Happy Birthday–February 27

Walter Briggs (1877)
Cy Perkins (1896)
Hilton Smith (1907)
Bill Capps (1919)
Buck Elliott (1919)
Johnny Pesky (1919)
Connie Ryan (1920)
John Wockenfuss (1949)
Ron Hassey (1953)
Greg Cadaret (1962)
Pete Smith (1966)
Matt Stairs (1968)
Willie Banks (1969)
Craig Monroe (1977)
Anibal Sanchez (1984)
Denard Span (1984)

Walter Briggs was involved in the ownership of the Detroit Tigers from 1920-1952, becoming sole owner in 1935.

Hilton Smith was a star pitcher in the Negro Leagues from 1931-1950.  Some observers considered him the equal of, if not better than, Satchel Paige.

Bill Capps was a third baseman who played in the minors for twenty years, fifteen of them at Class A or below.

Buck Elliott was an outfielder who played in the minors for fourteen years, all but one of them at Class A or below.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–February 27

A look back

So, I originally thought I was going to be doing a FKB in November, and started writing something up.  Then, someone else did one, and I sort of forgot about it, and now I’m up for reals.  But, since I wrote up a bit of a post a few months ago, I though it’d be interesting to see how things have changed in the past three months.  This was a pretty enlightening exercise for me, seeing how much things have changed in what seems like such a short period of time.  Then again, to a 2 year old, 3 months is a pretty substantial chunk of his life, so maybe I shouldn’t be quite so surprised.  To try to make it clearer which section is from which time, I put what I wrote in November in normal font, and today’s in italics.

(As a background, we have two boys; one is 4.5, and the other just turned 2 in January.)

Then vs. Now

Then: In general, they are both great kids.  The older one is amazingly helpful to us and his brother, and rarely does much to cause any big problems.  Of course there are things that could be better (still having frequent accidents and lying are the two biggest), but he’s always been such an easy kid to deal with.  I see how he acts compared to his classmates in preschool, and am constantly amazed at how mature he acts.

Now: It took a very long time to get to this point, but the frequent accidents from our 4-year-old seem to be mostly done.  In November he was still having accidents at least 3-4 days per week at school, but today it almost never happens.  I had always hoped we could wait this out, and turns out we did.  As for the lying, that also seems to have been a bit of a phase.  I think he figured out at some point that he could sometimes get away with not telling the truth, and was sort of testing it out for a while.

Then: However, lately we’ve been having a lot of difficulty with our almost 2-year old.  Whenever he gets bored, or we aren’t paying attention to him, he acts out.  That includes throwing things, dumping everything from a bookshelf onto the floor, intentionally hurting his older brother, just general crappy kid stuff.

Now: This seems to have mostly passed as well.  He still certainly has his momentary tantrums, but they are now far less often, and far less destructive.  His newest move is to pour his (or his brother’s) cup of water out on the floor or table.  Certainly annoying to have to clean up, but not that terrible a thing to do.

Then: Plus, bedtime has become a huge problem, which I could believe is the cause of these issues, or an effect of the same phase.  As recently as 2-3 weeks ago, bedtime with the young one was so easy.  We’d read him a book, lay him in bed, turn on his music box, and he’d go to sleep.  Easy as pie.  Then, for whatever reason, everything changed.  Instead of going to sleep, he would open his door, bang the door against the wall, and yell.  There’s a baby gate in front of his door, so he can’t get out, but he sure can be a huge pain.  We had already put up the little door stoppers that attach onto the hinge of the door, so that he couldn’t actually hit it into the wall.  Well, he managed to push the door hard enough to break a hole in the hollow door, which then allowed him to break a large hole in the drywall with the door handle.  Good times on that one.

Now: We’ve adjusted bed time regimens, and it has certainly helped.  Rather than leaving right after reading him a book, we stay with him for a while.  The downside is we now end up laying in his room for 20-30 minutes most nights, waiting for him to fall asleep.  It still beats holes getting punched into the wall, but I’d rather not be spending that much time sitting in there, waiting for him to finally go down.  I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to keep improving this part of our day-to-day routine, and hopefully getting where we can leave while he’s still awake.

Then: I’m pretty sure these bedtime tantrums will pass (hey look, I was right!), but I worry a bit about how we are dealing with it.  It seems like between my wife and I, there is always at least one of us that has been stretched to (or past) our limits.  That leads to too much yelling, too much anger, and too much escalation, which of course never helps the situation.  When we’re both available, we do a pretty good job of tagging the other one out when we see that they’re in too deep, but that’s of course not always possible.  Dealing with this, along with a ton of extra duties at work, have stretched us both pretty thin.  It’s almost the end of the semester (my wife and I are both professors), so I can at least see the end in sight.  But while we’re in it, I know I’ve been too quick to anger, and I don’t like the way things go after that.

Now: This is still an issue, but we’re getting better at it.  The triggers have changed, but I still feel like we don’t deal with our emotions as well as we could.  We’ve both been frustrated to no end by both kids just flat out ignoring us lately.  Having to say everything over and over just eventually drains me, and leads to poor results for everyone.  My wife and I are both making a big conscious effort to get more/better sleep, and I feel like this is helping.  If we can keep up this better sleep schedule, hopefully we’ll be able to keep ourselves from getting quite so overwhelmed.

 

Well, I feel like I’ve rambled on enough, and hopefully others will find this retro account interesting, too.  For me, writing this all out helps me remember a bit better that, whatever is going on with the kids now is temporary.  For better or worse, things will change.

Alessia Cara – Here

I like this song quite a bit. It's a little forced in the second verse (you can just say you don't like the party and would rather be hanging out with people you enjoy, no need to put on the pretense of discussing Super Important Stuff), but the vibe is nice, her voice is solid, and it sorta kinda brings trip-hop back into the Top 40 for a couple weeks.

2 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 102 votes, average: 8.50 out of 10 (2 votes, average: 8.50 out of 10)
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Friday Music Day – It Was My Lover.

I was listening to Currents by Tame Impala the other day, as I tend to do with some frequency (it was my favorite album last year, after all). "The Less I Know the Better" finished, and then... it came on.

"Past Life" would probably be annoying enough, what with its ham-fisted spoken word and merely "okay" chorus, but then there are those super pitch shifted vocals and the absolute stinker "It was my lover" line (at least that one's good for a laugh). The song is terrible.

It got me thinking - there are plenty of albums that I enjoy that have a song or two that I dislike, but not many albums that I truly love that have a one star song. I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

So, what say you? Do you have an album that you absolutely adore, but with a song that you absolutely loathe?

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Forty-three

MINNESOTA 10, CHICAGO 4 IN CHICAGO

Date:  Thursday, September 9.

Batting stars:  Jimmie Hall was 3-for-5 with a two-run homer (his twentieth) and a stolen base (his tenth), scoring twice.  Sandy Valdespino was 3-for-4 with a double and a run.  Rich Rollins was 2-for-5 with two runs and an RBI.

Pitching stars:   Jim Kaat pitched 6.2 innings, giving up three runs on five hits and one walk with three strikeouts.  Al Worthington struck out three in 2.1 innings, giving up an unearned run on four hits and one walk.

Opposition stars:  Ron Hansen was 1-for-4 with two runs and an RBI.  Jim Hicks was 1-for-1 with a double and a run.  Smoky Burgess was 1-for-1 with a double and an RBI.

The game:  The Twins scored once on a sacrifice fly in the first and turned five singles into three runs in the second to take a 4-0 lead.  The White Sox got on the board in the fifth to make it 4-1 but the Twins got two in the sixth on Kaat's single-plus-error to take a commanding 6-1 lead.  The White Sox never got closer than four runs after that.

Of note:  Zoilo Versalles was 2-for-5 with a run and an RBI.  Tony Oliva was 1-for-4 with a double, scoring once and driving in two.  Don Mincher was 0-for-4.

Record:  The win made the Twins 89-54 and increased their lead over the White Sox to seven games.

Notes:  Oliva's average remained .315...Valdespino again played left in place of Bob Allison...The two game sweep of the White Sox in Chicago pretty much took care of the pennant race, as the Twins led by seven games with only nineteen games left.

1965 Rewind: Game One Hundred Forty-four

MINNESOTA 8, BOSTON 5 IN BOSTON

Date:  Friday, September 10.

Batting stars:  Zoilo Versalles was 1-for-4 with a double, a walk, and a stolen base (his twenty-first), scoring once and driving in three.  Jerry Kindall was 1-for-2 with a double and a walk, scoring once and driving in two.  Tony Oliva was 2-for-5 with two doubles and a stolen base, his eighteenth.

Pitching star:  Jim Merritt struck out eight in 3.2 scoreless innings of relief, giving up one hit.

Opposition stars:  Tony Conigliaro was 1-for-4 with a home run (his twenty-eighth) and three RBIs.  Lee Thomas was 2-for-2 with a walk and two runs.  Jay Ritchie struck out three in three shutout innings, giving up one hit and two walks.

The game:  Versalles hit a two-out three-run double in the second to give the Twins a 3-0 lead.  The Red Sox got an unearned run in the bottom of the second, but doubles by Oliva and Don Mincher produced a two-run Minnesota third that made it 5-1.  It was 5-2 going to the sixth, when Kindall had an RBI double and Jimmie Hall came up with a two-run single to make it 8-2.  Conigliaro hit a two-run homer and Frank Malzone had an RBI double in the bottom of the sixth to cut the lead to 8-5.  That was as good as it got, however, as the last nine Red Sox batters went out.

Of note:  Hall was 1-for-4 with a walk and two RBIs.  Bob Allison was back in the lineup, going 1-for-4 with a walk and a stolen base, his tenth.  Jim Perry pitched 5.1 innings, giving up five runs on seven hits and three walks with four strikeouts.

Record:  The win made the Twins 90-54.  Chicago lost to New York, dropping them into a tie for second with Baltimore, eight games back.

Notes:  Oliva raised his average to .316...Jay Ritchie pitched for the Red Sox from 1964-65, for Atlanta from 1966-67, and for Cincinnati in 1968.  He made only two starts in his career, both for the Reds.  He was a decent reliever, going 8-13, 8 saves, 3.49, 1.36 WHIP in 291.1 innings (167 appearances).  He later became a scout for the Braves.  He passed away in January of 2016.  Of interest to no one but myself, he has the same name as my nephew.

Happy Birthday–February 26

Grover Alexander (1887)
Rip Collins (1896)
Preacher Roe (1916)
Johnny Blanchard (1933)
Don Lee (1934)
Hiromitsu Kadota (1948)
Jack Brohamer (1950)
Rick Wieters (1955)
Kelly Gruber (1962)
Scott Service (1967)
J. T. Snow (1968)
Mark DeRosa (1975)

Hiromitsu Kadota is third on the Japanese professional baseball home run list with 567.

The father of Matt Wieters, Rick Wieters pitched in the minor leagues for five years, reaching AA.

Right-hander Donald Edward Lee pitched for Minnesota in 1961 and the first part of 1962.  His father, Thornton Lee, was also a major league pitcher (both Lees surrendered home runs to Ted Williams, the only time a player has hit a home run against a father and son).  Don Lee was born in Globe, Arizona, attended the University of Arizona, and signed with Detroit as a free agent in 1956.  He pitched very well in the Sally League that year, and was in Detroit in April of 1957.  He started the season in the starting rotation, but lost his spot in mid-May, was used sporadically, and then sent back to the minors.  Lee was in AAA Charleston the next two years and pitched very well, winning 14 games each year and posting an ERA of 3.20 in 420 innings.  After the 1959 season, Lee was traded to Milwaukee, but the Braves left him unprotected and he was chosen by Washington in the Rule 5 draft.  He pitched well for Washington, working mostly in relief until late July, when he entered the rotation.  In 1961, Lee came to Minnesota with the team and was used mostly as a "swing man", with ten starts scattered throughout the season.  In both years he pitched well, posting ERAs in the mid-threes.  He started 1962 in the Twins' rotation, but started poorly, and was traded to the Los Angeles Angels in mid-May for Jim Donohue.  He was an Angel until June 1 of 1965.  He was used both as a starter and a reliever, and pitched well through 1964.  He was pitching out of the bullpen in 1965, and was off to a poor start, when he was traded to Houston.  Much of Lee's time with Houston was spent in the minors; he made seven appearances in the big leagues in 1965 and nine in 1966.  He was sold to the Cubs in June of 1966, did poorly in sixteen appearances, and was sent to the minors.  He made seven minor league appearances in 1967, pitching in the Cubs and Giants organizations, and then his career was over.  At last report, Don Lee was living in Tucson, Arizona.

Half-Baked Hall: 1944-1945

1944 and 1945 were different years for MLB, with most of the stars joining the service. However, a lot of old stars with decrepit bodies were retiring at the same time.

See below for your write-up assignments. Random.org once again believes only Scot should write about the Senators. I gave some of you two assignments. If you feel you can't do them, let me know as soon as possible.

Blurb Date: March 7th

Final Ballot

Red Faber: 71%
Wally Schang: 41%
Joe Sewell: 47%

New Hitters

Dolph Camilli (yickit)
Harlond Clift (bhiggum)
Joe Cronin (Scot)
Tony Cuccinello (DPWY)
Jimmie Foxx (CanofCorn)
Babe Herman (daneekasghost)
Bob Johnson (Beau)
Chuck Klein (philosofer)
Al Simmons (New Britain Bo)
Lloyd Waner (nibbish)
Paul Waner (nibbish)

New Pitchers

Paul Derringer (bhiggum)
Willis Hudlin (DPWY)
Van Mungo (Beau)
Lon Warneke (yickit)

Stats