For a month or so now, the recitation of Red Sox on the disabled list has taken a bit of time. Sage Stossel had a great op-ed drawing in last Sunday’s Boston Globe.
Now they are coming back. Matsuzaka, Martinez, Lowrie, Cameron, Buchholtz. Veriteck and Pedroia are still practicing fielding even with broken feet. This morning’s Globe headline:
Was last night a sign that things are turning around?
It is a miracle! The Sox go into the All-Star break only 5 games out of first and 3 out of second place in the American League East. Now every time a Sox player hops around a little or limps or shakes his wrist a little too long, I hold my breath. I think this cartoon from the Boston Globe Dirt Dogs blog says it all.
It can’t get worse, can it?
I woke up this morning to two surprising pieces of baseball news. First, Nomar Garciaparra signed a one day contract with the Red Sox so he could retire from baseball as a member of the team. Then, news that Willie Davis, Dodger centerfielder had died. Both were great ballplayers who were also complex personalities.
The Boston Globe story describes what happened.
Nomar Garciaparra, who for the better part of seven years was the face of the franchise before his shocking trade in 2004, has come home to the Red Sox.
At his request, the Red Sox today signed the 36-year-old to a minor-league contract at which point he announced his retirement from baseball during a press conference held at City of Palms Park. He was accompanied by his wife, Mia Hamm, and their twin daughters along with his father, Ramon.
“I was getting choked up then, I’m choked up now, and I’ve got the chills,” Garciaparra said.
“But to be able to have that dream come true, I just can’t put it into words what this organization has always meant to me,” an emotional Garciaparra said. “It’s my family, the fans — I always tell people Red Sox Nation is bigger than any nation out there. I came back home, and to be part of Red Sox Nation is truly a thrill.”
During his prime, all the young women I worked with wanted to meet him. He was “Nomah”. I don’t know which was more devastating: His trade or his marriage to Mia Hamm.
Tony Massarotti has a great piece on Garciaparra.
Most people who follow the Red Sox and the Boston media know much of the history that existed between Garciaparra and reporters, so let’s get this out there: I got along with him better than most, which is hardly to suggest that we’re best friends. We’re not. Garciaparra could be cold enough to walk right past you at a public appearance without acknowledging your existence, kind enough to walk across the room and shake your hand in the same setting. Most of the mistakes he made in Boston were because he did not know how to act, what to say, what to do. In many ways, he was a terrible fit for a place like Boston, where we ask a lot more questions than they do in Dodgertown, Wrigleyville or the Bay Area.
Why do you swing at the first pitch so much, Nomah? What happened on that throw, Nomah? Do you really like it here, Nomah?
Those of us who have always lived here and worked here accept that all as part of the deal. You take the bad with the good. For Garciaparra, it was all a needless reminder of everything that can go wrong, of the things Garciaparra spent far too much of his time thinking about.
As a result, most people saw him as a divisive force when he really wasn’t. Many remember the malcontent at the end of Garciaparra’s time in Boston more than the unbridled enthusiasm of his earlier years. Some see him as part of the problem more than part of the solution.
Remember: the Red Sox were a different team then and Fenway Park was a different place. Frustration had been building for more than 80 years. Lucchino and Co. were learning about Boston as much as we were learning about them, and, along with Pedro Martinez, Garciaparra was the biggest holdover and greatest symbol of a troubled, dysfunctional franchise that just couldn’t seem to get it completely right.
Ever.
Maybe Nomar was just as frustrated with all of that as you were.
Presumably, Garciaparra knows now that there are certain things he will never escape: the rejection of a four-year, $60 million deal that ultimately cost him about $25 million; the injuries to his wrist, legs and Achilles; the disputes with team doctor Arthur Pappas and, later, Lucchino; the never-ending suspicion of steroid use regardless of whether he ever failed any tests; the perpetual feud with the media; the trade that led to a world title; the fact that Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, once regarded as his peers, essentially went on to bigger things without him.
In the wake of all that, some of us choose to remember Garciaparra as a fascinatingly complex ballplayer who was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time, as someone who had trouble coping with relatively ordinary distractions, as someone whose intentions were generally good. At his best, he was a great baseball player. At his worst, he came off as ungrateful and impossible.
In the middle, he really wasn’t much different from anyone else.
And then there was Willie Davis who died at 69. To be honest, I didn’t know he was that close to my age when I was such a fan. That Dodger team: Koufax, Drysdale, Podres, Gilliam, Wills and Davis. I loved that team. That was back when I was a loyal Dodger fam – even after they left Brooklyn. That team won with pitching and speed.
The New York Times has his obituary today.
Frank McCourt, the owner of the Dodgers, said in a statement that Davis was “one of the most talented players ever to wear a Dodgers uniform.” Davis played 14 seasons for the Dodgers, on teams that were almost immediately the stuff of legend. Among his teammates were Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Maury Wills. His 31-game hitting streak in 1969 is still a team record. It was the longest streak in the majors since Dom DiMaggio’s 34 games in 1949 for the Boston Red Sox.
Davis holds six other Los Angeles Dodgers records, including hits (2,091), extra-base hits (585), at-bats (7,495), runs (1,004), triples (110) and total bases (3,094).
Davis lifetime batting average was .279, and he had a total of 398 stolen bases. He made it to the major leagues in 1960 and retired after the 1979 season.
Over his career, he played more than 2,200 games in center field, was a two-time All-Star and a three-time Gold Glove winner for his defense. He won World Series rings in 1963 and 1965, stealing three bases in Game 5 of the 1965 Series. On one steal, he had to crawl into second base after stumbling and falling.
…
William Henry Davis was born on April 15, 1940, in Mineral Springs, Ark. His family moved to Los Angeles, where he became a world-class track star at Roosevelt High School. He once ran a 9.5-second 100-yard dash and set a city record in the long jump.
The Dodgers signed him after he graduated in 1958. Playing the next year for the Reno Silver Sox, a Class C minor league team, he scored from first base on a single nine times in one season.
He made his debut with the Dodgers in 1960, and combined with Wills to dazzle the National League with speed. Some called Davis the second coming of Willie Mays. He had a career-high 42 stolen bases in 1964. Dodgers fans loved how his hat flew off when he ran.
He was, in many ways, like Nomar. Not a media favorite.
But he was a loner who sometimes chanted Buddhist mantras before and after games.
For all his speed and obvious ability, sportswriters sometimes questioned why Davis was not even better. Jim Murray, the syndicated sports columnist for The Los Angeles Times, suggested that Davis had tinkered with his batting stance too much.
“Willie, you see, did imitations,” Murray wrote. “The only way you could tell it wasn’t Stan Musial was when he popped up.”
I will remember Willie in centerfield and Nomar at short. Different teams and different eras, but two ballplayers who played hard, played well, and in the end just wanted to be known for their game. And it doesn’t really matter what other teams they played for because Willie is always a Dodger and Nomar is now always a Red Sox.
With the aging Celtics fading into an average team and snow on the ground outside my window, it is time to think about the Red Sox.
This was Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur (which is set in Maine) from February 12. Truck Day is when the equipment trucks load up at Fenway and head south. People actually go watch and cheer.
The Boston Globe wrote
Sorry Punxsutawney Phil and your six-more-weeks-of-winter prediction, but if you live in New England and are a fan of Red Sox, a sure sign of spring has arrived — Truck Day!
But today is the day pitchers and catchers report which is yet another sign of spring to come. A new season is always hopeful with new players and changes. I understand that the Sox are going to be more defensive this year. Just another thing to watch for as the season unfolds.
Will Dice-K stay healthy? Do we have a shortstop? Can Jacoby play left field? What will happen to Mike Lowell? Can Clay learn to pitch? Will Pap get his groove back? The answer to these questions and more as the season unfolds, but for now all things are possible.
I heard somewhere that President Obama gave himself a B or maybe it was a B- for his first year. Despite everything that we wished he would do but didn’t and that we wished would happen but hasn’t yet, I think that ends up about right. While President Obama was grappling with where to even begin to try to change things, it at least appeared that he and the family were having some fun and doing some normal family stuff. It is so much better to see the President and First Lady doing Halloween or doing a date night or getting ready to attend an event at their kids school than to see W. cutting brush or riding his bike.
So we should also have some fun looking back at the year. Last Sunday the Washington Post ran a long recap of the year by Dave Barry.
It begins
It was a year of Hope — at first in the sense
of “I feel hopeful!” and later in the sense of “I hope this year ends soon!”
It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result, Washington, rejecting “business as usual,” finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it, and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.
To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:
Bad news: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.
Good news: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.
Bad news: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.
Good news: A lot more people were tweeting.
Bad news: Ominous problems loomed abroad as — among other difficulties — the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.
Good news: They finally got Roman Polanski.
In short, it was a year that we will be happy to put behind us.
The year began with the inauguration
… during which history is made in Washington, where a crowd estimated by the Congressional Estimating Office at 217 billion people gathers to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated as the first American president ever to come after George W. Bush. There is a minor glitch in the ceremony when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., attempting to administer the oath of office, becomes confused and instead reads the side-effect warnings for his decongestant pills, causing the new president to swear that he will consult his physician if he experiences a sudden loss of sensation in his feet. President Obama then delivers an upbeat inaugural address, ushering in a new era of cooperation, civility and bipartisanship in a galaxy far, far away. Here on Earth, everything stays pretty much the same.
And so it goes, month by month. Here is a sample from from June
In political news, the Minnesota Supreme Court, clearly exhausted by months of legal wrangling, declares Al Franken the winner of “American Idol.” Meanwhile, the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, goes missing for six days; his spokesperson tells the media that the governor is “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” which turns out to be a slang term meaning “engaging in acts of an explicitly non-gubernatorial nature with a woman in Argentina.” The state legislature ultimately considers impeaching Sanford but changes its mind upon discovering that the lieutenant governor, who got into office through some slick legal maneuvering when nobody was paying attention, is Eliot Spitzer.
And August
California, in a move apparently intended to evade creditors, has its name legally changed to South Oregon.
In an alarming technological development, hackers shut down Twitter, leaving a desperate and suddenly vulnerable America with no way to find out what the Kardashian sisters are having for lunch. The Federal Emergency Management Agency urges the nation to “remain calm” and “use Facebook if you can.” Twitter service is eventually restored, but most of the estimated 875 million thoughts that went untweeted during the outage will never be recovered, making it the nation’s worst social-networking disaster ever.
Don’t forget September
… Obama, speaking on health care before a joint session of Congress, is rudely interrupted by Kanye West, who grabs the microphone and declares that Beyoncé has a better health-care plan. No, wait, sorry: The president is rudely interrupted by Republican congressman Joe Wilson, who shouts, “You lie!” Wilson later apologizes for his breach of congressional etiquette, saying, “I should have just mooned him.”
And in sports
In sports, the New York Yankees, after an eight-year drought, purchase the World Series. But the month’s big sports story involves Tiger Woods, who, plagued by tabloid reports that he has been hiking the Appalachian Trail with a nightclub hostess, is injured in a bizarre late-night incident near his Florida home when his SUV is attacked by golf-club-wielding Somali pirates.
Dave, I still miss reading you every Sunday in the Globe. You claim to have made up most of the column, but maybe it would have been more fun if it all really happened this way.
So the Phillies are off to a good start and I’ll be pulling for Pedro (the former Red Sox ace) to help the Phillies win tonight. There is a theory that Sox fans are watching the series hoping that the Phillies can beat the Yankees, that if the Phillies were playing the Angels we wouldn’t care so much. Could be true. But as Tony Mazzarotti wrote in today’s Boston Globe
The transformation of Rasheed Wallace is complete, the enemy of the people now serving as the man of the hour. As seamlessly as Wallace has joined the Celtics on the floor this season, he made a similarly fluid entry last night in his first home game at TD Garden.
In Boston, Rasheed now dresses in white.
“I didn’t know if the fans wanted to keep it personal and still call me those names or what,” Wallace mused in the wake of the Celtics’ 92-59 annihilation of the outmanned, overmatched and outclassed Charlotte Bobcats. “It was cool though.”
Cool, indeed. Cool as Wallace entered the game to chants of Sheeeeeeeeeeeeed with 4:06 remaining in the first quarter, cool as Wallace drilled his first two shots, both 3–pointers, helping the Celtics build a 22-11 lead in the opening quarter. Cool even as Wallace dressed in front of his locker following the game, when he donned a black sweat jacket bearing the name and logo of the Philadelphia Phillies, as sure a sign as any that he has embraced Boston as firmly as Boston already has embraced him.
‘Sheed, it seems, plays by the same rules many of you do. If he is not necessarily rooting for the Red Sox, he is at least rooting for whoever is playing the Yankees.
The Celtics, by the way, are 2-0.
So to Red Sox fans, the New York Yankees are still the evil empire.
But why is today October 29 and just the 2nd game of the Series is being played tonight? The answer is in provided by Tyler Kepner in a New York Times story from last Sunday. Some of the reasons are:
¶When baseball scheduled the World Baseball Classic for March 2009, the players wanted two more weeks of spring training games after its conclusion. So pushing the Classic later would have further delayed the start of the regular season, and the players would not have been ready if it had started sooner.
¶The calendar did not help. Except for the Sunday night opener, the schedule always begins on a Monday, and the first Monday of April 2009 was the sixth. Teams do not want to start the season with a weekend series, because they already draw well on weekends. Opening on a Monday allows teams to sell out a weekday game that would otherwise be a hard sell.
¶The idea of starting the regular season in late March and playing only in warm-weather cities and domes is considered too problematic to be realistic. If both teams in New York and Chicago open on the road, that means overlapping home dates later. And the teams in warm-weather cities and domes would complain about losing dates for later in the season, when they can sell more tickets than they can in late March and early April.
¶The idea of shortening the regular season from 162 games is unrealistic, because teams would not willingly give away moneymaking home dates.
So you have a combination of greed and the quirks of the calendar that will have fans in New York and Philadelphia freezing in their seats. And another thing: Why no day games?
Sometimes pictures tell the story. Pictures from the Boston Globe.
Jim Rice with his placque.
Jim and Rickey Henderson.
From his speech
You always feel that after every great once-in-a-lifetime moment, there could not be anything else to top it. You find your life-long partner, that one true love. You have your first child and you spend hours wondering at the perfection of tiny little fingers and toes. You rejoice and cry through pre-elementary, middle and high school and, if you’re lucky, college graduation. You marvel at how sanity endures. Right when you thought it couldn’t get any better, you have grandchildren and a new astonishing love blossoms.
And then after 15 years, you get a phone call that you thought you’d never get. Your aspiration’s realized. Your tears overflow. Because you know now that the highest honor of your career means so much more than you ever thought it would mean before. Because what it feels like most is being welcomed at home plate and after hitting a walk off home run. You find yourself repeating the same phrases over and over:
“We made it, we made it. We made it.”
Just think about it. Jim Rice spent his entire career with the Sox. Is there anyone playing right now you will be able to say that about 10 or 15 years from now? Jon Lester? Dustin Pedroia? Hard to say and probably not.
I look forward to the retirement of his number 14 at Fenway and to his return to the pregame show.
And by the way the John Smoltz experiment needs to end now. It was a good try – didn’t work.
The President is a White Sox fan to which I say, “wrong color sox, Mr. President.” But leaving partisanship aside, it appears that he was the first President to be at an All-Star game since 1978 – when I think the President was Jimmy Carter.
We already knew that basketball and not baseball was Obama’s game so we shouldn’t be surprised when
Obama, who warmed up with Pujols in the batting cage, threw a pitch that was a lot slower than one of Tim Wakefield’s knuckleballs.
Jack Curry goes on in the New York Times Bats blog
Before Obama tossed the first pitch, he stopped to shake hands with Stan Musial, a Hall of Famer for the Cardinals, who was sitting in a red golf cart. After Obama’s pitch, he shook hands with Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith, Bruce Sutter, Red Schoendienst and Lou Brock, the other living Cardinals who are in the Hall. Brock saluted Obama, who saluted back.
…
When Obama visited the National League clubhouse before the game, Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies, a fellow Hawaiian, gave the president some macadamia nuts. The players had been advised not to give Obama anything, but Victorino did anyway, and his teammates howled.
…
Witnesses said Obama glided from player to player before the game, shaking hands and exchanging small talk. Obama spent the most time with Pujols. He also teased Pujols, who plays here, and Ryan Howard, who is from here, about losing the Home Run Derby to Prince Fielder on their home turf.
The last time Obama threw out the first pitch was before Game 2 of the 2005 American League Championship Series, so he was pitching on 1,371 days’ rest. Those White Sox won eight consecutive postseason games and a World Series title. After Obama noted how he brought his favorite team some luck, he added, “Any of these teams need a lefty
Interestingly, Obama also visited the umpires before the game and signed things for them and for a charity auction. Alan Schwartz wrote in Bats
So 40 players and staff on each All-Star team got 15-minute clubhouse drop-ins from the president? Big deal. The six umpires got 10 minutes all to themselves.
“For the leader of the free world to take the time to talk to us lowly umpires was just incredible,” the left-field ump Tim Timmons said. “I barely remember it, I was just in awe.”
Don’t think that has happened before.
And finally there is this. Alan Schwartz asked some players – no Red or White Sox – what they would ask the President.
— Miguel Tejada, Astros: “How does it feel to have all that power?
— Prince Fielder, Brewers: “When do you get to just watch TV? When can you just sit and not talk to nobody?”
— Trevor Hoffman, Brewers: “Did you think that things would slow down once you got into the White House?”
— Zach Duke, Pirates: “What’s the highest bowling score you’ve gotten down there?”
— David Wright, Mets: “Something about A.C.C. basketball. I know he hooped it up with the Tar Heels.”
— Adrian Gonzalez, Padres: “Can you get us a college football playoff?
— Brian McCann, Braves: “When’s the economy going to turn around?”
— Carlos Pena, Rays: “Are you a see-it-to-believe-it person or a believe-it-to-see-it person?”
— Mark Teixeira, Yankees: “Who was your favorite athlete growing up, when you were just a kid enjoying sports?”
— Curtis Granderson, Tigers: “Are you tired? Do you get stressed?”
— Michael Young: “How can I help?”
And about the game: The American League won. Beckett and Wakefield did not pitch. Youk and Bay each had a hit and Pap had a one-two-three inning but one of his high wire performances.
It is no secret to people who know me or anyone who follows this blog and has read my occasional baseball posts but I love baseball. I follow certain basketball teams but I really don’t watch unless one of them is playing. Baseball on the other hand, particularly live baseball is a love. If it is live, I can watch any two teams at any level play. I think I like the game so much because it one one of the things that my grandfather who spoke little English and I could watch in common.
This spring training 2009, what is the state of baseball. Well, I think that the use of steroids is down. George Vescey writes in the New York Times in his column titled “The Incredible Shrinking Baseball Player.”
Baseball clubhouses seem to be getting bigger this spring, with more room to move around. Or maybe the players are becoming smaller.
Out of the roughly 1,000 major leaguers in spring training camps, a couple of dozen appear to have lost significant weight in the off-season, all in the name of health and agility.
Some of them did it by eating grilled fish. Others played active video games with their children. Some went on diet programs or took up yoga. Others cut back on alcohol. Whatever they did, clubhouse attendants are coming up with smaller uniforms all over Florida and Arizona.
Whether or not it is because they are no longer using steroids or because, like many of us non ballplayers, they are discovering a healthier lifestyle, Vescey can’t say. But he has his suspicions.
“You have to be a little skeptical, given the context of watching bodies change,” Dr. Gary Wadler, an internist and member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said Thursday. “The explanation then was that they were eating more and working out more. Now if you hear players say, ‘We changed our ways,’ all you can do is be suspicious.”
But the weight loss can be good.
The model for clean living and technique over brute size is Derek Jeter of the Yankees, whose physique and hitting style have never fluctuated since he came up in 1995. Jeter seemed to be quietly seething last week when having to discuss revelations of steroid use by Alex Rodriguez. Not all of us did it, Jeter veritably hissed. That is an important fact to remember as players assert their inner athlete.
•
Baseball players did not necessarily need all the bulk they were sporting in the last generation, said Dr. Michael Joyner, deputy director and vice dean for research at the Mayo Clinic, an expert in exercise physiology.
“I think it’s better to say people were going in the easier direction,” Dr. Joyner said, referring to past weight gain. “Athletes are supercompetitive. Many of them are almost sociopaths in almost a friendly way,” he added, saying that players would compete in anything, including body mass.
Dr. Joyner recalled the power of a small hitter like Jim Wynn and a slender pitcher like Ron Guidry, of the 1960s and 1970s. He also praised the immortal lefty Sandy Koufax and the four-time Olympic discus champion, Al Oerter, who combined athletic ability and technique.
…
Still, thin just may be in. This minitrend has been labeled the Pedroia Effect by Greg Lalas, retired soccer player and writer for Goal.com. He was referring to the 5-foot-9-inch, 180-pound second baseman with the Red Sox who hit .326 with 17 home runs last year and was named most valuable player in his league.
I knew I’d get a reference to a member of the Red Sox in there someplace.
But the big story, at least in my mind, is the tie between the Barry Bonds trial for perjury and the tactics of the Bush Justice Department. Who knew that all those questionable tactics would come home to roost in the trial of a baseball player for using steroids?
David Zirin writing in The Nation and also appearing of the Rachel Maddow show makes this connection. His story “The US v. Barry Bonds” begins
This is a story about garbage. There’s the actual garbage overzealous federal investigators examined in their efforts to prosecute a surly sports celebrity. There’s the shredding of the Bill of Rights, crudely ignored by the government in the name of obsession and ambition. Finally, there’s the thorough trashing of people’s reputations, not to mention the game of baseball. Welcome to The US v. Barry Bonds; please disregard the stench.
…
The embodiment of this obsession was IRS agent Jeff Novitzky. He broke open the BALCO case after spending a great deal of time, to the adulation of the press, literally sifting through garbage and sewage.
Novitzky was given the green light by President Bush and Ashcroft to go for the jugular. In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, he marched into Comprehensive Drug Testing, the nation’s largest sports-drug testing company. Armed with a warrant to see the confidential drug tests of ten baseball players, he walked out with 4,000 supposedly sealed medical files, including every baseball player in the major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN magazine, “Three federal judges reviewed the raid. One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky’s actions a ‘callous disregard’ for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence….”
It was a frightening abuse of power, all aimed at imprisoning a prominent African-American athlete. Yet despite the landfills of trash, the government’s case always rested on a flimsy premise. Bonds’s contention under oath was that anything illegal he may have ingested was without prior knowledge. The only person who could contradict Bonds was his trainer and longtime friend Greg Anderson. The government pressed Anderson to give testimony. He refused, citing a promise made by the feds that he wouldn’t have to testify after pleading guilty to steroid distribution and money laundering in 2005. The feds stuck him in jail for thirteen months to soften him up, but he didn’t crack.
We all knew that the Bush Justice Department was completely ignoring the Constitution to keep us safe from terroists, but to convict baseball players who used steroids? I guess it could be a threat to the American pasttime.
It’s way past time to say enough is enough.
Whether or not you are a Barry Bonds fan, or consider him to be just a step above a seal-clubbing, pitbull-fighting bank executive, every person of good conscience should be aghast at the way the Justice Department has gone about its business. Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson and maybe thousands of others have had their rights trampled on, all for the glory of a perjury case that looks to be going absolutely nowhere. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama have strongly indicated that the government is getting out of the steroid monitoring business. That is welcome, but after so many years, so many tax dollars and so many reputations destroyed, it all feels positively Pyrrhic.
You can also watch Dave on the Rachel Maddow Show.
I’m sure that there will be another drug. And I sure that ball players get through the long season and the travel using the occasional upper, but for now at least healthy living seems to be a trend.
Sir Issac Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642 according to the Julian Calendar. Or January 4, 1643 if you use the Gregorian one that we use today. Olivia Judson proposes to resolve this difficulty by celebrating for 10 days – the Ten Days of Newton or the Newton Birthday Festival. She has even written the words to a song celebrating his life and achievements. The tune is, of course, the Twelve Days of Christmas.
On the tenth day of Newton,
My true love gave to me,
Ten drops of genius,
Nine silver co-oins,
Eight circling planets,
Seven shades of li-ight,
Six counterfeiters,
Cal-Cu-Lus!
Four telescopes,
Three Laws of Motion,
Two awful feuds,
And the discovery of gravity!
Sandy Koufax was born on December 30, 1935, He was my first sports hero. I began following him when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn and continued after the move to LA. I had an old console radio on which I could, at night, get AM stations from New Jersey (where I grew up) to St. Louis and New Orleans. So in the summertime, I could get the Dodgers playing most of the National League. Looking back, I think I admired him because he seems to have a life outside of baseball and to be secure in his own person – not that I could have articulated that as a teenagers.
Koufax was a great pitcher and I’m sure many batters thought he defied the Newtonion Laws of Motion. It is only right that his birthday comes in the middle of the Newton Festival.
FortLeft 