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February 12, 2013: I wanted to ask if his first name is “Fire”

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So, I helped Joe Morgan with his RCA cable problem last night. Turns out he showed up while I was at lunch, explained what he needed, assumed the other guy was wrong, brought it home and had to come back. My guy was totally right, though Morgan didn't admit this conversation had happened to me while we spoke. He was a nice guy and got bothered a lot by customers (there are a lot of Reds fans in town). I cut off a few people from bugging him, which he greatly appreciated. I did not bring up my views on baseball.

100 thoughts on “February 12, 2013: I wanted to ask if his first name is “Fire””

  1. .
    .
    The local baseball card shop owner showed me this absolutely beautiful photo, an 8"x10" B&W of "Wahoo" Sam Crawford doing some bat maintenance in his Detroit basement workshop. I'm glad I found the image online to share:

    2. I agree with strat, that's a great pic.
      edit: I'm not the baseball historian that some of you are and didn't know him from ty cobb, so his bio was fun to read.

      2. Be careful not to bite too hard, you never know where the plastic baby will show up.
        It hasn't happened to me, but I'm wondering etiquette when, while cutting a slice, the knife runs across the baby.

        1. once again, we just had 2 king cakes delivered to the office. we do business with some company in new orleans, and they send them about 3-4 per year. they send one to us, and another for one of our NY offices, though they use our address. that NY office doesn't actually do any real work with them though, so we just hold on to theirs for them.

          i've been baby-free, but that's mainly because i don't really eat any.

          1. We get at least three from one of our clients. All end up in the breakroom.
            This year's were a bit of a downer, the cream filling seemed a bit more like barely-sweetened lard or shortening. Not sure what that was about. Had to have several pieces over several days just to make sure.

        2. Sheenie baked three king cakes last night. Her father also usually ships up one. I've had the baby several times. Tonight we're eating Sheenie's king cake and Popeye's chicken.

            1. we have a Popeyes in the neighborhood. Haven't been yet, but I've been meaning to find an excuse. I loved me some Popeyes back in the day.

            2. After I saw this, I have been craving chicken, but I couldn't decide between wings and fried chicken, so I got both. I need to get my calories in, right?

  3. So, um... Pitchers and Catchers officially report today for the Twins, right? And nothing about it yet?

    2. Sorry, I was listening to Mike & Mike, and all they've talked about is an NFL team that missed the playoffs re-signing its mediocre quarterback.

  4. I think the one baseball view I would share with Mr. Morgan would be, "I think you were the greatest second baseman of all time."

    1. and the hilarious thing is, he spouts ignorance re: the statistics that prove he is the greatest second baseman of all time

        1. I did indeed tell him how much I loved footage of him as a player.

          He was back in today, so I talked to him again. My female co-workers suddenly wouldn't stop staring at him when I mentioned he was a HoFer.

    4. It was one thing to get rid of baseball/softball--they'd only been contested 4-5 times (about as often as Tug of War was contested as an olympic sport, but wrestling? I'd sooner get rid of any team sport than wrestling. Here's a rough list of how often each sport has been held at the summer Olympics:

      28 - Swimming
      28 - Gymnastics
      28 - Athletics
      28 - Fencing
      27 - Track cycling
      27 - Wrestling
      27 - Rowing
      26 - Diving
      26 - Water polo
      26 - Soccer
      26 - Shooting
      25 - Road cycling
      25 - Sailing
      25 - Weightlifting
      24 - Equestrian
      24 - Boxing
      23 - Modern pentathlon
      22 - Field hockey
      18 - Canoe/kayak (sprint)
      18 - Basketball
      15 - Archery
      15 - Tennis
      13 - Volleyball (indoor)
      12 - Handball
      12 - Judo
      8 - Synchronized swimming
      8 - Rhythmic Gymnastics
      7 - Canoe/kayak (slalom)
      7 - Table tennis
      6 - Badminton
      5 - Mountain biking
      5 - Volleyball (beach)
      4 - Trampoline
      4 - Taekwondo
      4 - Triathlon
      2 - BMX

      While I'm not the world's biggest modern pentathlon fan, I don't see why that should have to go, either. Surely if you're going to get rid of a hand-to-hand combat sport, Taekwondo or Judo ought to go before wrestling, right? I'd even remove boxing before wrestling. It's not even like it's a difficult sport to contest. It'd even make way more sense to remove soccer from the Olympics, since FIFA treats it as a second-rate tournament, basically a U23 world championship. Not to mention that soccer is much more logistically challenging to host than wrestling, given the number of venues required.

        1. If I understand correctly, rhythmic gymnastics doesn't count as one of the 25 core sports. FIG organizes all three of artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, and trampoline and in total they count as one of the 25 core sports. Similarly, diving, swimming, synch swimming, and water polo are all lumped together, as are the cycling events (road, track, bmx, mountain), the equestrian events (dressage, jumping, eventing), volleyball (beach and indoor), canoe (sprint and slalom), and wrestling (freestyle and greco-roman.)

        1. See above: I think trampoline is included because FIG organizes it, and it doesn't count as one of the 25 core disciplines.

          More concerning to me is the number of core disciplines that are taken up by racket sports--badminton, table tennis, and tennis each have their own governing body, so eliminating any one of those three would open up a spot for wrestling, whereas eliminating trampoline would not make room for wrestling. Similarly, Judo and Taekwondo each have their own organizing body, so they each take up a core discipline slot.

          Of course, if I was king of the world, I'd probably get rid of some of those sub-discipline events, like synch swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline (though trampoline at least fits with "higher" in "faster, higher, stronger"), BMX, beach volleyball.

      3. well, it's even worse. "Wrestling" is actually two very different sports, or events at least: Freestyle, and Greco-Roman. It's like lumping "Swimming" together with "Diving" and saying that it's one sport.

              1. Yeah, sorry for the confusion. I took this list, and imported it to Excel to come up with a rough count for each event, but the table is a little inconsistent so it turned out partially baked.

        2. Actually, the IOC does exactly that. FINA is the organizing body for swimming, diving, synch swimming, and water polo, so those four events all count as one "core" sport.

          1. so the solution is a strategic partnership between the governing bodies of wrestling, boxing, taekwondo and judo. And maybe baseball (hey, baseball fights!).

            1. Basically. You could reduce from 26 to 21 just by strategically combining wresting, boxing, taekwondo, and judo under one governing body, and tennis, badminton, and table tennis under one governing body.

              1. Then they can bring back baseball (with softball and cricket), tug-of-war, and two other disciplines.
                Rock climbing and scrambling?

        3. 52 different nations have had at least one wrestler win an Olympic medal -- 40 in Greco-Roman (contested almost every Olympiad 1896-2012) and 44 in Freestyle (almost every Olympiad 1904-2012).

  8. Just the history of the sport should have kept it in. I am all for sports where everyone has an opportunity to compete. You don't need special equipment (like a fencing foil, a horse, a bicycle, etc.) to compete in wrestling, just protective gear.

    1. I have similar tastes for Olympic sports. The less equipment, the better. I was actually surprised a bit how some of the more equipment-y events go back as far or nearly as far as wrestling, at least cycling, equestrian, and fencing.

        1. Not true. You need a hula hoop and a stick (baton? some damn thing) too.

          also, tell me with a straight face that the title "rhythmic gymnastics" doesn't make you think first of teh pr0n. And then make you feel dirty, because so many of the contestants are prepubescent girls.

  9. Well, good news and bad news-
    Good- The new work firewall doesn't bar me from the WGOM.
    Bad- All the gravatars are just showing image placeholders. Evidently those take up too much bandwidth. Boooooo!

  10. Interesting perspective on the state of the nation's high school education.

    I'd like to hear from more teachers about their thoughts on No Child Left Behind or education in general...seems like "teaching to the tests" isn't the best way to promote academic (or other types of) curiosity.

    1. I'm not a teacher, but my wife started substitute teaching this year since our kids are all in school, so I've heard some related stories.

      The story that is probably the most relevant to this comes from a one-week stint she had teaching algebra to 7th and 8th graders. Every single kid was getting an A or B for the year. Every. Kid. The regular teacher didn't use textbooks, allowed unlimited retakes on tests, and gave extra credit on homework. The test that my wife gave to the 7th graders, one kid passed with a 74%. No one else was over 60%. I don't think the teaching methods and the grades those kids were getting are preparing them for anything.
      I wish I could say that I thought this was a isolated incident, but I don't believe it is.

      1. as with every other profession, there are good teachers and bad ones.

        Grade inflation is endemic. My favorite story came from the Chronicle of Higher Ed a few years ago. Some twit from an Ivy League university justified Ivy grade inflation by arguing that their kids were all that much smarter than the kids in state schools, so of course the average grade should be high.

      2. When I was in college, my roommate asked me to help his sister with college algebra. She was an honor student in high school, but this was her third shot at college algebra and suffice it to say, she was not getting it. I tried to help her, but she literally could not solve an equation as easy as 3X-7=0. I tried and tried and tried. She could not figure it out. I finally said, "How in the world did you graduate from high school?" Not the most politically correct thing to say, but after explaining 20 times that you add 7 to each side and then divide each side by 3 to isolate X (or whatever the equation was) and having her just not be able to do that, I just had to ask.

            2. You do not even need to take algebra in high school.

              My wife is a great writer and was summa cum laude in college but can not do one lick of algebra.

            3. I was a Precalc TA for one semester at the UMN. The students that came to my office hours were like that.

  11. a kid on Jeopardy just trumped Cliff Clavin on the Final Jeopardy answer

    Spoiler SelectShow

    ROFL

    2. I hate it when athletes get into politics.
      Stick to the basketball at least until you retire. Unless the point is a better lottery pick.

      1. Hey, if the water torture is too forbidden zoney, I won't be offended if someone axes it. I just thought it was funny in a "watch delmon play the outfield" sort of awkward slapstick.

        1. Ok, clearly there's actually something there that I'm not seeing. Or you guys are taking this joak to new heights.

            2. Spoiler SelectShow

        2. My problem isn't with you. It's that danged Rubio thinking he can tell us how to run our country when he has no ideas on how to even help the Timberwolves.

              1. Have there been any shoe ads on tv with him playing basketball? Until I see one, I can't judge whether he's good at basketball.

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