I hope I do this correctly!
Thank you, Polly Ticks @Polly Ticks for your warm welcome.
@Slip18 @Polly Ticks is one of our most intelligent members and a nice lady in the bargain. She's also extremely tolerant,
the proof of which is she has kind words for my baseball essays. ;)
I have been a baseball fan since I can remember. So there are a few of us out there.
One of my fondest memories of my mom was when she was holding my six-year old brother on her lap watching (or listening) to Vin Scully! What a voice! He retired last year, and Cyber and I listened to his commentary on the D-Backs vs. Dodgers game.
One of mine is this: In 2000, when I lived in southern California, I took then-seven year old son to
Dodger Stadium for the first time. (He was an Angels fan but he also had a huge thing for then-
Dodger Shawn Green.) When we got to the park, I was struck first by two things:
a) Everything I'd ever heard about Dodger Stadium itself was true---that ballpark is a masterpiece.
(I always loved the story I heard about Walter O'Malley handing his architect the blueprints he'd
acquired of Candlestick Park, the Giants' old ballpark, and telling the man, "Study these and
learn what not to do.")
b) Wherever you were in the park, there were a boatload of fans carrying small portable
television sets---with the picture turned off and the sound turned on, so they could listen to Vin
Scully calling the game. It struck me: Scully had
so much credibility that
even in the
stadium the fans wouldn't believe what they saw on the field until or unless they heard
it from Scully!
My mom knew every stat of every player on every team. She was that good! In fact, later in life, she was the oldest working lifeguard in the United States! I actually put waterproof makeup on her that day when she was being filmed.
Your mother must have been a remarkable lady. The only thing my mother knew about baseball
was she could barely tolerate it (and she was the daughter of die-hard New York Giants fans
until they left New York, after which they---like their eldest grandson ;)---became Met fans
from the day they were born, not to mention being the wife of a guy who became a Brooklyn
Dodgers fan and never stopped rooting for the Dodgers even after they went to Los Angeles)
and, when she did go to a game now and then, she hated The Wave even more.
And to EasyAce @EasyAce thank you for the kind words about Cyber and myself. We are still so in love after 16 years of marriage. I honestly don't know what I would do without him! I am so proud of him!
@Cyber Liberty -- You owe your wife a fancy dinner and an exclusive hotel for that!
Trust me on this, "The Ball," as we now call it is going nowhere but here until my nephew inherits it, along with the rest of the sports memorabilia. I have been collecting certain things for ages.
Smart lady!
Another "favorite" piece I have is a Life Magazine dated March 5, 1971. On the front is Joe Frazier and Mohammed Ali. I was in that magazine (my name was not properly mentioned on the front cover) as a Snow Bunny in my Aspen year of skiing.
I remember that issue! It's a pleasure to meet one of the Snow Bunnies.
I recently read a remarkable book about Ali,
Blood Brothers, about his close relationship with Malcolm
X until Malcolm defected from the original Nation of Islam---including the revelation of the real reason Ali
denounced Malcolm after winning the first Liston fight and why Ali stayed in the Nation of Islam for another
decade---he feared for his own life after knowing what happened to Malcolm barely a year after Malcolm's
defection.
I wish I could show all of my newly found friends all of the cool stuff we have, but, alas, I do not know how to post images. How about the back cover of Baseball Magazine with Lou Gehrig and Greenberg that has a tag "Army" on it? WWII vintage.
If you find a place to host photographs of that stuff, you can post it here by copying the image link and then
putting it between when you write a message here.
At the ending of a Little Leàgue season for two of my nephews, I purchased 40 raffle tickets for some prizes at the end of their awards ceremony. I gave each of them ten tickets, and I kept 20. I won the first prize which was a Mark McGwire "shrine." There are so many things in the shrine. Then there's Sammy Sosa, etc al., of that year that brought the crowd back to baseball.
At a later Dodger Stadium game my son got to see Sosa blast two homers, both of which landed in
between the bleacher sections at the rearmost spot.
DcPatriot @DCPatriot , I have been watching Judge's stats. Just as Mark Grace has said so many times, that August fade can hit so hard for a young player. They put so much gusto into the game in the early part of the season, then they just get a bit worn out in August. We shall see!
Some players fade in August, some manage to stay consistent, some actually do better in August (and
September) than earlier in the season. Since the Sandy Koufax ball kicked this whole thing off in the
first place, I can tell you that Koufax lifetime was a better pitcher in August and September than he
was in April or May, and that June he had his highest monthly lifetime ERA but the
lowestbatting average against him (.193). The batting average against him down the stretch, in August
and September/October, was .208. About the once-notorious Koufax home-road splits, usually
hooked on Dodger Stadium, you should know that lifetime---consider, too, that Koufax pre-
Dodger Stadium worked in home parks that were either neutral for lefthanded pitchers (Ebbets
Field) or brutal for them (the ridiculous field shoehorned into the Los Angeles Coliseum, with the
supershort left field line and the "Chinese Screen" high left field wall)---the batting average
against him was .198 at home and .212 on the road.
I do think Puig of the Dodgers is injured from last night's game, but Puig will not admit it. They are getting pretty low on that outfield bench right now. We have a chance to sweep the mighty Dodgers! Just wheeee! It is on today early for the getaway game to Colorado.
You'd need a shotgun to get Puig to admit he's hurting. Come to think of it, the last thing
a player likes is to admit he's in pain. Fools. ;)
And, lastly, Cyber @Cyber Liberty, thank you for turning me on to The Briefing Room! You knew I would like it!😘
Once in awhile we men know something, after all . . . ;)
