Happy Birthday–March 4

Red Murray (1884)
Jeff Pfeffer (1888)
Dazzy Vance (1891)
Lefty O'Doul (1897)
Buck Canel (1906)
Clyde McCullough (1917)
Mel Queen (1918)
Leo Righetti (1925)
Cass Michaels (1926)
Bob Johnson (1936)
Jack Fischer (1939)
Danny Frisella (1946)
Tom Grieve (1948)
Harry Saferight (1949)
Sam Perlozzo (1951)
Mark Wagner (1954)
Jeff Dedmon (1960)
Tom Lampkin (1964)
Giovanni Carrera (1968)
Dave Stevens (1970)
Mark Wegner (1972)

Born in Argentina, Buck Canel broadcast major league baseball to Latin America for over four decades, calling forty-two World Series.

The father of Dave Righetti, Leo Righetti played in the minors for twelve years, eight of them in AAA.

Harry Saferight made it to the majors with Pittsburgh in 1979, but did not appear in a game.  He got to the on-deck circle three times, but each time the last out was made before he had a chance to bat.

St. Paul native Mark Wegner has been a major league umpire since 1998.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–March 4

Gordon Gano and The Lost Bayou Ramblers – Blister In The Sun

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHOPJZ3EilU
So, last week I happened to see one of my favorite cajun bands featuring Gordon Gano. It was probably the craziest show I've ever seen. This pales in comparison, but it's all you're going to get. This video was shot by a good friend as well. That's a weird thing when you search for something on the internet and select a random video only to discover a friend made it.

4 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 104 votes, average: 5.75 out of 10 (4 votes, average: 5.75 out of 10)
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Happy Birthday–March 3

John Montgomery Ward (1860)
Wee Willie Keeler (1872)
Ed Phelps (1879)
Tetsuya Yoneda (1938)
Paul Schaal (1943)
Rick Reed (1950)
Chuck Cary (1960)
Neal Heaton (1960)
Marvin Hudson (1964)
Scott Radinsky (1968)
Mike Romano (1972)
Matt Diaz (1978)
Jorge Julio (1979)

Tetsuya Yoneda is the second-winningest pitcher in Japanese professional baseball with 350 victories.

The Rick Reed whose birthday is today is the major league umpire since 1979, not the ex-Twin.

Marvin Hudson has been a major league umpire since 1999.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–March 3

LA Clippers @ Wolves. 7:10pm

Kevin Garnett was nice enough to buy 1,000 tickets to this game (would a segment of Twins fandom boo if Joe Mauer did something like this at Target Field?)

The Wolves are playing better since Pek, Martin, and Rubio have come back from injury. But tonight they will be without Pek (foot) and Martin (the flu) and missing Pek might be more of a thing because DeAndre Jordan has been in beast mode lately.

Lets hope for the best.

First Monday Book Day

A few thoughts.

Nebula Award nominees are out.  One pet peeve I have with SF/F awards is that so much is series-oriented.  This year 5 of the 6 nominees in the novel category are part of a series and one of them is book 7 in its series.  (To be fair, 2 of the nominees are the first book in the series) and so require an awful lot of someone who uses these awards as reading list fodder.  All that aside, I'm excited that The Three Body Problem was nominated.  I definitely plan to pick that one up at some point in the future, and I was always going to read Ancillary Sword given how much I liked the first book.

I read Player Piano as part of my ongoing passage through Kurt Vonnegut's novels.  It was pretty much as I remembered, not exactly what you think of when you think of Vonnegut, but so many of his consistent themes are right there from the very beginning.

I read some other stuff, but I'll save that for the comments.

Some good things that I found on the internet this month:

"Some Desperado" by Joe Abercrombie.  A short story title that should be read sarcastically.  It's a Western setting with a young woman trying to get away with the spoils of a robbery.

"Weary" by P.E. Garcia.  A quiet, but strong short story.  I'm not sure I can put my finger on why I liked this.  But I did.

"Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov.  The short story that became the first chapter of the novel by the same name.  I actually read this a few years ago and loved it.  But then I came across this reading of it by Alexsander Hemon and I got to listen to it again.  I love the initial description of the title character and his situation.