New York Giants Celebrate Winning The National League Pennant September 30. 1937
Or, How To Put Celebrating In Perspective
The way baseball players celebrate or more accurately carry on when they win a regular ball game makes me scratch me head. It also makes me a little nauseous.
C.J. Abrams gets a Gatorade shower after delivering a tenth inning game winning single over the Atlanta Braves for the last place Washington Nationals. photo: San Diego Union Tribune
Pat Benatar Performs Promises In The Dark Live In Albany July 2022
Rocker Pat Benatar has been performing with her husband, guitarist and songwriter Neil Geraldo for over 43 years.
Musicians don’t fret that their skills will deteriorate the way singers do.
A powerful rock singer usually has no more than ten to fifteen years of prime vocal strength and then its a slow steady decline as their range and power diminish. The decline can be devastating to the singer and painfully sad for fans of a band. Ask Steve Perry of Journey or Lou Gramm of Foreigner.
Not so with Pat Benatar.
At age 69 Pat Benatar has been singing her heart out for over 40 years. This performance last month in Albany, NY shows that Pat can still hit her notes.
Husband Neil Geraldo is one of the most underrated guitarists in rock. His fluid style of playing does not get noticed by the casual rock fan. He is an amazing talent.
In this clip Pat tells the audience that the musical couple are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.
It’s about time that someone spoke up for the Morlocks. The privileged Eloi get to live above ground, even if they do eventually become dinner for Morlocks. Continue reading →
New York’s Idiot Asylum Was A School / Prison For Children Who Were Often Not “Idiots”
Without discussing the question how far down in the scale of idiocy the work of education can practicably go, this much may be said: that some idiots are teachable to an extent which will fully compensate for the amount of labor involved in their instruction. These certainly should be cared for by the State.
It will be seen by the report of the Superintendent, that according to the last census, there were in the State, 303 idiots under 15 years of age. No one can examine these returns without being convinced that the actual number is at least double the number so returned. Were only a third of these fit subjects for management and training in a public institution, even then it is obvious that the present provision made by the State falls short of their needs.
– from the 1867 Sixteenth Annual report of the New York Asylum for Idiots: transmitted to the Legislature, January 17, 1867
Today it would be politically incorrect to label anyone with mental disabilities or deficiencies as an idiot. The word mentally retarded has also fallen out of common usage.
Idiot.
Imbecile.
Moron.
In the early 20th century these words took on new psychiatric meaning, which has since been expunged from the nomenclature of psychiatry. In the 19th century those words were pretty much interchangeable for anyone considered mentally deficient or inherently stupid.
What Do We Do With “Idiots”?
The study and understanding of psychology and medical conditions related to learning and developmental disorders was virtually nonexistent before the 20th century. In a large state like New York, a facility was developed at public expense to deal with so-called idiots. Hence came the “Idiot Asylum.”
Often parents couldn’t understand why a child wasn’t speaking. paying attention, responding to social cues, or learning like other children. Continue reading →
You can infer what you want about what is written here. I’m not naming names.
Certain groups and causes now overwhelm the media, and in turn our citizens with their lies. Their lies get repeated over and over. Their special cause, whatever it may be, works hard to get the truth obfuscated.
Lies get accepted into truth.
The man who most eloquently summed up why this happens, was Swiss writer Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821 – 1881). From 1847 until his death, Amiel recorded his insights about humanity in his diary, Journal intime. It is a brilliant self-introspective work.
This quote best reflects what we are experiencing today.
“Man defends himself as much as he can against truth, as a child does against a medicine, as the man of the Platonic cave does against the light. He does not willingly follow his path, for he has to be dragged along backward. ‘The natural liking for the false has several causes: the inheritance of prejudices, which produces an unconscious habit, a slavery; the predominance of the imagination over the reason, which affects the understanding; the predominance of the passions over the conscience, which depraves the heart; the predominance of the will over the intelligence, which vitiates the character. A lively, disinterested, persistent liking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism and doubt.”
With Vehicle Congestion Pricing Imminent, On Horizon Is Total Congestion Pricing
Proposed Total Congestion Fee Map – A plan to tax all New Yorkers to enter Manhattan
By Lipra Loof, Special STAFF REPORTER to SNCA | April 1, 2019
New York City Mayor Bill de Blassio and Governor Andrew Cuomo, have come together to support a congestion fee for all vehicles entering Manhattan from the Battery to 60th Street. As controversial as that idea is, the next proposal may be considered drastic and have some citizens scratching their heads.
Total Congestion Pricing – a plan to charge anyone entering any part of Manhattan has arrived. The proposal is being hailed by some as a courageous and innovative way to further reduce Manhattan’s congestion.
This plan would see the city charge a fixed fee to enter Manhattan via bus, train, bicycle and even walking.
Last night at a news conference alongside city and state officials, Mr. de Blassio and Mr. Cuomo unveiled the plan.
The city and state chiefs who rarely see eye to eye, said in unison, “We were not originally on board for the vehicle congestion pricing. But car-hating special interest groups and the MTA with their constant need for money have forced our hand and we had to cave in. After the vehicle congestion pricing plan gets finalized and hopefully passed by the state legislature, we will try and institute this bigger and bolder plan to rid our streets of all congestion.”
The governor and mayor continued, “We can completely eliminate congestion by removing the main cause of congestion- the people.”
“If people don’t want to pay a fee to be here, then we’ll have no people in the city and we will have solved the congestion issue once and for all,” Mr. de Blassio enthused.
Fifth Avenue – The way the whole city may look after Total Congestion Pricing is instituted.
Deputy Mayor Paul Frehley said “Putting an eight dollar fee on drivers, is okay for starters. Continue reading →
Fowler & Wells, Phrenologists – The Art of Reading The Shape Of Your Head.
What sort of foolishness did people believe in the 19th century? Phrenology, which might sound silly today, was studied and taken seriously by many people.
Phrenology is the “science” of reading character traits by the shape of your head. And of course there were plenty of experts – phrenologists – who could perform such accurate assessments.
Of course it is a pseudo-science, that is absurd, and yet there are still people today who believe in Phrenology. Continue reading →
A One-Sided Stupid Conversation With A Help Website
Whether its an appliance, a car or a computer, that you have a question about, there are “expert” web sites that will answer your question – almost always for a fee it turns out.
These sites claim an expert is available to immediately have a conversation with you and will answer your question. A pop-up appears on your browser with a name and avatar and asks you to type in your question.
You may or may not realize that most of the time there is no one on the other end conversing with you.
It’s a “bot” with an automated algorithmic program, which will do nothing but in the end try and extract $ or £ out of your purse. No matter what you type and say to the “helper”, you will get a response. Any user of one of these sites will earnestly type in their questions and possibly discover they are wasting their time by having a one-sided exchange.
How mush stupider could I get? Well read below. Here’s a transcript of a “conversation” I had with a music instrument appraiser’s assistant. This is the response I received to my “questions”.
Welcome! How can I help with your appraisal question?
You
I have a nuclear trumpet which when played sets off fusion bombs. I have some hydrogen and extra uranium that I can load into it. My concern is that I cannot play it on Jupiter without a car. I’m 5-years-old and considered retarded by my parents, Bathory and Dagwood. I’ve told them its not PC anymore to call anyone retarded but they are 116 and 111-years-old respectively. We live in the rubbish bin and it is very dark in here. Will you adopt my trumpet or me?
Watching the game from center field – the only way an entire generation of TV director’s have decided to televise baseball
Here are just a few of the ways television has helped to ruin watching baseball. None of the corrective suggestions will be heeded, but someone has to point it out.
1 – The camera angles
Guess what? About 80% of the time you’re not watching baseball. What you are seeing is four guys – a pitcher’s back, a catcher, a batter and an umpire.
What kind of a lead is the runner taking? Where are the outfielders shaded? Is the overused shift in effect? Where was that ball hit? Is it going to be a hit?
How would we know? The audience rarely sees any other part of the field except from the center field camera.
Unless you attend games in person and sit in center field with a high power telescope, this is not the way anyone views an entire baseball game. Nor should it be the way to televise one.
It would be nice to see the return of the overhead mezzanine high camera from behind the catcher so we can see the whole field.
So here are two angles from behind the plate – one high and wide the other not as high. Both of these camera angles are more conducive and infinitely superior to the view you see on most broadcasts.
2- The busy screen
I don’t know about most people but I want to watch a baseball game, not be diverted by ads and a constant scroll of information.
While not every channel is guilty of the news scroll on the bottom of the screen, your view is still cluttered with unnecessary information.
Watching the World Series there are no other scores or news to scroll on the screen so you won’t see the scroll there. Yet that doesn’t stop clutter.
Showing “Fox World Series Game 1” in the upper right hand portion of the screen for the ENTIRE game? Does the score, runners on base, balls and strikes, number of pitches, pitch speed and all other sorts of information need to be shown every second of the game?
Go watch a game from the 1980’s or earlier. How did people enjoy the first 40 years of baseball telecasts with justhaving the game and nothing else on the screen? Quite well.
With the exception of a few local broadcast outlets, most networks televising baseball have adapted their own version of a strike zone box. And it’s getting to be de rigueur instead of a special feature.
This horrible innovation that began a few years ago is an artificial rectangular box on the TV screen surrounding home plate, that supposedly identifies the strike zone and differentiates strikes from balls. Unfortunately it is in the direct line of sight of the television viewer.
MLB About To Introduce Two Ridiculous Rule Changes To “Speed Up” The Game.
Why The Changes Are Bad And What They Should Do Instead.
These fans watching baseball in the 1940s don’t look bored at all. That may be because the average length of a 9 inning baseball game in the 1940s was about 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Baseball is a slow and boring sport. The games are too long. There is not enough scoring.
These are some of the complaints that have been lodged against the National Pastime.
The only part I’ll agree with is that the games are definitely too long.
MLB executives and the players union are trying out two changes this year in the minor leagues to speed up the game. After trial periods, it is likely these changes will be permanently adapted in the major leagues. They may indeed speed up games by a few seconds. For the vast majority of games these changes will have little effect and do more damage than good to the overall structure of baseball.
There are other changes that would be more practical and easy to implement to dramatically shorten all games without changing baseball itself. I’ll discuss that after we review the two proposed MLB rule changes.
The first proposed rule change is that a team will be able to declare an intentional walk without the pitcher throwing any pitches. The pitcher’s manager will just signal for an intentional walk and the batter will go to first.
The second rule change is even sillier. In extra inning games, starting in the tenth inning each team when they come to bat will start the inning with a man already on second base.
So why are these changes beyond foolish?
Let’s look at the first proposal, the announced intentional walk. Although it sounds like an easy strategy to walk a batter intentionally, it is sometimes not so simple to throw four balls that are nowhere near home plate.
There are pitchers, such as the Yankees Dellin Betances, who when called upon to execute an intentional walk, every ball they throw can be an adventure. A wild pitch is always a possibility. Lobbing the ball to the catcher is hard for some pitchers. There are also quite a number of pitchers who throw the ball too close to the plate, so the batter can swing at the ball. Every now and then you’ll see something that you rarely see. Here are just two recent examples.
Miguel Cabrera drives in a run on an intended intentional walk.
Gary Sanchez of the Yankees nearly hits a home run on a pitch that was meant to be a ball.
As I pointed out many pitchers really have a hard time throwing a ball intentionally outside of the strike zone when the situation is called for. This is far more common than you might imagine. Wild pitches can change the outcome of a ballgame, especially with runners on base as seen here in multiple cases:
Then there is the opposite effect, where the defense pulls a tricky play.
In the early 1970s I recall seeing Reds superstar Johnny Bench get fooled at the plate. It happened on the biggest stage possible; game three of the 1972 World Series.
Bench had a 3 and 2 count when A’s manager Dick Williams paid a visit to the mound. Williams talked with pitcher Rollie Fingers and catcher Gene Tenace and made it seem like Williams told Fingers to intentionally walk the dangerous slugger. Because as Tenace returned to the plate to await the next pitch from Fingers, Tenace, stood up, put his hand out calling for an intentional ball four.
And guess what? Tenace jumped right back behind the plate and Fingers threw a slider for strike three, stunning Bench and everyone watching. It was a deft move you don’t see very often.
I couldn’t believe that I found the moment on YouTube.
In 1996 Dennis Martinez and Tony Pena of the Indians, successfully pulled the same move on Blue Jays star John Olerud.
It’s true, these flubs are extremely rare, but they do occur. The automatic intentional walk is a shortsighted rule change and ends up removing strategy from the game.
One other thing: how does the new rule go down in the record books? Will the pitcher be credited with four pitches thrown? What happens when you are at three balls and one strike, do you just declare the walk when you want to intentionally pass a batter or does the pitcher still have to throw a pitch?
The second rule change of starting the inning of an extra inning game with a man placed on second base to begin the inning is simply ludicrous.
No nail-biters anymore, no strategy – it’s just get this game over with. This is what MLB is saying.
Joe Torre, MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer, is in favor of bringing the rule to the major leagues if the minor league experiment works.
Torre said, “Let’s see what it looks like. It’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch. As much as it’s nice to talk about being at an 18-inning game, it takes time.”
Really Joe? How many games went to 18 innings or more in the past ten years? How many times did a manager use their whole pitching staff?
In the entire history of Major League Baseball there have only been 46 games that have gone more than 19 innings. On average less than 10 games per year last 15 innings or more. If a manager goes through his entire pitching staff, well he’s not a good manager. Believe it or not many fans enjoy marathon games. It’s the time of those exciting games that gets people sleepy, not the number of innings.
If you want to ruin baseball then this rule change is perfect.
By the way: how would the scoring work for putting a runner on second? Idiotically.
The pitcher didn’t allow the runner on, so why penalize him and the team when a ground ball to second for an out advancing the runner to third and then a fly ball can result in a run. The pitcher and the team was essentially defensively effective, but could lose the game.
This rule is MLB being lazy and coming up with a dumb solution just to shorten games and appeal to younger fans with limited attention spans. It’s like MLB took a page out of the NHL rule book with hockey’s overtime shootout to decide tie games. That adjustment has been horrible for hockey and its fans.
Now what are the ways to speed up baseball games significantly?
Change # 1 – Enforce rule 5.07 (c) of the Major League Baseball rule book which states: “When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 12 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call “Ball.”
The 12-second timing starts when the pitcher is in possession of the ball and the batter is in the box, alert to the pitcher. The timing stops when the pitcher releases the ball. The intent of this rule is to avoid unnecessary delays. The umpire shall insist that the catcher return the ball promptly to the pitcher, and that the pitcher take his position on the rubber promptly. Obvious delay by the pitcher should instantly be penalized by the umpire.
Did you realize rule 6.02a (8) says:
If there is a runner, or runners, it is a balk when: The pitcher unnecessarily delays the game;
Have you ever seen that enforced? I haven’t. But I’ve seen pitchers call the catcher to the mound six separate times for one batter or take over 30 seconds between each and every pitch.
I’ve noticed and counted the time between pitches in many games. Most pitchers take between 22 -27 seconds to throw a pitch after receiving the ball back from the catcher. Some pitchers are agonizingly slow, like the Dodgers Pedro Baez (over 30 seconds between pitches) and Kenley Jansen (27 seconds between pitches). There are many hurlers who can transform their own fielders into a trance-like state with all that inactivity.
There’s no excuse for this. Watch R.A. Dickey or Mark Buehrle pitch and the game moves at a brisk pace. Unfortunately they are the exceptions. Most pitchers take wayyyyy too long between pitches. Put up a pitch clock and give the pitchers a little leeway- 15 seconds and have them throw the pitch or call it a ball. Figure saving at least 5 seconds per pitch with 260 total pitches being thrown. total time shortened per game: minimum 26 minutes Continue reading →
The man who most eloquently summed up why this happens, was Swiss writer Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821 – 1881). From 1847 until his death, Amiel recorded his insights about humanity in his diary, Journal intime. It is a brilliant self-introspective work.
Whether its an appliance, a car or a computer, that you have a question about, there are “expert” web sites that will answer your question – almost always for a fee it turns out.
