car, the car being the place where CD's go to die by a thousand scratches and they never re-emerge. Death by 1000 cuts is too good for Alex Jones, it is great we get to track his demise for his eternity.
Speaking of the car, I had an old *Saab convertible that had a six CD changer in the trunk… it felt like the lap of luxury until you realized what a pain in the ass it was to swap out discs when you got tired of one or more *items in the collection.
I was fancy, I had Renault Clio with the changer under the passenger seat, with about 4 of those zip-up sleeve things full of discs in the foot-well. I bet I changed 3 of those discs out over the 4 years I owned the car.
Today the CD player in my car is built into the glovebox. Seriously. It's completely unusable for the driver yet someone at Volkswagen decided it couldn't be eliminated altogether. My in car music is via CarPlay or an SD card that sits right next to the CD player.
I used a cassette adapter and a portable CD player in my cars as a teen. I put an aftermarket radio in my 1998 Honda as my first car CD player a couple years after college.
The first CD I owned was Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volumes I and II, acquired during my freshman year of college in 1989, because I have always been on the cutting edge of cool.
Shane is really reaching here; baseball diamond, amirite? I’m a fan of books and movies about baseball even though I’m not a fan of any team. While I understand the assignment, I just don’t think $1000 is worth it. That is not life-changing money, and it would be actual work (on top of filling out a form to be chosen to apply). What a total failure to read the room.
I'm not hurting for cash, but I'd rather just let random people on the internet know my opinion of these movies than actually go through the process of filling out an application and writing and submitting formal reviews.
actually since the Rosetta Stone is itself a translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs into Greek, and the royalty was greek, the Rosetta Stone should go to Greece. They’re the actual inhabitants of Egypt at the time.
Well, actually they were Macedonians. But Macedonia then was part of Greece. Ptolemy was from Pella, which is in Greece. But maybe Macedonia deserves it? Especially since they have the whole name of the empire?
Hmm. Many of the inhabitants of Egypt today are also Arabs (or mixed in) and didn’t the Arabs conquer Egypt? I mean that was over a millennia ago.
And of course the stone was given to Britain after defeating the French, and handed over by treaty (meaning it wasn’t an imperial spoil of Britain conquering Egypt) and actually Egypt at the time wasn’t independent but part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Macedonians were not the actual inhabitants of Egypt, they were the colonizing overlords of Egypt. The Egyptian people were still the Egyptians that were there before Alexander showed up, and are generally still the same as the people that are there now.
The Rosetta Stone was carved over two millennia ago when Egypt was ruled (and intermingled with) Greeks who conquered Egypt. They conquered Egypt FROM the Persians, who had ruled for centuries. The Ptolemaic Dynasty was then conquered by the Romans, who lost Egypt to the Arabs (and many Arabs migrated to Egypt; Egypt is the largest Arab country in the world). The Arabs fought over it for centuries until the Ottomans conquered Egypt.
It was the French who actually recovered the stone, who then gave up the stone to the British by treaty during the Napoleonic Wars.
In short, the simple easy stories people like to tell themselves about the 'justice' of the situation is stupid and dumb (especially where the Rosetta Stone is concerned). The stone is in a pre-eminent museum in Britain. It's properly preserved and restored, and there's nothing wrong with the stone staying where it is; you can't please everyone.
Does this mean the original Declaration of Independence should be in a British Museum, too, since it was written by British subjects in a British colony?
No it means that history is complicated and the Rosetta Stone’s “true” ownership is a complex question with no clear answer. Britain got the stone as part of a treaty and there’s no sense in moving it
They got the stone through a treaty that didn't involve the Egyptian government whatsoever, so it seems a little off to me that you'd think that would be binding somehow since it's like if I bought a stolen baseball card, do I get to keep it just because I bought it from a thief even if the original owner filed a police report to get it back?
Ultimately, though, the Rosetta Stone was created in Egypt and discovered in Egypt. Sure seems like it's probably an Egyptian artifact, just like the Declaration of Independence is an American one
Precisely! The "ownership" of these items is very often muddled and confused, with many conflicting "claims". Almost all of them can be said to belong to Humanity as a whole, anyway.
As far as I'm concerned, as long as the artifact is properly displayed where it can be seen by everyone, and studied appropriately when not on view, why should it matter where it is? And if that doesn't matter, why go through all the unnecessary trouble and cost and risk and danger of moving it??
p.s. And don't get Greek Macedonia confused with North Macedonia.....
Oh no doubt, that's what caused the whole naming controversy in the first place (and it's one of the cooler and better stories of peace in the last decade or so).
I had so many cassettes I don't remember what one I got first and I did receive a bunch as gifts, but I think the first CD I got myself was Heart Bad Animals. At least that's the first one I remember anyway, it was a long time ago!
I'm reminded of the first baseball movie I ever saw back in the late 50s and early 60s. I think it was called, It Happens Every Spring but even the 8 year old me knew this was a bad movie. Still, one of our local stations in Cleveland would broadcast it every spring just prior to the season opener and I always looked forward to seeing it. As I recall it was about a guy who discovered a substance that when applied to a baseball would cause the ball to avoid the wood of a bat. No redeeming value except as the harvenger of the upcoming baseball season. Haven't thought about this for a very long time but wondering if there are any other old farts who remember this clunker.
First CD purchase was Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Fall 1990. My 19 year old ears weren't ready for Paul's Boutique. Crazy how well it holds up.
"All I wanna know is how BetMGM expects to make money on this thing when no one goes to Reds games anymore."
Exactly what I was thinking.
I don't listen to CDs much anymore, but they come in handy when I'm driving through an area with bad cell service and I can't stream anything in my truck. In those moments they're like a nice blanket on a chilly October night.
Remember the jokes in the IT departments about people thinking their PC's CD tray was a coffee cup holder?
That show sounds great, what was the deal more specifically? I'm so fascinating by all those old songs and their evolution, eg "The Bloody Miller" into "Knoxville Girl" and also the whole history leading up to "Hard Rain." Historians think the events in the old songs likely actually happened!
Also, re the coaster, speaking as a guy who sells em and gets candy bar money every year from Spotify: HAHA uggghhh. Yup.
Honestly don't understand how Eight Men Out is never in the conversation for top ten baseball movies.
Billy Crystal directed it.
I saw it again for the second time not too long ago. I had HBO as a kid and watched it when it premiered.
Did you count how times Thomas Jane said "pussy"?
Thanks for the reminder. I saw it 20+ years ago when it came out, and was considering watching it with my kids in the off season. Maybe we'll wait a few years...
I thought that was universally seen as a good movie, at least among baseball fans. I’m betting it gets left off lists like this because it was a TV movie and not a theatrical release.
Billy Crystal annoys me but you can tell the movie was made by someone who loves baseball and the Yankees of that era.
Came here to say the same thing. I thought 61* was very good. Just watched it again recently and it holds up well.
Me either … also Bang the Drum Slowly and Sugar.
Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings.
Sugar is phenomenal & was years ahead of its time, as we've seen some recognition of how these young boys are exploited, as well as the conditions they face as minor leaguers.
"Bang the Drum Slowly" on line 3
Probably because it’s not historically accurate. We like our dramas based on real events to be documentaries. Don’t know why.
I don't think most people know it's historically inaccurate, though. I wouldn't know if I hadn't been asked to review Gene Carney's book ~15 years ago.
http://baseballbook.blogspot.com/2006/05/burying-black-sox-by-gene-carney_17.html
There was no rally goose because the most famous goose in baseball played for the 1984 Padres team that came from 2-0 against the Cubs to make the World Series. All geese follow Goose Gossage's lead and root for San Diego.
Was it Gossage or Nettles who was very critical of McDonalds causing grief with Padres owner Ray Kroc?
Gossage went after Joan Kroc, saying, "She's poisoning the world with her hamburgers." He later apologized.
He was clearly a grumpy old man long before he was old. And hard to say he was wrong about the hamburgers.
He was wrong about the hamburgers
He apparently hates that nickname. Meaning the most famous baseball good won the Senators their only WS back in 1924.
That was my thought as well. If the goose was a sign, it was in favor of Goose's team and not any team for which he didn't play.
As I’ve said before, the first CD I ever heard was Big Country in the autumn of 1982. I can still remember how astonished I was that the room went from absolute silence to a wall of sound. I’m sure my face looked like a caveman first experiencing fire.
PS I think the Nats are the first team to have had an onsite sports book… I guess when your on field product is unwatchable, you do whatever you can to get people in at least one of your doors.
PPS Can you imagine what they would’ve written about Judge if the Yankees had LOST Game One?
Roxy Music Avalon and Suzanne Vega self-titled for me. First CD I ever sold was Genesis Invisible Touch which someone gifted me.
The Queen and the Soldier just popped up on my playlist.
I had heard, vaguely, about the magical compact disc but our family didn’t have the money for such luxuries, so I kept on mowing lawns and dropping $7 on cassettes.
The first CD I ever saw with my own two eyes was owned by my friend Duane, and he showed it to me walking down the hall in school. It was Van Halen’s 5150. I didn’t get to hear it, but I was in awe of the thing, for some reason. We were just more easily amazed back then.
Then he told me he paid $25 for it and I almost tripped on my unlaced Nike high-tops. $25 bucks got me two newly-released cassettes, one older one, and five bucks for five gallons of gas for the old ‘Vette (Chevette, that is).
No clue what the first CD I bought was.
I got a Technics CD player and a $25 gift certificate for Christmas in 1985, my freshman year in college. I bought Dark Side of the Moon and Back in Black
That CD player was still working in the early 2000s.
I bought a CD player in the Fall of 1986. That week I got four CDs, but only remember three: Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Dire Straits’ self titled debut, and Pat Matheny’s Song X.
had a 5-disc changer.
included random play setting.
heaven.
I'm not sure that $1,000 offer is worth it if it means I have to watch Trouble With the Curve. Maybe I can get $900 for watching the other nine movies and leave Trouble With the Curve on the sidelines.
The first CD's to enter our house were Kylie Minogue and Brother Beyond, when my dad proudly came home with his new stereo system, complete with wooden cabinet to hide it, in the same way the tv bench hid the betamax machine.
The only CD player I own now is the one in the car, the car being the place where CD's go to die by a thousand scratches and they never re-emerge. Death by 1000 cuts is too good for Alex Jones, it is great we get to track his demise for his eternity.
Speaking of the car, I had an old *Saab convertible that had a six CD changer in the trunk… it felt like the lap of luxury until you realized what a pain in the ass it was to swap out discs when you got tired of one or more *items in the collection.
I was fancy, I had Renault Clio with the changer under the passenger seat, with about 4 of those zip-up sleeve things full of discs in the foot-well. I bet I changed 3 of those discs out over the 4 years I owned the car.
I had the multi disc player in the trunk of my ‘93 Saturn SL1. Truly cutting edge.
CD's have lasted 40 years. Saturn started 3 years later and died after only 24 years.
That car could have been a museum showpiece if some British guy stole it.
It was a good car. No bells or whistles, just simple functionality.
Today the CD player in my car is built into the glovebox. Seriously. It's completely unusable for the driver yet someone at Volkswagen decided it couldn't be eliminated altogether. My in car music is via CarPlay or an SD card that sits right next to the CD player.
I used a cassette adapter and a portable CD player in my cars as a teen. I put an aftermarket radio in my 1998 Honda as my first car CD player a couple years after college.
The first CD I owned was Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volumes I and II, acquired during my freshman year of college in 1989, because I have always been on the cutting edge of cool.
That was one of the first tapes I got when I bought my first Walkman. But Billy Joel was, is, and always will be cool. No matter what the critics say.
For the longest time ...
Love that song.
That was pretty much my first Billy Joel song in terms of making me a fan for good.
It was also the first tape I got when I got my boom box in high school. I'm consistent. :)
I like We Didn’t Start the Fire. You may all judge me. It has 6 references to baseball so it’s appropriate for this newsletter.
It's incredibly catchy. Also almost quaint by now.
No Fear Strikes Out (Tony Perkins) or Pride if the Yankees (Gary Cooper)?
For that matter, "It Happens Every Spring" (1949), starring Ray Milland.....
You can’t get people to watch anything from the black and white era.
Shane is really reaching here; baseball diamond, amirite? I’m a fan of books and movies about baseball even though I’m not a fan of any team. While I understand the assignment, I just don’t think $1000 is worth it. That is not life-changing money, and it would be actual work (on top of filling out a form to be chosen to apply). What a total failure to read the room.
I'm not hurting for cash, but I'd rather just let random people on the internet know my opinion of these movies than actually go through the process of filling out an application and writing and submitting formal reviews.
Love the Doc Gooden jersey
actually since the Rosetta Stone is itself a translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs into Greek, and the royalty was greek, the Rosetta Stone should go to Greece. They’re the actual inhabitants of Egypt at the time.
Well, actually they were Macedonians. But Macedonia then was part of Greece. Ptolemy was from Pella, which is in Greece. But maybe Macedonia deserves it? Especially since they have the whole name of the empire?
Hmm. Many of the inhabitants of Egypt today are also Arabs (or mixed in) and didn’t the Arabs conquer Egypt? I mean that was over a millennia ago.
And of course the stone was given to Britain after defeating the French, and handed over by treaty (meaning it wasn’t an imperial spoil of Britain conquering Egypt) and actually Egypt at the time wasn’t independent but part of the Ottoman Empire.
Wait a minute, are you trying to tell us that history is complicated and there’s more to it than England=bad?
Hmmmm….
Perish the thought
The Macedonians were not the actual inhabitants of Egypt, they were the colonizing overlords of Egypt. The Egyptian people were still the Egyptians that were there before Alexander showed up, and are generally still the same as the people that are there now.
Give them back the rock.
The Rosetta Stone was carved over two millennia ago when Egypt was ruled (and intermingled with) Greeks who conquered Egypt. They conquered Egypt FROM the Persians, who had ruled for centuries. The Ptolemaic Dynasty was then conquered by the Romans, who lost Egypt to the Arabs (and many Arabs migrated to Egypt; Egypt is the largest Arab country in the world). The Arabs fought over it for centuries until the Ottomans conquered Egypt.
It was the French who actually recovered the stone, who then gave up the stone to the British by treaty during the Napoleonic Wars.
In short, the simple easy stories people like to tell themselves about the 'justice' of the situation is stupid and dumb (especially where the Rosetta Stone is concerned). The stone is in a pre-eminent museum in Britain. It's properly preserved and restored, and there's nothing wrong with the stone staying where it is; you can't please everyone.
Does this mean the original Declaration of Independence should be in a British Museum, too, since it was written by British subjects in a British colony?
No it means that history is complicated and the Rosetta Stone’s “true” ownership is a complex question with no clear answer. Britain got the stone as part of a treaty and there’s no sense in moving it
They got the stone through a treaty that didn't involve the Egyptian government whatsoever, so it seems a little off to me that you'd think that would be binding somehow since it's like if I bought a stolen baseball card, do I get to keep it just because I bought it from a thief even if the original owner filed a police report to get it back?
Ultimately, though, the Rosetta Stone was created in Egypt and discovered in Egypt. Sure seems like it's probably an Egyptian artifact, just like the Declaration of Independence is an American one
There was no Egyptian government. Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire
They had two chances to take it from us and lost both times. Future Vice President Hershel Walker will probably gift it Putin later this decade.
Precisely! The "ownership" of these items is very often muddled and confused, with many conflicting "claims". Almost all of them can be said to belong to Humanity as a whole, anyway.
As far as I'm concerned, as long as the artifact is properly displayed where it can be seen by everyone, and studied appropriately when not on view, why should it matter where it is? And if that doesn't matter, why go through all the unnecessary trouble and cost and risk and danger of moving it??
p.s. And don't get Greek Macedonia confused with North Macedonia.....
Oh no doubt, that's what caused the whole naming controversy in the first place (and it's one of the cooler and better stories of peace in the last decade or so).
North Macedonia does not mean Classical Macedonia
That’s why they changed it in fact.
I had so many cassettes I don't remember what one I got first and I did receive a bunch as gifts, but I think the first CD I got myself was Heart Bad Animals. At least that's the first one I remember anyway, it was a long time ago!
I'm reminded of the first baseball movie I ever saw back in the late 50s and early 60s. I think it was called, It Happens Every Spring but even the 8 year old me knew this was a bad movie. Still, one of our local stations in Cleveland would broadcast it every spring just prior to the season opener and I always looked forward to seeing it. As I recall it was about a guy who discovered a substance that when applied to a baseball would cause the ball to avoid the wood of a bat. No redeeming value except as the harvenger of the upcoming baseball season. Haven't thought about this for a very long time but wondering if there are any other old farts who remember this clunker.
::raises hand, farts::
First CD purchase was Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Fall 1990. My 19 year old ears weren't ready for Paul's Boutique. Crazy how well it holds up.
"All I wanna know is how BetMGM expects to make money on this thing when no one goes to Reds games anymore."
Exactly what I was thinking.
I don't listen to CDs much anymore, but they come in handy when I'm driving through an area with bad cell service and I can't stream anything in my truck. In those moments they're like a nice blanket on a chilly October night.