Happy Birthday–October 9

Dave Rowe (1854)
Al Maul (1865)
Rube Marquard (1866)
Joe Sewell (1898)
Mike Hershberger (1939)
Joe Pepitone (1940)
Freddie Patek (1944)
Bob Moose (1947)
Steve Palermo (1949)
Brian Downing (1950)
Randy Lerch (1954)
Felix Fermin (1963)
Danny Mota (1975)
Brian Roberts (1977)
Mark McLemore (1980)
Jason Pridie (1983)

Steve Palermo was a major league umpire from 1977-1991, when he was shot and paralyzed while trying to prevent a robbery.  He became Supervisor of Umpires in 2000.

We would also like to wish a happy birthday to brianS' dad.

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First Monday Reading Day: Links and Stories

That's right, reading day. I haven't read a book in a two months. Having all of our books still packed makes it difficult to find the few I haven't yet read and more difficult still to contribute to DG's book exchange (see, still haven't forgotten).

Instead, I have been chipping away at the 3626 pages in Tor's short story bundle. 828 pages in and I discovered one thing: I detest short stories that are actually excerpts of books. Fortunately, after reading more about each book, I found that none of them interest me much. Still, it's frustrating to pulled into a story only to have it abruptly end. For the actual short stories, they have been mostly good. I'm not used to constantly having to figure out the world in which the story is set, so that has been a bit challenging. Not a bad thing, but different from what I am used to doing.

Along with many short stories is something else I have wanted to include here previously: links to longer-form writing on the web. Unfortunately, I don't read many in a month and the ones I do read I forget to save the link. Therefore, what follows is what I did remember to record over the past year along with some notes from each. Some of these are "long" in the twitter sense; you could read them in a few minutes. I just didn't want my list to be even shorter.

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Happy Birthday–October 8

Doc Crandall (1887)
Donie Bush (1887)
Ping Bodie (1887)
Wally Moses (1910)
Danny Murtaugh (1917)
Catfish Metkovich (1920)
Ed Kirkpatrick (1924)
Don Pepper (1943)
Paul Splittorff (1946)
Rick Stelmaszek (1948)
Enos Cabell (1949)
Jerry Reed (1955)
Mike Morgan (1959)
J. T. Bruett (1967)
Olmedo Saenz (1970)
Antoan Richardson (1983)
Cody Eppley (1985)

Right-hander Jerry Reed was drafted by the Twins in the eleventh round in 1973, but did not sign.

We would also like to wish E-6 a very happy birthday, and a very happy anniversary to Rhu_Ru's parents.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–October 8