Tuesday | 28 Dec 2010
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11:56 - Good thing I'm not obsessed
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Trivia question: who holds the Major League record for most home runs in a career by a player who never had more than one in a game?
Thanks to my not-at-all-obsessive research, which required visually comparing separate databases, we now have the top twelve:
Rk Player Last Name HR
721 Lou Piniella 102
827 Grady Hatton 91
867 Del Unser 87
870 Dom DiMaggio 87
923 Johnny Edwards 81
997 Jason Kendall 75
Olmedo Saenz 73
Tom Brookens 71
Glenn Hubbard 70
Mike Lamb 69
Mike Scioscia 68
Mike Shannon 68
The "Rk" column is where they stand on the all-time HR list.
As expected, some rather underwhelming names on that list. Interesting how many later became managers. A couple of Hall of Famers just missed...George Sisler probably should be up there, but individual game records are missing from the first few years of his career, 1915-1919. During that time, he hit 21 home runs - 10 in 1919, however. Assuming none of those came more than one to a game, he'd be tied with Piniella for first. The fantastically named Granville Hamner had 104 career HRs and only one game when he hit two: July 24, 1953, which the Phillies won, 2-1, over the Cards.
current mood:  geeky
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Thursday | 7 Oct 2010
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14:50 - On this day in history
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1849 - Edgar Allan Poe dies on Election Day in Baltimore of mysterious circumstances.
1957 - The Brickskeller opens for business in D.C.
1974 - The events of "The Denton Affair" take place, dated from the newspaper Janet Weiss holds over her head.
current mood:  amused
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Thursday | 30 Sep 2010
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15:51 - QotD
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From a young Ghanan cow-orker, at yesterday's company picnic, when a soccer game was breaking out and I was throwing myself into the middle of it:
"Okay, lessee. We'll put all the Africans on one side, with the Europeans and the Asians. And on the other side, we'll have...um, Scooterbird."
As a footnote: ow. I'm sore.
current mood: amused
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Friday | 24 Sep 2010
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13:54 - It lies to us
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I have one of those fact-a-day desk calendars for the Orioles. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am, because it can indeed play free and easy with the facts it gives, sometimes giving records as current that have already been broken, and so on.
Here's another example from yesterday indicating that this might not have been put together by the world's sharpest folks:
Former pitcher Dock Ellis once pitched for seven different managers in the same season. In 1977, Ellis played for three teams - the Yankees, A's, and Rangers. At his final stop that season in Texas, Ellis toiled for 4 managers.
Now I'm not all that smart 'r nothin'...but one for the Yanks, one for the A's, and four for the Rangers would make six managers, yes?
UPDATE: I looked it up, and as it turns out, Ellis did indeed pitch for (or at least was on the team for) seven managers in 1977. He started the season with the Yankees under Billy Martin, and only pitched three games for them before getting dealt on April 29 (along with Larry Murray and Marty Perez, for Mike Torrez) to the lowly A's under Trader Jack McKeon. Trader Jack saw the writing on the wall and split after a win on June 8, with the A's at 26-27 - pretty much because he couldn't stand the owner, Charlie O. Finley. The unfortunate-in-both-name-and-circumstance Bobby Winkles took over and pranged the A's head-first on concrete, limping them to a 98-loss season...Ellis pitched terribly for them, but still managed to get his contract purchased by the Texas Rangers on June 15. Anyway, that's two with the A's, not one, as was implied.
Ellis pitched his first game for the Rangers and their manager Frank Lucchesi on the 20th, won it - and then watched Lucchesi leave town the next day. Eddie Stanky was brought in as manager and quit after one game (which the Rangers won); he couldn't handle this "new breed" of baseball players, supposedly after watching one dry his hair with a blow dryer after a shower. Connie Ryan was rushed in as a stopgap manager for a few games before the Rangers found Billy Hunter, who led them to a winning record.
Bert Blyleven was the starter for the game Stanky managed, so one could argue that he only "pitched" for six managers.
current mood:  apathetic
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Wednesday | 22 Sep 2010
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10:41 - Livin' la vida metric
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There are some good and bad points to being an intellectual or cultural loner, refusing to follow the herd on matters that are otherwise taken for granted. I've always felt that the metric system would be the thing to follow in the U.S. - blame it on a combination of studying in the sciences for years and growing up during the Carter administration, which represented our only serious national foray into the concept. (At least one Congresscritter derided it as being "definitely Communist".)
My biggest attempt at being metric has been to follow the temperature in Celsius on my computer and my Web page. It's working fine, and I appreciate being in step with the rest of the world beyond America's borders, but I also have regained an appreciation for Fahrenheit as well: 0 F is roughly equivalent to "too damn cold" on the official Scooterbird Scale, while 100 F is "too damn hot", and everything else can therefore be classed as a percentage off of those values.
Anyway, speaking metric weather also now gives me a harbinger of fall that no one else really has: the dipping of the temps into single digits. It came damned close on Monday night, which set off the usual mini-bout of depression I get with oncoming winter (since fall seems to last about 45 minutes around here). Now it's back up to 31 today, with a predicted 33 on Friday, so I'm happy again (provided there's A/C or a pool), but we're looking at a low of 13 later in the weekend. It won't be long now, and when it happens, I'll have to face my wistful melancholy alone.
current mood:  discontent
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Wednesday | 15 Sep 2010
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10:59 - Breaking news: suicide at Long Reach
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Just to let everyone know, yes, a suicide was found on the Long Reach campus this morning; an older male - not a student - apparently hanged himself from the bleachers outside. Local MSM has the story here. The school is on lockdown, kids are safe. I heard from DD#1 and she's fine; DD#2 leaves her phone off at school.
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Tuesday | 24 Aug 2010
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0:37 - This is what you would call an object lesson
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My lovely daughters are both teenaged, which is to say that they are by now quite convinced that their old man is a tedious fool, hopelessly out of touch with what matters the most in today's world. Well, to qualify that: with what really matters. The usual example for that would be computers, but as I've mentioned before, they have grown up with the reaction of "if a computer fails in the house, call Dad". And when I say, "call Dad", I mean that quite literally - the voice goes up to that register they had ten years ago, and they point at the offending screen and scream, "DADDEEEEEE!!" This is followed by, from an engineering standpoint, the least descriptive error report possible, and a corresponding demand, such as "THE INTERNET IS BROKE AGAIN! FIX IT!!"
What really matters isn't such stuff, because that's covered. What matters to them is things like Justin Bieber, and knowing that, despite the evidence to the contrary, he at least allegedly has a pair of stones.
Anyway, DD#2 is currently talking on Facebook with a Russian boy. He's got something of a mistrustful view of the United States, and my daughter is showing a bit of patriotic gumption and attempting to debate him on the matter. I learned this because she began asking me questions about world history, and sounding a bit shocked by the answers, such as, "The Soviet Union was our ally in World War II??" And then she would stare at the screen and gulp and try to think of something to write after making a complete fool of herself. She did know this while taking history in school, but the idea of actually retaining any of this knowledge, say, over the summer, is a new concept.
Now I just got asked, "Tokyo is in Japan, right?" *sigh* Still plenty of time to develop some degree of worldliness. I hope.
current mood:  embarrassed
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Monday | 5 Jul 2010
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16:58 - It's like this
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MLW has taken some amusement at my self-description as Not Exciting (with the Significant Capitalization).
She has also said that my older daughter would prolly agree.
Such is life in our household.
current mood: Not Exciting
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Monday | 31 May 2010
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23:35 - What I did on my weekend
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Or, "My Life on the Interwebs".
First, I recorded my podcast. You can find it here.
Second, I went from there to a party/cookout at the house of the father of Kid#1's best friend, who is a pretty good musician and hangs around with pretty good musicians. I ended up on "stage" with them for "The Weight". (That's me in the cap and sunglasses, singing backup. A bit embarrassing, really, but they're great musicians.)
Actually, that was all just today. The rest of the time I was inside being introverted. (Ain't like me much, but every so often I do feel I deserve it.)
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Wednesday | 19 May 2010
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23:11 - Surfacing
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I've been thinking about opening a Facebook account for quite a while now, but thanks to the largely negative publicity they've received regarding their privacy policy, I am less inclined to do so.
I'm still from a segment of paleo-hackers who believes very strongly in the Internet as a giant collective of effort - a sort of equalizing community where the power of one's vision counted more than the amount of one's currency. I believed it had the power to change the world drastically. To a certain extent, I've been right about that: it has created a global creative community, albeit one that stands apart from their local surroundings, mostly by displaying imagination. And large segments of capitalist business have been...well, "negatively" impacted is only a true statement from the point of view of those on the losing side of the evolution (in the press, pornography, music, and the like). I've also been wrong about a few things, too.
Anyway, the point is, joining a "free" online community and discovering that the hidden cost of your admission is to become that company's commodity are just repugnant notions to me, and I don't wish to participate.
Some of that old spirit might be coming back. There is a new concept for a bit of social networking software called Diaspora which looks interesting. It's not yet ready for prime time, but my feeling right now is that I'll hold out and see what that brings.
There is a cost to this, however, and that is that I've removed myself from the mechanism of the usual social circles, so no one remembers who I am or what I've been doing lately. I'm not blaming anybody for that except for me - I haven't had the cycles lately to keep up with everyone, which is what you sort of consign yourself to when you go silent on the network and try to do it all manually...
It'd be nice to change that, so if you're so inclined, drop me a note here and say hi, tell me what's up, or tell a dirty joke, or demand that I take you out and buy you ice cream. (That last one for  papertigers.)
current mood: drained
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