I can honestly say I’ve never once, since Craig started doing it, paid attention to the rainy day lyrics thing, or made an effort to figure out the song. Not for any specific reason, mind you. I just see the musical notes and slide right past to the next section.
It usually hits my inbox minutes before I wake up, and when I picked up my phone and saw no notification, my first thought was "the sub isn't as much of an early bird I guess." Welcome Bill, and I appreciate that you've also got an employee giving parenthetical asides. You've already nailed the usual vibe.
In fairness, just because Craig gets up at 4 am or whenever doesn't mean Bill should have to do the same. But if he's aiming to top Craig by doing it at 6 am, I guess he's game for that challenge.
Because I guess it wasn't as clear in pixels as it was in my brain, I was saying it in a lighthearted manner. I don't care when specifically it publishes, I'll read it whenever.
Well, I'm just glad to find out the explanation is a typo and not my old-man CRS disease making me unable to remember a 16 year old getting All-Star nods and post-season awards....
As a Pottstown ex-pat, I was certain Danilo would make it into town and just fade away. He could have strolled right up route 100 in the dead of night, lived for months out of fast food dumpsters and slept in any one of 100 vacant buildings.
Well done, substitute! Please don’t give up on us kids even though some of us may occasionally light fires in the trash can in the back of the classroom.
I for one welcome our new suburban Philadelphian overlord. But you have to up your rainout poetry game.
I think that while no one is going to say the Mets are good again, they seem to be relaxing enough now that we are getting some good games from a lot of people who might still be around in 2024. Plus wins over contenders are always fun.
Feeling ever more like the "trade old pitchers for prospects and foot some of the bill" idea was a good one. Sorry that Max is gone for the playoffs - assuming the Rangers get in, that is - but a part of me is thinking "maybe we are better off not running him back for another season." A big part of me.
Dollars to donuts (what is that exchange rate these days?) he goes without any team represented. CYAs in both Detroit and Washington suggest that we'll get the Roy Halladay result.
Unless he wins a WS with another team, I'm thinking that might tip him into a W cap. (Also 2 CY's with Washington vs. 1 w DET). I know he'll try to pitch next year, but he may have to convert to a reliever if he's going to stick around longer than that. So we might only have to wait 7 years to find out.
Would I put money on it? Yeah, maybe five bucks. Or a dozen donuts.
Seems like a pretty straightforward decision on the Hall's part. Scherzer has more Wins, more innings, and more success with Washington than with any other team, though to be fair it's only 10 more Wins and ~200 more IP than for Detroit.
Verlander is kind of an interesting case. He has vastly more time with Detroit than anyone else (over 2500 IP and 183 Wins there, compared to 700 IP and 66 Wins as an Astro), but he won 2 CYAs and 2 World Series with Houston, while winning the CYA and the MVP with Detroit. His postseason record before last year, especially in the WS, was not very good either, part of the reason he didn't win a ring as a Tiger.
By rights, in my mind, he should go into Cooperstown with a gothic D on his cap, but I could see his personal and team success and recency bias causing him to want to go in with a Houston cap.
It's the ultimate longevity vs. quality argument. Reggie Jackson famously went in as a Yankee despite having a lot more time in Oakland (about twice as many ABs) and for that matter, more success there (1 MVP, 3 championships vs. 2 WS and only one top-5 finish in the MVP with NYY), but his case was not as pronounced as Verlander's is, I don't think.
I know there were a few pointed comments from JV about the Tigers training staff and how they handled him when he was hurt and how different it was in Houston.
If he had won a WS in Detroit I think it's a slam dunk case for the D. I'm not sure now.
Johns Creek. Atlanta suburbs. Pretty near the AAA team in Gwinnett. Come down and I'll treat you to a MiLB game and let you cry into a Pontoon Brewing Co beer lamenting the horrors of the Gnats.
Does the player get a voice in the hat, or is the selection made only by the Hall? Halladay was inducted posthumously, so obviously didn't get a say in the matter, and I don't know if he would've had a say even if alive.
The player picks but the Hall can override that pick. I believe that rule was put in place after Tampa paid Wade Boggs to announce that he wanted to be inducted as a Devil Ray.
IIRC, Halladay had made his desire known including to his wife. I'm too lazy to look up the news stories that were published.
Erica Scherzer is a badass and a goddamn national treasure and an awesome follow on the socials. I'd take even a broken-down and ready to retire Max back on the Nats just to have her back in town.
Not all teachers. Subs. In junior high (60 years ago) we had a sub for our science teacher. She walked in, frowned, picked up a yardstick, slammed it down on the desk of a guy in the first row and said “no one is going to give me any trouble, right?” She then went to her desk, sat down and glared at us for an hour without saying another word.
My wife was *highly* pissed off earlier this week. She teaches elementary school and they had an in-service day where the regular teachers did some training while they brought in subs for the kids. She, as usual, prepared detailed sub plans ... absolutely none of which were used and the kids went nuts and the room was left trashed.
I've subbed and might start again, given my retirement and interest in getting out of the house. Places around here are paying $200 a day, some in MN a little more. The classroom management stuff scares me most.
I can tell how the day went by what drink my wife asks me to pour. Tea or perhaps a glass of wine and its been fine. A nice cocktail and it has been challenging. Straight tequila? Look out.
Ha! I have no doubt that is true. We are great friends with a few teachers (and a couple of administrators). The stories they tell are hard to believe.
My wife always hates taking days off for just that reason. She says it's almost more work no NOT go in, because she needs to make detailed lesson plans and provide notes about particular students' needs/issues and and make sure things are organized so the sub can find them and OMG just writing all this crap is kind of exhausting so I see what she means. I don't think she's even had a sub just eschew those plans and mail it in like that though. That sucks.
Yeah, sometimes you are sick and you have no choice. But a training day when they are pulled from the classroom because administration wants to demo something new or - god forbid - have a team building activity? Ouch!
In grade school we had a horrible sub one Friday, she was about 5 foot nothing, pinched white face, red hair, a permanent frown, and her name was Mrs. Millington. Ugh.
It turned out she passed away the weekend after we had her and when informed on Monday one of the boys on the class immediately said "well *I* didn't do it! I have an alibi!"
In high school I still remember 2 consecutive subs in my calculus class. The first one was a very nice old lady but she'd had algebra at most and was out of her depth, so we had one of the students run us through the problems on the board and we were okay, but did tell our regular teacher that the sub didn't know much math when she got back.
So two weeks later we had a different sub. He was a younger guy, wore his long hair in a ponytail and a tie with his nice shirt, and walked in and wrote his name on the board. He turned to the class and saw us all eyeballing each other and asked what was up, and one of my classmates hesitantly raised a hand and when recognized tried to delicately inquire about the new teacher's qualifications (or as delicate as a high school kid can get when trying to be polite but wanting to know if a grown up is competent). He chuckled and said "don't worry, I know my calculus." And he was very good!
Clearly Mrs. Fick talked to someone before her second trip to make sure we got a sub with a bit more math background which was much appreciated. 🙂
I used to work with a guy - *for* him really, since he was in charge of business development for the little R&D firm I worked for and I was just an Applications Engineer - but he seemingly always had a better story than you about whatever was being talked about.
Your neighbor had an iguana? He had a neighbor who had an Emperor penguin for a pet. You survived a close call in a car accident? His wife maneuvered their Dodge Caravan to safety when the engine literally dropped out of the engine compartment on the highway. Your family had connections? His dad served under Patton in WWII and knew Haile Selassie from when he was stationed in Ethiopia. Stuff like that. He was never a jerk about it. He just always had something better than you. Or at least better than me.
Anyway, substitute teachers: He grew up around DC in the 1970s because his dad was a general in the army, and one day his HS chemistry class gets a sub: JOE THEISMANN. Not yet a superstar, he was already the starting QB for the Redskins, and all the boys in class (at least) knew it.
To his credit, he actually tried teaching for a while. I don't know how well he knew chemistry, but he was an Academic All American in addition to his football accolades in college, so he was a smart enough guy to give it a go. But eventually all the boys in the class talked him into taking them out to the football field and throwing passes.
That's a great story! I wonder why JOE THEISMANN would need to sub when he was already a starting QB. Well, he did get divorced twice ... and when he started with the then-Redskins (sorry, Craig!), he would have been making only around 25K a year in the late 70's (equivalent of 120K today).
PS: I had a mentor at my law firm who was like your guy. Always could and did one-up everyone. It became a running joke with the rest of us.
Everybody had offseason jobs in those days. He was probably still making something close to the league minimum ($9000) in the first couple years of his career, which was not much.
He was probably making more than that. He had turned down the Dolphins' offer of 55K over 3 years a number of years before. Instead, he went with the to the CFL for 50K per year, according to Wikipedia. He wouldn't have gone to the Reds for the league minimum. But you're right, everybody in the NFL had to have side jobs. Things got a little better only after the 1974 strike and the court decision that struck down the Rozelle Rule.
I had forgotten about him pioneering the J.D. Drew Route to the pros. ;-)
Maybe he figured his high school subbing gigs would all degenerate into throwing passes to kids in lieu of being in the classroom anyway, so he would effectively get paid to do training? I have no idea. Or maybe he was just frugal. Who knows? FWIW, I don't think my boss was lying.
I refer to those types of people as "topper." A lot of times to their face because it's so damn annoying. For example, "topper, can't you simply allow a person to tell their story without having to one up or otherwise top them?" Of course, I've never had a direct report who was a topper. That certainly adds a wrinkle to it.
Today's lesson, class, is how to read critically and tell the difference between a JOKE and a TROPE, which is a literary device used to create a mental picture that helps shape a story.
Please turn to page 69 in your textbooks and (silently!) read this article.
Glad you're here Bill (Mr. Baer? Despite being in the internet for who knows how long now, I still never know how to address people that I haven't actually met in person. Bill seems too informal, but Mr. Baer seems wrong as well.)
Mr. Calcaterra always takes us to 7-Eleven and buys us Slurpees. Just so you know. (Welcome, Bill!)
PS It seems fitting that Mike Rizzo got extended on the same night that Jackson Rutledge became the 17th consecutive Nationals starter (0-11, 6 no decisions) to fail to win his debut. (The last one who did? Stephen Strasburg.) As Bill notes, Rizzo has done relatively well in trades - but the team’s current record on drafting and player development is abysmal. Yesterday’s announcement came with some pretty serious “things are going to be different now“ energy, but you will forgive me if I am skeptical.
PPS Full disclosure: I was completely unaware of the whole manhunt drama – until I saw the photo of all the police gathering for what basically looked like a “team picture“ after the capture. The only thing that was missing was a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.
I didn't think Rutledge was as bad as the box score might indicate last night.
You know that scene in Bull Durham where Crash Davis talks about the difference between hitting .250 and .300, and how it's one hit a week? In that speech he mentions a gork, a flair, a groundball with eyes, and a dying quail, and I think the Pirates checked all those boxes in the first inning.
Granted, Rutledge wasn't good, but it felt like maybe he should have only given up 4 or 5 runs rather than 7.
He wasn’t terrible, but he wasn’t good. I was also mystified/irked that they let him go 90 pitches down 7-0 when Qorbin got pulled Monday after 100 pitches with two outs in the 6th and a FOUR RUN LEAD. If we are going to exhaust the bullpen, let’s do it for the young guys, not the idiot making $10K+ per pitch.
I live just outside of Norristown, and our church is 20 minutes away in Phoenixville, where he went late Saturday night, so the church took some extra precautions Sunday morning, like most people in the area. I finally got around to fixing the lock on our back door, for example, which had not worked in, or mattered for, several months.
People were posting about it online, and while it was a little scary to have to wonder where he'd turn up next - he had a van, after all - I don't think it's fair to say that the cops screwed this up. We're conditioned with TV shows and movies to think that cops can just pull video or check fingerprints or get a report of a credit card transaction or numbered bills being used and the whole thing ought to be wrapped up in half an hour. Maybe an hour, tops.
But real life is messy, and looking for one guy, who now has a car, is not easy or straightforward. He did the things escaped convicts do in movies, stealing a car, clothes, a weapon, asking former friends for help, etc. and people reported what they heard or saw and he was apprehended in a few days. Not having access to money limited his ability to run and having thousands of people constantly talking about him online meant that we knew what he looked like and he was never far from our minds. The cops followed the tips they got and found him. Maybe not as efficiently as we might have liked, but the system worked.
I think people have no idea how large an area is that has a radius of 20 miles (and then he was found way outside that). Think how often it takes days when a little kid wanders less than a mile from a campsite.
In my little corner of the internet, when a team is a hot mess they get some variation. So Cubs became Cubes, Atlanta became Barves, we had LOLMETS and for football fans there were the Detroit Loins. Obviously after winning the NLEast they aren't technically Barvesing, but it is now a handy substitute for the out of favor actual name, and I guess one could argue they are Barvesing by not adopting a new moniker. (I had a lot of time to think about this on my walk this morning, no wonder Craig is doing this trip!)
I just looked it up in my Funk & Wagnalls and it looks like both are acceptable and up to the writer which they prefer. (Nothing has aged me in this comment section like that sentence.)
I haven’t had the heart to look up how many of the Guardians’ losses are courtesy of the bullpen. Whew… I sure hope we spend the off-season signing some guys decent free agents that we can trade next summer for more middle infield prospects…
I want C to be true.
That would be better than acting as Matt Angerer to Craig's Bill Bryson!
I loved that book. "The hardest part was coming to terms with the constant dispiriting discovery that there is always more hill."
That was the regular blogger's responsibility. Should have left lesson plans for the sub.
How Craig still finds rain lyrics baffles me
He said in the comments once that he repeats them, but tries not to do the sme ones twice in a season.
I feel like I just learned the truth about Santa
I had him up to the house one time
And we was having a real good time
Then he went and lain
His Saddle in the rain
Your lips lose me, your eyes move me, colder than the rain
Your arms hold me, your body folds me deep again
Run with me, run with me, colder than the rain
Run with me, run with me, colder than the rain
No one understands the heartache
No one feels the pain
No one ever sees the tears
When you're crying in the rain
When you're crying in the rain
Crying in the rain
No you didn’t.
If he left off the “in Boston” part he’d have a bit of a rhyme going.
Once the rain starts fallin'
On my face (on my face)
You won't see (you won't see, ah)
A single trace (a single trace)
But the tears I'm cryin' (I'm cryin')
Because of you I'm cryin' (because of you)
Don't want you to see me cry
Let me go, let me go, let me go
I can honestly say I’ve never once, since Craig started doing it, paid attention to the rainy day lyrics thing, or made an effort to figure out the song. Not for any specific reason, mind you. I just see the musical notes and slide right past to the next section.
I saw you (and him)
Walking in the rain
You were holding hands
And I'll never be the same
Tossing and turning, another sleepless night
The rain crashes against my window pane
Jumped into my car, didn't drive too far
That moment I knew
I would never be the same
I saw you (and him)
Walking in the rain
You were holding hands
And I'll never be the same
This hit my inbox at 7:03. You are fired
It usually hits my inbox minutes before I wake up, and when I picked up my phone and saw no notification, my first thought was "the sub isn't as much of an early bird I guess." Welcome Bill, and I appreciate that you've also got an employee giving parenthetical asides. You've already nailed the usual vibe.
I'm a west coast weirdo who is awake at 4am, so for once I was ahead of the game. All good!
It's the little fault slippages that wake you people at 4 AM. Stop trying to take credit for it
6 am! Or as I call it, prime time!
Time to check the shabbos stove to see if it kept the shrimp scampi warm for breakfast.
Sleep in man, Craig is a chronic insomniac.
In fairness, just because Craig gets up at 4 am or whenever doesn't mean Bill should have to do the same. But if he's aiming to top Craig by doing it at 6 am, I guess he's game for that challenge.
In any event, welcome Bill!
Because I guess it wasn't as clear in pixels as it was in my brain, I was saying it in a lighthearted manner. I don't care when specifically it publishes, I'll read it whenever.
It was a good run. It wasn't a bad run. He had some good days here. Actually, I guess not so much.
I enjoyed it, but Acuna is 25.
Well, I'm just glad to find out the explanation is a typo and not my old-man CRS disease making me unable to remember a 16 year old getting All-Star nods and post-season awards....
We’re used to typos. I think interpreting them is part of the allure.
No problem, again I enjoyed the post.
Don't sweat it Bill. Craig has gotten us so familiar with typo's most of us don't even notice them anymore.
As a Pottstown ex-pat, I was certain Danilo would make it into town and just fade away. He could have strolled right up route 100 in the dead of night, lived for months out of fast food dumpsters and slept in any one of 100 vacant buildings.
Well done, substitute! Please don’t give up on us kids even though some of us may occasionally light fires in the trash can in the back of the classroom.
Nice job but I need more Dane Dunning weirdness with my morning coffee please
I for one welcome our new suburban Philadelphian overlord. But you have to up your rainout poetry game.
I think that while no one is going to say the Mets are good again, they seem to be relaxing enough now that we are getting some good games from a lot of people who might still be around in 2024. Plus wins over contenders are always fun.
Feeling ever more like the "trade old pitchers for prospects and foot some of the bill" idea was a good one. Sorry that Max is gone for the playoffs - assuming the Rangers get in, that is - but a part of me is thinking "maybe we are better off not running him back for another season." A big part of me.
Yeah, it's looking more and more like Max will be going into the Hall with a Curly W on his cap. Not that I mind that or anything.
Dollars to donuts (what is that exchange rate these days?) he goes without any team represented. CYAs in both Detroit and Washington suggest that we'll get the Roy Halladay result.
Unless he wins a WS with another team, I'm thinking that might tip him into a W cap. (Also 2 CY's with Washington vs. 1 w DET). I know he'll try to pitch next year, but he may have to convert to a reliever if he's going to stick around longer than that. So we might only have to wait 7 years to find out.
Would I put money on it? Yeah, maybe five bucks. Or a dozen donuts.
Where do you get your donuts for less than $0.50 each? The day-old section at Dunkin? :)
Yep. Actually late-afternoon at Dunkin.
I know I'm old because I remember the days when Dunkin' Donuts actually made the donuts at the shops rather than a commissary.
I wish he'd be going in with the Old English D on his hat but the W seems more likely.
I think the bigger debate is will Verlander go in as an Astro or a Tiger?
I would not put money on that one--at least not at this point in the 2023 season.
I did not scroll down far enough before posting my own screed on this matter.
Seems like a pretty straightforward decision on the Hall's part. Scherzer has more Wins, more innings, and more success with Washington than with any other team, though to be fair it's only 10 more Wins and ~200 more IP than for Detroit.
Verlander is kind of an interesting case. He has vastly more time with Detroit than anyone else (over 2500 IP and 183 Wins there, compared to 700 IP and 66 Wins as an Astro), but he won 2 CYAs and 2 World Series with Houston, while winning the CYA and the MVP with Detroit. His postseason record before last year, especially in the WS, was not very good either, part of the reason he didn't win a ring as a Tiger.
By rights, in my mind, he should go into Cooperstown with a gothic D on his cap, but I could see his personal and team success and recency bias causing him to want to go in with a Houston cap.
It's the ultimate longevity vs. quality argument. Reggie Jackson famously went in as a Yankee despite having a lot more time in Oakland (about twice as many ABs) and for that matter, more success there (1 MVP, 3 championships vs. 2 WS and only one top-5 finish in the MVP with NYY), but his case was not as pronounced as Verlander's is, I don't think.
Thoughts?
I know there were a few pointed comments from JV about the Tigers training staff and how they handled him when he was hurt and how different it was in Houston.
If he had won a WS in Detroit I think it's a slam dunk case for the D. I'm not sure now.
Why do you hate fun? But seriously – he also won (his only, so far) world championship and threw two no hitters in DC. I’m with Laura on this one.
And Halladay made his only post-season appearance -- and threw a post season no hitter! -- in Philly. But he has a blank cap.
Plus, I don't see Mad Max as being particularly sentimental about any particular organization.
Less than half his career and half of his wins were in Washington. He has made the playoffs with - so far - four different organizations.
But we can compromise: let's induct him wearing a D'backs cap!
I don't know where you live, but I'm gonna find out. [Just kidding.]
[Sort of.]
Johns Creek. Atlanta suburbs. Pretty near the AAA team in Gwinnett. Come down and I'll treat you to a MiLB game and let you cry into a Pontoon Brewing Co beer lamenting the horrors of the Gnats.
Does the player get a voice in the hat, or is the selection made only by the Hall? Halladay was inducted posthumously, so obviously didn't get a say in the matter, and I don't know if he would've had a say even if alive.
The player picks but the Hall can override that pick. I believe that rule was put in place after Tampa paid Wade Boggs to announce that he wanted to be inducted as a Devil Ray.
IIRC, Halladay had made his desire known including to his wife. I'm too lazy to look up the news stories that were published.
Erica Scherzer is still on the board of our local DC animal rescue shelter, so add that to the tea leaves in favor of a Curly W in Cooperstown.
Erica Scherzer is a badass and a goddamn national treasure and an awesome follow on the socials. I'd take even a broken-down and ready to retire Max back on the Nats just to have her back in town.
So you start off making a "teachers are lazy" joke. Yeah, see y'all in 3 weeks.
Not all teachers. Subs. In junior high (60 years ago) we had a sub for our science teacher. She walked in, frowned, picked up a yardstick, slammed it down on the desk of a guy in the first row and said “no one is going to give me any trouble, right?” She then went to her desk, sat down and glared at us for an hour without saying another word.
My wife was *highly* pissed off earlier this week. She teaches elementary school and they had an in-service day where the regular teachers did some training while they brought in subs for the kids. She, as usual, prepared detailed sub plans ... absolutely none of which were used and the kids went nuts and the room was left trashed.
Ugh that's awful to go to all that work and then have it be ignored.
I've subbed and might start again, given my retirement and interest in getting out of the house. Places around here are paying $200 a day, some in MN a little more. The classroom management stuff scares me most.
I feel for today's teachers. Based upon the horror stories teachers have told me...I would start on a Monday and be fired or in jail by noon.
I can tell how the day went by what drink my wife asks me to pour. Tea or perhaps a glass of wine and its been fine. A nice cocktail and it has been challenging. Straight tequila? Look out.
Ha! I have no doubt that is true. We are great friends with a few teachers (and a couple of administrators). The stories they tell are hard to believe.
My wife always hates taking days off for just that reason. She says it's almost more work no NOT go in, because she needs to make detailed lesson plans and provide notes about particular students' needs/issues and and make sure things are organized so the sub can find them and OMG just writing all this crap is kind of exhausting so I see what she means. I don't think she's even had a sub just eschew those plans and mail it in like that though. That sucks.
Yeah, sometimes you are sick and you have no choice. But a training day when they are pulled from the classroom because administration wants to demo something new or - god forbid - have a team building activity? Ouch!
In grade school we had a horrible sub one Friday, she was about 5 foot nothing, pinched white face, red hair, a permanent frown, and her name was Mrs. Millington. Ugh.
It turned out she passed away the weekend after we had her and when informed on Monday one of the boys on the class immediately said "well *I* didn't do it! I have an alibi!"
In high school I still remember 2 consecutive subs in my calculus class. The first one was a very nice old lady but she'd had algebra at most and was out of her depth, so we had one of the students run us through the problems on the board and we were okay, but did tell our regular teacher that the sub didn't know much math when she got back.
So two weeks later we had a different sub. He was a younger guy, wore his long hair in a ponytail and a tie with his nice shirt, and walked in and wrote his name on the board. He turned to the class and saw us all eyeballing each other and asked what was up, and one of my classmates hesitantly raised a hand and when recognized tried to delicately inquire about the new teacher's qualifications (or as delicate as a high school kid can get when trying to be polite but wanting to know if a grown up is competent). He chuckled and said "don't worry, I know my calculus." And he was very good!
Clearly Mrs. Fick talked to someone before her second trip to make sure we got a sub with a bit more math background which was much appreciated. 🙂
Geez.
I used to work with a guy - *for* him really, since he was in charge of business development for the little R&D firm I worked for and I was just an Applications Engineer - but he seemingly always had a better story than you about whatever was being talked about.
Your neighbor had an iguana? He had a neighbor who had an Emperor penguin for a pet. You survived a close call in a car accident? His wife maneuvered their Dodge Caravan to safety when the engine literally dropped out of the engine compartment on the highway. Your family had connections? His dad served under Patton in WWII and knew Haile Selassie from when he was stationed in Ethiopia. Stuff like that. He was never a jerk about it. He just always had something better than you. Or at least better than me.
Anyway, substitute teachers: He grew up around DC in the 1970s because his dad was a general in the army, and one day his HS chemistry class gets a sub: JOE THEISMANN. Not yet a superstar, he was already the starting QB for the Redskins, and all the boys in class (at least) knew it.
To his credit, he actually tried teaching for a while. I don't know how well he knew chemistry, but he was an Academic All American in addition to his football accolades in college, so he was a smart enough guy to give it a go. But eventually all the boys in the class talked him into taking them out to the football field and throwing passes.
That's a great story! I wonder why JOE THEISMANN would need to sub when he was already a starting QB. Well, he did get divorced twice ... and when he started with the then-Redskins (sorry, Craig!), he would have been making only around 25K a year in the late 70's (equivalent of 120K today).
PS: I had a mentor at my law firm who was like your guy. Always could and did one-up everyone. It became a running joke with the rest of us.
Everybody had offseason jobs in those days. He was probably still making something close to the league minimum ($9000) in the first couple years of his career, which was not much.
He was probably making more than that. He had turned down the Dolphins' offer of 55K over 3 years a number of years before. Instead, he went with the to the CFL for 50K per year, according to Wikipedia. He wouldn't have gone to the Reds for the league minimum. But you're right, everybody in the NFL had to have side jobs. Things got a little better only after the 1974 strike and the court decision that struck down the Rozelle Rule.
I had forgotten about him pioneering the J.D. Drew Route to the pros. ;-)
Maybe he figured his high school subbing gigs would all degenerate into throwing passes to kids in lieu of being in the classroom anyway, so he would effectively get paid to do training? I have no idea. Or maybe he was just frugal. Who knows? FWIW, I don't think my boss was lying.
I refer to those types of people as "topper." A lot of times to their face because it's so damn annoying. For example, "topper, can't you simply allow a person to tell their story without having to one up or otherwise top them?" Of course, I've never had a direct report who was a topper. That certainly adds a wrinkle to it.
I bet you have never made a joke about any person anywhere!
You mean he never laughed at a joke
Today's lesson, class, is how to read critically and tell the difference between a JOKE and a TROPE, which is a literary device used to create a mental picture that helps shape a story.
Please turn to page 69 in your textbooks and (silently!) read this article.
Yes, you too, Mr. Dover: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TeasingTheSubstituteTeacher
Heh heh... He said 69
I know everyone always says "Nice!" But I'm going to throw out an "Up top, my brother!" and see if anyone else knows what I mean.
Ah, TVTropes. The place that heard about everyone going down Wikipedia rabbit holes and went, "Hold my beer."
Glad you're here Bill (Mr. Baer? Despite being in the internet for who knows how long now, I still never know how to address people that I haven't actually met in person. Bill seems too informal, but Mr. Baer seems wrong as well.)
Mr. Bill was RIGHT THERE. (“Nooooooooo!”)
Mr. Calcaterra always takes us to 7-Eleven and buys us Slurpees. Just so you know. (Welcome, Bill!)
PS It seems fitting that Mike Rizzo got extended on the same night that Jackson Rutledge became the 17th consecutive Nationals starter (0-11, 6 no decisions) to fail to win his debut. (The last one who did? Stephen Strasburg.) As Bill notes, Rizzo has done relatively well in trades - but the team’s current record on drafting and player development is abysmal. Yesterday’s announcement came with some pretty serious “things are going to be different now“ energy, but you will forgive me if I am skeptical.
PPS Full disclosure: I was completely unaware of the whole manhunt drama – until I saw the photo of all the police gathering for what basically looked like a “team picture“ after the capture. The only thing that was missing was a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.
They had a banner, but the dog chewed it.
I didn't think Rutledge was as bad as the box score might indicate last night.
You know that scene in Bull Durham where Crash Davis talks about the difference between hitting .250 and .300, and how it's one hit a week? In that speech he mentions a gork, a flair, a groundball with eyes, and a dying quail, and I think the Pirates checked all those boxes in the first inning.
Granted, Rutledge wasn't good, but it felt like maybe he should have only given up 4 or 5 runs rather than 7.
He wasn’t terrible, but he wasn’t good. I was also mystified/irked that they let him go 90 pitches down 7-0 when Qorbin got pulled Monday after 100 pitches with two outs in the 6th and a FOUR RUN LEAD. If we are going to exhaust the bullpen, let’s do it for the young guys, not the idiot making $10K+ per pitch.
Some TJ Friedl wikipedia info: no periods in TJ, and his full name is Terry Lee Friedl. Further proof that the world is falling apart.
Nice job Bill.
I live just outside of Norristown, and our church is 20 minutes away in Phoenixville, where he went late Saturday night, so the church took some extra precautions Sunday morning, like most people in the area. I finally got around to fixing the lock on our back door, for example, which had not worked in, or mattered for, several months.
People were posting about it online, and while it was a little scary to have to wonder where he'd turn up next - he had a van, after all - I don't think it's fair to say that the cops screwed this up. We're conditioned with TV shows and movies to think that cops can just pull video or check fingerprints or get a report of a credit card transaction or numbered bills being used and the whole thing ought to be wrapped up in half an hour. Maybe an hour, tops.
But real life is messy, and looking for one guy, who now has a car, is not easy or straightforward. He did the things escaped convicts do in movies, stealing a car, clothes, a weapon, asking former friends for help, etc. and people reported what they heard or saw and he was apprehended in a few days. Not having access to money limited his ability to run and having thousands of people constantly talking about him online meant that we knew what he looked like and he was never far from our minds. The cops followed the tips they got and found him. Maybe not as efficiently as we might have liked, but the system worked.
I think people have no idea how large an area is that has a radius of 20 miles (and then he was found way outside that). Think how often it takes days when a little kid wanders less than a mile from a campsite.
Oooh oooh! I know! It's approximately 1,257 square miles
I knew somebody would say this!
Gotta let the sub know that he's got one ally in the room
I am sure lots of people in our anti-math country wonder how you can get square miles into a circle.
Duh, you cut the corners off.
Oh man, he said BRAVES instead of ATLANTA. Craig definitely isn’t here. :)
you need to say "Barves" every time someone says the other word, it's in the CoC constitution someplace
I'm pretty sure I've seen and made the Barves variation enough that it's now just how it comes out. Looks good in all caps too. BARVES
Love is when your web dictionary accepts that spelling as correct.
I said the name of the Nats’ insurrectionist sympathizer lefty last night and my phone spelled it “Qorbin.” My work here is done.
I may be late to the party, but I assume it is plural of "barfs"?
In my little corner of the internet, when a team is a hot mess they get some variation. So Cubs became Cubes, Atlanta became Barves, we had LOLMETS and for football fans there were the Detroit Loins. Obviously after winning the NLEast they aren't technically Barvesing, but it is now a handy substitute for the out of favor actual name, and I guess one could argue they are Barvesing by not adopting a new moniker. (I had a lot of time to think about this on my walk this morning, no wonder Craig is doing this trip!)
I also think to some extent it was one of those oops typos but now it's kind of funny things.
This was my first encounter with the term "Barve...." https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/A_Barve_Like_That:_The_Tale_of_Boba_Fett
Dammit another one I missed!
Is the correct plural BARVES or BARFS??
I just looked it up in my Funk & Wagnalls and it looks like both are acceptable and up to the writer which they prefer. (Nothing has aged me in this comment section like that sentence.)
No Mr Baer, I’m not her twin sister Bridgette…
I haven’t had the heart to look up how many of the Guardians’ losses are courtesy of the bullpen. Whew… I sure hope we spend the off-season signing some guys decent free agents that we can trade next summer for more middle infield prospects…