The one about the Preacher and the Virgin
Attempts to censor the internet are creating some hilarious results.
In England, citizen e-mails sent to a city council regarding building permits were blocked because they included the word "extension," and in Manhattan, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin was forced to change its website from stmvirgin.org to stmvnyc.org to hurdle spam blockers. Says the flummoxed parish priest, "Apparently Our Lady through her intercessions was not able to fix this problem to the word 'Virgin,' even though we were referring to her!"
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My re-reading of the 1992 Robert Gregory biography of Dizzy Dean has led to unexpected heartache over the loss of the great baseball nicknames. The large truckloads of money being backed up to ballplayer's homes is probably the culprit of my grief. I don't begrudge the players any of it, and Lord knows I contribute plenty with a fawning attention and open wallet for the sport, but today's players seem to have less time for frivolity and gamesmanship on the diamond, and-- I suspect-- more time off of it for sensible estate planning. Meanwhile, television cameras and microphones have all but wiped out that good old-fashioned bench-jockeying.
In the mid-'30s, during an afternoon's contest between St. Louis and another NL team-- say, the New York Giants, you would be likely to encounter the Cardinals'
Dizzy and
Daffy Dean,
Pepper Martin,
Ripper Collins,
Ducky Medwick,
Spud Davis,
Dazzy Vance,
Wild Bill Hallahan,
Tex Carleton,
Hollywood Wop Ernie Orsatti,
Leo the Lip Durocher,
Chick Fullis,
Kiddo Davis,
Red Worthington,
Buster Mills,
The Fordham Flash Frankie Frisch, and three guys that would never require more colorful names than the ones given at their birth-- Burleigh Grimes, Flint Rhem, and Burgess Whitehead. The Gothams offered up
King Carlos-- later to become--
The Meal Ticket Carl Hubbell,
Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons,
Prince Hal Schumacher,
Lefty O'Doul,
Blondy Ryan,
Tarzan Parmalee,
Slick Castleman,
Watty Clark,
Hi Bell,
Jo-Jo Moore,
Memphis Bill Terry,
Master Mel Ott,
Shortwave Bartell,
Gunboat Gumbert,
The Pride of Havana Dolph Luque, and a couple of extra fellers named Lafayette Fresco Thompson and Homer Peel.
The deprival of this vast assemblage is lamentable, but the specific ballpark handle that I miss the most is
Preacher, as in
Preacher Rowe of the Brooklyn Dodgers or National League team executive Branch Rickey.
The Preacher was once a pleasant rarity. One had to be either a teetotaling virgin, a clubhouse evangelist, or both to earn the moniker. Today, each team would have 12
Preachers.---
I'm trying to survive the week without a telephone, having purposely abandoned my home phone for a cellular unit last year and
accidently abandoning my cell charger in Iowa City Monday afternoon. I'm left with more time for reflection upon absent friends and family, and more room in my pants pockets for beef jerky and concealed weapons.
It's back to the Stone Age. If you need to reach me, you'll have to e-mail, or comment on the blog.
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I cannot continue hyperlinking
these Ken Levine posts. Eventually you're going to have to start checking his blog for yourself. I like the Bud Selig line best.
Crappy beer night
The fan who caught Barry Bonds' 715th circuit clout was waiting in line to buy beer. A few commentators have predictably played up this fact to make a point about the fans' indifference to Bonds' pursuit of the home run record, but what kind of idiot pays $30 or $40 a pop for a Sunday afternoon ballgame in San Francisco and goes to the concession stand when Bonds is due to bat?
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Twins owner Carl Pohlad's long wait for a publicly-financed, open-air stadium in Minnesota came to a happy end last week. Thanks to a 34-32 vote in the state senate, taxpayers in one of America's most enlightened locales, Hennepin County, MN, are now on the hook for $522 million in new sales taxes.
Let me say that I'll miss the Metrodome less than anyone on the planet. When the plunger is pushed on its destruction, the ceremony should include a bill-signing by the commissioner in which every game ever played there is retroactively forfeited by the home team. But this political deal is disgusting. Reason number one, Pohlad is one of America's 30 richest men. And number two, voters in Hennepin County, who have repeatedly rejected public financing, are denied further say in the matter-- giving way to a situation in the legislature in which representatives from
outside the county can overrule the objections of Hennepin's delegation. (Read the battle's entire lurid history
here.)
One of the bill's supporters thought the vote tally fitting because the 34
yeas matched Kirby Puckett's retired uniform number, but the only apt comparison is that the late Twins slugger suffered from severe glaucoma and the chamber was blind to fairness.
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Michael Barrett deserved each one of his ten suspended games for taking a swing at the White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski, but there are probably very few people around the game who didn't enjoy watching the Cubs' catcher pop the snake-like Pierzynski. A couple A.J. anecdotes from today's Chicago Sun-Times:
- After being struck in the groin during a spring training game in 2004, Giants trainer Stan Conte came onto the field and asked how he felt. "Like this," Pierzynski said, as he kneed Conte in a similar spot.
- In May 2004, he turned down Giants teammate
(and former Cardinal) Brett Tomko's request for a pregame meeting to discuss Braves hitters, preferring instead to play cards in the clubhouse.
''He's the cancer in here,'' Tomko told the Oakland Tribune, at first anonymously, before later acknowledging the quotes were his.
''The pitchers aren't happy with him. If they can trade him, that would be fine with me. I've never seen a catcher who didn't watch video before games. He doesn't watch hitters -- other than the Twins (his former team) when they're on TV.''
A year later, Pierzynski offered any White Sox teammate $100 for hitting a home run off Tomko, and paid up when outfielder Joe Borchard did it.
''Once an ass, always an ass,'' Tomko told a San Francisco reporter.
Get that Congressional steroid committee back in session!
Some wet blankets are beginning to cast doubt on Pat Robertson's claims that he can leg press 2000 pounds. To buy into the good reverend's claims, one must be willing to believe that a 76-year-old man is capable of shattering the Florida State University leg press record by more than 665 pounds. Furthermore, one must believe that Robertson bettered a record-holder there by the name of Dan Kendra, who had to modify the leg press machine to even fit 1,335 pounds of weight on the machine and whose capillaries in his eyes burst-- seriously-- when he attempted the feat.
Quote of the day: "Thou shalt not lie." -- Charlton Heston, as "Moses," "The Ten Commandments," 1956
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Another quote:
"We believe that God in fact is in control and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the Lord." Ken Lay, this afternoon. Amen to that... and don't drop the soap.
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This item won't mean anything to many of you, but those boneheads at Clear Channel Radio in Des Moines have finally succumbed to an utter lack of vision. One of their long-suffering stations, KMXD-100.3 FM, is getting the Terri Schiavo treatment on its ubiquitous "Favorite hits of the '80s, '90s, and '70s" format, and since they can't think of a better mix of music to replace it with, they're just going to
simulcast one of their more successful stations on that frequency for a while. KMXD's remaining on-air staff was fired weeks ago so now the corporation has this enormous new building in Des Moines and two of their five stations operating as jukeboxes. Ridiculous.
And a note to their general manager-- the proper expression would be "a
really popular format," not "a
real popular format."
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I'll be in Cedar Rapids for the holiday weekend, but I'd prefer to get things straight first-- Is Memorial Day about honoring the sacrifice of the American military, or will any dead Americans suffice? I'm pretty sure it's the latter. They have Veterans' Day, right? Seriously, which is it?
Running scared
The Senate late last Thursday slipped a bill through by unanimous consent that would increase indecency fines on broadcast radio and TV stations tenfold to $325,000; and keep in mind, it's no longer just station owners that can be fined, it's you and me. (A House bill to be reconciled with that measure is just as scary.) The Land of the Free has morphed into the Land of the 'Fraid, at least in Washington, and this has nothing to do with decency or the protection of sensitive eyes and ears. It has to do with protecting pockets of privilege and chilling dissent.
The FCC, in one example, has ruled that the word "bullshit" is acceptable if it comes out of the mouths of white people in "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List," but the same word was ruled profane when it was uttered by a black blues musician on a Martin Scorsese PBS documentary. Critics of the current administration, such as Howard Stern, are collared like criminals over sex and fart jokes, but Bush bootlicker Sean Hannity can broadcast the audio of a beheading on
his radio show. The encouraging part is that-- three years after Miss Jackson's nipple outing (
Miss Jackson, because I'm nasty)-- mainstream public support has evaporated behind the movement to tighten broadcast standards. That's why politicos were forced to slide this bill through in the middle of the night.
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I believe internet freedom is one of the most important issues confronting us as global citizens. An information revolution is taking place that is allowing everyday people unprecedented access to education, their own public expression, and democratic participation. The telecommunications conglomerates are scared shitless. Seven hundred organizations from Moveon.org to Google to the Christian Coalition are backing a political alliance called Network Neutrality to combat any legal erosions of this freedom.
Join the fight.---
Marty Short, last night on Letterman: During his brief tenure as a stand-up comedian, he faced an audience so hostile, they came dressed as his deceased parents. Rough crowd.
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Where are they now? The scout who signed Albert Pujols to the Cardinals is
stocking shelves at a Wal-Mart in Arkansas.
True originals
A political activist in Arizona has a really novel idea. Ophthalmologist Mark Osterloh is attempting to get a referendum approved that would award a $1 million prize to one lucky voter in his state each election cycle. I still need more convincing, but I can't dismiss the plan outright. More voters would indeed dart to the polls, and our elections are already a big giveaway of taxpayer money anyway.
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My affection for The Great Pujols continues to abound. Not only has he kept my favorite baseball team drenched in Korbel for the better part of the new millennium, but his slugging exploits are backing
my theory about the relatively small impact of steroids on the game. El Hombre
says he's been drug tested three times this year, and no one from MLB is contradicting him.
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Did you know Pat Robertson can leg-press 2000 pounds?
I shit you not.
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The LA Times' Joel Stein, on "The Da Vinci Code":
"There are two types of Christians: Those who will let us dance, and those who won't. Admittedly, much of my theology comes from 'Footloose.'"---
You people only have 38 days left to consolidate your student loans before interest rates get hiked.
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I love me some Chloe Sevigny. She's been great in everything from "Kids" to the underrated "Palmetto" with Woody Harrelson to "If These Walls Could Talk 2" (The Deuce) to "Boys Don't Cry" to "The Last Days of Disco" and now, HBO's "Big Love." She's a stunner, too, though I'm now nearly 90 percent sure I'm mispronouncing her name. "The Paper of Record" has
a profile.
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The Village Voice's Michael Musto:
"Heather Mills doesn't have a leg to stand on."---
Two weeks ago, I linked one critic's list of some of the great songs of the 20th century. Mindful of the long-lost Fairness Doctrine, here is
an alternative-- the
worst tunes of all-time, compiled exhaustively by blogger Ken Levine and his readers. For me, it doesn't get much worse than "Unchained Melody." I
hate that song.
On-deck at the bay
The Cards are in San Francisco tonight. Bonds chasing Ruth as Pujols chases Bonds. There's a guy dressed as Babe Ruth in a life raft out in the bay The Redbird television announcers keep dwelling on the fact that the game isn't sold out. Maybe the fans are just waiting to come tomorrow night when Matt Morris pitches against his former team...
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White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski sure knows how to make friends,
doesn't he?
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The Cardinals unveiled a nice addition to Busch Stadium during the last homestand-- pictures of their retired-numbered players on the leftfield wall. The added good news is that the campaign to retire Willie McGee's uniform #51 is gaining traction. An on-line p.r. campaign by his most cultish fans has elevated to the mainstream with the publishing of
this Post-Dispatch column last week.
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Speaking of those retired numbers, I began rereading a 14-year-old book this week called "Diz-- The Story of Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression" by Robert Gregory. What a character ole' Diz was. It's a shame that baseball allows ESPN to dictate so much of its marketing strategy these days. The 1930s were such a colorful era of the game, and Dizzy was the Satchel Paige of the Caucasian Leagues. Of course, the Worldwide Leader in Sports only gives a shit about the great Yankees, Red Sox, and Jackie Robinson, and the rest of baseball's greats are left to shrivel up in the musty basement. Even when the network's broadcast teams cover games in St. Louis and they utter thoughtless platitudes about the great baseball city, they only reference back as far as Bob Gibson and the 1960s. And the local sportscasters only suck up to old timers that can still grant them interviews.
Dean, the brash son of an Arkansan sharecropper, developed folk hero status throughout the south and the west before the War, and I don't think Dean has ever been properly credited for expanding the ballclub's popularity during those early days of radio. Maybe the media will dig up the ghosts of the Gas House Gang when the next Depression arrives.
Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for fair housing laws
The municipality of Black Jack, Missouri-- whose council
plans to evict unmarried couples with multiple children living in their home-- is the same St. Louis suburb that I serviced by ice cream truck in the summer of 1994. I recall, actually, that it wasn't much of a town at all, just a traffic intersection or two. The big "map on a board" I was given on the first day of my route had "Black Jack" written in magic marker across the top of it, but I would say that I more accurately sold to customers in eastern Florissant, and by nightfall, an unincorporated area of new cul-de-sac housing directly north-- and
sold to customers, that is, who didn't run screaming in the heat from a loudspeaker piping Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" across an eight-square-block radius. I remember distinctly that there was a Dollar General store in Black Jack, but the city council part surprises me.
It goes without saying that this type of housing discrimination is insane, hardly worth the harangue really. But I'm compelled by these periodic stories of archaic laws still existing on the books in various locales, either because governments never got around to changing them or because witless bureaucrats don't feel they have the authority to overturn them. Maybe I've got it all wrong, though. Maybe this little old river town-- swallowed almost in whole by suburban sprawl--
really is an ass-backwards burg looking to cast out the heathen Kurt Russell-and-Goldie Hawn-wannabes and restore a 19th Century morality that never was, but I'm tempted to give the benefit of the doubt to a community that took the "Choco-Taco" so warmly to their bosom.
Moeller TV Listings 5/16/06
More of that tired "American Karaoke" on FOX and season finales of about a dozen crime scene forensics programs, is that the best that May television sweeps has to offer anymore? Join me in abandoning network television tonight and tomorrow. Tune to PBS for a "Frontline" investigation tonight at 9 central-- "Can You Afford to Retire?" an in-depth look at the baby boomer generation approaching retirement, and tomorrow at 7, a one hour special profiling "The Great One." It's "Jackie Gleason, Genius at Work."
Bush's latest front line in the War on Terrorism
Let's hope that if the United States experiences another Katrina-like disaster or 9-11-style attack during the coming months, it happens along our Mexican border. That's where thousands of our National Guard troops and nearly two billion new dollars of tax contributions will be headed in an effort to hunt down unarmed Mexican subsistence farmers and their families headed for minimum wage employment in U.S. hog butcheries and car washes. More than a thousand of roughly eight-thousand Guard members in Iowa have already been shipped off to serve to Iraq and Afghanistan as the U.S. military attempts to cobble together a world-class international fighting force of "weekend warriors," untreated depression cases, and
autists. Now, we're slated to lose up to a thousand more to the treacherous front lines of the Rio Grande Valley so that our president can shore up his political base.
Blogger Steve Gilliard writes:
Bush reeks of Oedipal issues like no other president. He is surrounded by nurturing women, because his mother is as warm as Angela Lansbury in the Manchurian Candidate and his father a weak philanderer who hired his mistress to work in the White House. Imagine that as your parents? Emotional cripples who either distanced themselves or were cold and withholding, and then to fail badly where your father shone on his own merit. Mediocre student, failed pilot, drunk.Karl Rove's gift was to create a Bush who was the opposite of the mean, hardheaded momma's boy he was. He took his willfull ignorance and turned it into a homespun folksiness. He took his refusal to get serious treatment for drug and alcohol issues into a religious conversion. Rove took the spoiled scion of one of America's richest families, with a legitimate employment history shorter than a Mob button man, into an entrepeneur. It was a clever bit of slight of hand, but then, just as Ricky Jay only has 52 cards in a single deck, Bush only has his character to work with, and it isn't much. In the end, his wilfullness, his refusal to admit error will lead to the greatest failure, not only for him, but his family as well. Just as it was predictable that Nixon would turn into a paranoid mess and Carter would overmanage and Clinton would cheat, it is predictable that Bush will fail and run from his failure as he has his entire life. Bush is now in a downward spiral not even Osama could save him from for long. He's got three years of this to go and he doesn't have the character for it. To make his presidency work, he would have to grow up, be a man and fire people.In his speech to the nation tonight, Bush called for human dignity and value for all human beings, but he also opposed amnesty for many humans on general principle, advocated a Senate compromise on the House of Representatives' racist immigration bill, subverted one of our most fundamental national ideals by threatening recent immigrants to learn a foreign language for true inclusion, and laid the groundwork (you watch!) for a national identity card. Furthermore, his indictment of the true villains of American immigration policy, companies who hire the illegals, suggested only that they were victims of document fraud.
He claimed that policy goals of security and inclusion were not contradictory, but in concurrent breaths uttered these two sentences-- "When people know that they'll be caught and sent home if they enter our country illegally, they will be less likely to sneak in," followed by "The reality is that there are many people on the other side of our border who will do anything to come to America to work and build a better life." Bush unwittingly put his finger on the crux of the problem for the last two decades. This very contradiction is the reason that increased border patrol, or even a security wall, would have no impact other than on our pocketbooks.
Illegal immigrants are already building that better life here, not just for themselves, but for all of us. Bush understated the importance of his meeting with Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant Guadalupe Denogean, the Iraq War victim he met recently at Bethesda Naval Hospital who wanted nothing more than to become a United States citizen. If Denogean has already lived here 26 years-- even fighting for his country in this administration's trumped-up war in Iraq, and hasn't yet earned citizenship, Bush shouldn't be merely
"honored" to meet him, he should be humbled. Or embarrassed.
That wonderful, dogshit time
One of the terrific elements of "The Sopranos" is the music, which was also true of one of its small screen predecessors, "Northern Exposure," during creator David Chase's reign there.
It's admittedly a lesser-used genre on "The Sopranos," beside the preferred rock and roll music of Chase's childhood, but I'm partial to the big band tracks, chosen to frame an episode once or twice a year. The best examples are: Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman's "Good Night, My Love," from season 2's episode "Do Not Resuscitate"; Dean Martin's Summit tunes in season 4's finale, "Whitecaps"; Jackie Gleason's "Melancholy Serenade," from season 5's "In Camelot"; and from this season's best episode "Johnny Cakes," Ray Charles' "I'm Going to Move to the Outskirts of Town." This golden collection tends to be reserved for Uncle Junior subplots and themes of fading traditions, but why change a thing? All of the music is great.
Blogger
Tom Watson likes the "'70s grime" of the show and its soundtrack.
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Most of the music will survive when "Sopranos" re-runs
hit the A&E network next January, but you won't catch me watching the sanitized family action on basic cable. I don't watch movies edited for content or length on television, and I won't be viewing chopped-up TV shows, either. Would you gaze adoringly at the Mona Lisa if the Musee du Louvre cut off her nose?
To the cleaners
Fifty degrees in May is worse than 10 below in January. Like many Midwesterners, I'm stuck inside today, and I can barely feel my fingers as I continue to mistype through today's entry. Please forgive any published typos or rude opinions that may have been stewed by such a foul mood.
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The Iowa Economic Development Board is weighing Governor Tom Vilsack's proposal to grant $10 million to the city of Newton to help lure a new large business to town and cushion the blow of 1,800 lost jobs with the closing of the Maytag plant on Thursday. What a marvelous illustration of the lack of foresight of all involved.
Newton is--
or was-- a company town (Maytag was by far its largest employer,) and, like so many other company towns across the U.S. the last two decades, has now been hung out to dry by the utter fallibility of our nation's corporate economic structure. Maytag washer/dryer's new parent company, Whirlpool, not surprisingly, felt no sense of obligation to the workers, families, and community that made Maytag what it was for a century. Twenty-seven hundred other jobs are being cut across the country, in Michigan, Illinois, and Arkansas, as Whirlpool shutters the entire Maytag division, and Whirlpool's Hoover and Dixie-Narco acquisitions/divisions probably soon to follow.
Meanwhile, the
Republicrats in Des Moines, not to mention Washington, D.C., where global trade policy is actually written (by corporate lobbyists)-- continue to do what they do best-- brace for any short-term political fallout, having to add out-of-work factory employees and other disgruntled laborers to the list of people they need to bribe with taxpayer money to hold their power.
We can end the cancerous economic cycle in
our state by, first, demolishing the corporatists' Iowa Values Fund, a staggering earmark of tax dollars to the bribery of companies with absentee ownership for relocation to a state once dominated by small family farms and businesses, and not coincidentally, thriving small
communities as well--
communities that respected our land and our core principles, and who conspired to fund civic assets and public education. Give our money back to the people who actually live here, raise their families here, and who would be willing to, quite literally, sign up for a long-term financial commitment to the state, worker accountability, and for the community reinvestment of a portion of their profits. A policy of drastic tax incentives to real entrepreneurs and these civic champions-- the educated and the socially-conscious-- would be worth every red cent, and the Democrats and Republicans could stop shoveling good money after bad into the canyon of greed and waste they've conspired to create.
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When I get mad, I get empowered. And breathy.
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There hasn't been anything good in the movie theaters in three months.
And that's
another industry that's been destroyed by the corporate mindset.
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I felt a warm sense of pride yesterday when I heard that my former employer, Qwest Communications, had refused to go along with the National Security Agency's program of warrantless wiretapping-- the only one of the four former Ma Bell telephone companies to do so. Former CEO Joseph Nacchio denied government requests when he determined that they weren't pursuing "any legal process" in their efforts. Still, I expect nothing less of a privately-held company given full financial control over a communications network built by and operated with public funds for roughly a century. And they should still throw the book at him for insider trading.
More Ed
These
media releases reinforce my decision to back Ed Fallon for Iowa Governor.
5/13/05 update-- There's a Democratic candidates' debate this coming Saturday, the 20th, at 1pm on Iowa Public Television. It will be re-broadcast the following day at 6pm.
It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing
This provocative list is not a recent one, but I came across it while web-surfing earlier today. I know my brother, for one, will enjoy it. It's a
Time Out New York critic's list of the greatest recorded songs from each year of the 20th Century. What does it say about me that I'm 31 years old and I know every tune from 1923 to 1946 and only one (at least by name--
"Dancing Queen,") from my own lifetime?
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The Great Pujols added a double and home run to his slugging resume this afternoon- the latter, a pull shot on an 0-2 pitch down and away. LBoros of Vivaelbirdos.com calls his 2006 season thus far the greatest one man show since
this one in '46. "Just as entertaining, and nearly as improbable." I'd like to add-- much more legitimate.
Diamond visions
-- Barry Bonds is set to pass Babe Ruth any day now on the all-time home run list. When he also collects three wins on the mound during a single World Series, it will be worth our breath to compare the two players, or anyone else to Ruth, for that matter.
-- Even as Americans are purportedly ambivalent about Bonds and his home run chase, they still seem ten times as interested in that as they are in the NBA Playoffs. Maybe it's just my circle.
-- The Associated Press is reporting that the two authors of the Bonds steroid probe "Game of Shadows" could wind up spending more time in prison than the BALCO steroid lab operators. Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada have been subpoenaed to testify as to who leaked to them the secret grand jury testimonies of Bonds, Jason Giambi, and others.
-- As I documented thoroughly last spring, the majority of Cubs games have left Des Moines' cable system due to the team's new contract in 2005 with the Comcast cable company, a move for which you can probably tell that I blame the team and not our local provider, Mediacom. I'm grateful for the 120-some Cardinals games in return-- don't get me wrong, but it's beyond me why the Tribune Co. in Chicago would betray the very television arrangement with its own property (WGN-TV) that made the team the cash cow it is today. I won't be truly pissed unless Bonds hits #714 or #715 tomorrow night in San Francisco off Carlos Zambrano.
-- Four thousand of eleven thousand seats still remain for Friday night's Iowa Cubs' game in which Kerry Wood makes his annual rehab start in Des Moines. I think the excitement of Wood's visits is finally starting to wear off.
-- When will Ken Griffey, Jr. return from the disabled list so the Reds can start tailing off?
-- I really couldn't care less about what "sits well" with
Cory Lidle, or what he thinks is "selfish." He was a scab during the players' strike in 1995.
-- The Kansas City Royals continue to dig deeper lows in the Show-Me shadow of St. Louis and the Cardinals' 96-wins-per-season millenium.
Michael Rosenberg chronicles.
-- The most important statistic in the Great Pujols' game is runs scored. He leads the majors in home runs and RBIs (adding to them with a game-winning three run bomb tonight in the eighth,) but scoring runs are what fuels his team-first approach. He has crossed the platter 33 times already this year, and 662 times in 5 years and 5 weeks of ML service, leading the National League three years in a row. The career record is Rickey Henderson's 2,295.
A little farther down the road
There's a
great article today in the Washington Post by Michael Powell, who debunks many of the myths of U.S. immigration history. His starting point is that fact that in 2006, there is roughly the same percentage of foreign-born New Yorkers as there were at the turn of the last century. Did your ancestors really have it tougher than today's migrants in their effort to gain legal entry into the States? It would seem not.
The most relevant text follows, italicized for your corneal comfort:
"They waited in line. They passed the tests. They had to get permission to come... They had to get through Ellis Island.. get questioned and eyeballed by a bureaucrat with a badge."But these accounts are flawed, historians say. Until 1918, the United States did not require passports; the term "illegal immigrant" had no meaning. New arrivals were required only to prove their identity and find a relative or friend who could vouch for them.Customs agents kept an eye out for lunatics and the infirm (and after 1905, for anarchists.). Ninety-eight percent of the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were admitted to the United States, and 78 percent spent less than eight hours on the island. (The Mexico-United States border then was unguarded and freely crossed in either direction.) "Shipping companies did the health inspections in Europe because they didn't want to get stuck taking someone back," said Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at Hunter College and author of "From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration." "Eventually they introduced a literacy test," she added, "but it was in the immigrant's own language, not English."---
A lot of native-born U.S. residents should be thanking their lucky stars they never had to pass a literacy exam to earn their citizenship-- a disproportionate percentage, it seems, in California's
Orange County.
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"Late Show" bandleader, Paul Shaffer, has written three songs for Worldwide Pants Incorporated's new film, "Strangers With Candy," due in theaters next month.
Take a listen.
The Final Production Delay
After a year of waiting, the film "The Final Season," about the last high school baseball campaign of tiny Norway, IA in 1991 (my connection to the story
here and
here,) is proceeding into production. Late in May, shooting will begin in Cedar Rapids, Marshalltown, and Norway, and will wrap in early July. Since last we spoke, my alma mater has apparently relaxed its policy on the use of Benton Community school facilities, but still refuses to grant the use of its name for a script that its administrators think could defame the school. Instead, it will be called "
Benson Community." (Makes perfect sense with a little hindsight, don't it?)
"The Lord of the Rings" star Sean Astin is still slated to star as head coach Kent Stock, but veteran actor Sam Elliott, not unlike the coach he would have been portraying, took a powder, and has been replaced by Powers Boothe, who plays that clever cocksucker
Cy Tolliver on our favorite TV show, "Deadwood." Ultra-babe Eliza Dushku, late of TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," will play Astin's love interest (I'm not buying it,) and Tom Arnold has heroically finagled his way into the movie set and filmed in his home state (I like Tom.) Astin's brother, Mackenzie, who you remember as George Clooney's junior foil on "The Facts of Life," also appears.
Who else stars in "The Final Season"? Maybe you, fellow Iowan. Thirty-three roles are still being cast, according to this
link from the movie's
website. Local wags are already wondering-- is the player "Tyler Kitt" modeled after Norway alum Tyson Kimm, son of former big league manager Bruce Kimm? Is "Harvey Makepeace" an homage to former Benton Superintendent of Schools Harold Merchant? Is Norway's town diamond destined to become the tourist attraction that Dyersville's "Field of Dreams" has become? Will the character "Barb" work behind the real Norway P&P counter on-screen, and who
was the real "Barb," anyway? How can a team with 19 state championships be considered an underdog? Isn't this like rooting for the Yankees? Why do some web summaries refer to the larger school as
Benson, while at other times, it's
Madison? How can producers expect to find a "Don Zimmer look-alike" for the "Coach Hinkleman" part without having to hire the real thing? Were scenes involving Stock in St. Louis expected to be filmed at old Busch Stadium, because it's no longer there? If Stock was a teacher at Belle Plaine High School in 1991, was it even permissable for him to be coaching at a different school? And, if so, could the state championship still be rescinded? Will the producers be brave enough to tackle the controversial consolidation of
Newhall, IA's high school into Benson Community 25 years previous? Could this movie wind up being as corny as it's beginning to sound?
The May 4th Riot
One hundred and twenty years ago today, striking members of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions took their mass demonstration in Chicago to the Haymarket near the intersection of Randolph and Des Plaines Streets. The first day of May, 1886 had seen the deadline pass for inauguration of the eight-hour work day. During the fourth evening of severe provocation and harassment by police and demand for dispersement, a bomb exploded among the police, killing one instantly and wounding others. The cops responded by firing into the crowd of about 200 workers, inflicting many casualties.
In the aftermath, anti-labor forces demanded vengeance for the bombing, and the blame was directed specifically at the anarchists who had made speeches and published statements prior to the demonstration urging workers to arm themselves in self-defense. Eight men were brought to trial before a rigged jury and convicted without the prosecution having presented any material proof of guilt. After losing appeals, four of the victims-- Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer, were hanged. Another-- Louis Lingg, committed suicide. Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden had death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, and Oscar Neebe received a 15-year prison term.
The trial of these men and the national pardon campaigns that followed spurred the global labor movement. The victims were martyred by the working class, and pardoned by the Illinois governor seven years later, with those serving prison terms released.
The eight-hour work day, of course, has long been the standard throughout America and the western world. The deadline date of its original implementation in 1886 has been remembered each year subsequent as International Workers Day, or May Day, throughout the world with the exception of the United States, and this year's Day Without Immigrants in the U.S.-- true to its roots and its ideals-- was organized for May 1st with this incident in mind.
