Archive for July 28, 2020

Three strikes, and I’m out

Posted: July 28, 2020 by chrisharper in baseball
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By Christopher Harper

Like most of my friends in the Boomer generation, I loved baseball as a kid.

My friends and I traded baseball cards. We’d oil our gloves during the winter months in anticipation of the spring.

If we weren’t practicing with a team, we’d hustle to the makeshift diamond our parents built in a nearby vacant lot.

I played second base. I didn’t quite have the arm of a shortstop. I usually batted second or third in the lineup because I was a good hitter.

When I was eight, I wrote a letter to the New York Yankees and got a bundle full of photos, autographs, and information about the team. When I visited San Francisco a few years later, my father bought me a baseball with all of the team’s autographs, including future Hall of Famers Juan Marichal, Willie Mays, and Willie McCovey.

My love affair with baseball was sealed in Yankee pinstripes and Giant orange and black!

As a journalist, I covered a wide range of sporting events, including afternoon games at Wrigley Field in Chicago and Harry Caray’s seventh-inning songfest. I wrote a profile of Rod Carew, who won six batting titles.

Later in life, I flew into Chicago from Beirut to see the White Sox in the 1983 playoffs. I enjoyed the Yankees of the 1990s when I lived there, and even took my 9-year-old daughter to a game. I relished the Phillies of 2008, where I now live, and their World Series win.

But those memories have become tainted by the politically correct version of baseball today. Baseball used to be a game I could attend with my friends and talk baseball, not politics.

Today I have two heroes left in the game. One is San Francisco Giants pitcher Sam Coonrod, the only player to stand rather than take a knee, telling reporters after the game that as a Christian he “can’t kneel before anything besides God.”

The other is Bryce Harper, who revealed a sports coat honoring the Phanatic and a pair of cleats that included feathers emblematic of the Phillies mascot. That was fun!

Whatever the case, I’ve watched my last baseball game until it becomes a game again rather than a political statement. I hope others feel the same way! Maybe Major League Baseball will get the message.

Quick Tuesday Thoughts Offensive Statues , Saxon & de Havilland missed Redsox & WNBA not Under The Fedora:

Posted: July 28, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

It makes perfect sense that Antifa & BLM are able to convince young college student to pull down statues of great men.

Every moment such statues stand it’s a reminder that they have no now nor are likely to every accomplish even a tiny percentage of the good such men have done. No wonder they’re offended by them

It’s actually the same reason why the MSM & Boomers kept classifying the WW 2 generation as “the greatest generation”. If they are the “greatest” then it’s not odd that the boomer and other fail to achieve what they did.

Actor John Saxon died this weekend. He was a guy who seemed to be everywhere, always did his job well, made the people around him better but never managed to get top billing on a big moves or show.

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The John Saxons of the world keep it going

Speaking of actor’s dying Oliva de Havilland died this weekend at 104. She was the last great star of Hollywood still with us (Angelia Lansbury 9 years younger came later). Of the 16 movies I own on Amazon Prime she co-stars with Errol Flynn in four of them. With her finally dies the Golden Age of Hollywood.

I wonder how many of the obits running today and yesterday on her were initially and largely authored decades ago by writers now dead?

Well cancel culture can now come for her, if not for Gone With the Wind or her roll in speaking out against communism maybe for the fact that the 1st act she does in the 1st significant movie she appeared in (Captain Blood) involves her buying Errol Flynn’s character Peter Blood at a slave auction.

Apparently the 1st Baseball game which was the 1st broadcast of a Major Sports game since the COVID closer had, as might be expected rating through the roof.

To those who might claim this as proof that the kneeling to the anthem in empty stadiums and the BLM messages will not hurt their draw let me remind them that the 1st episode of Jodie Whitaker’s run on Doctor Who had high ratings too.

I wonder how than ended?

Meanwhile Sunday for the 1st time in my life I was driving a car at a time when the Redsox where playing a game and did NOT turn on the radio to listen.

Didn’t miss it and given the COVID 19 outbreak among the Marlins this might be the shortest season in history.

Oh and I had to laugh when I read this story of the WNBA teams walking off the court during the national anthem, which according to a correction took place before the anthem (like it matters).

Either way if there is any sports league that will not be hurt by this it’s this one. Given the predominance of the uber woke within their microscopic fan base it would likely help.

Even better for the WNBA they are so used to playing in empty arenas that their players’ games are unlikely to be affected not to mention that for the 1st and likely last time in their history their fan draw at games will be equal to the NBA.