31 Tuesday Mar 2015
Tags
2015 Millerstime Baseball Contests, baseball, Join me, Nationals, Opening Day, Take a Kid to a Game, tickets, Washington Nationals
Once again I have some tickets available for Nats’ games, some to join with me and some I cannot use.
28 Saturday Mar 2015
Posted in Go Sox
Tags
Bart Giamatti, baseball, Hall of Fame, MLB, Permanent Ineligibility, Pete Rose, Rule 21(d), Thomas Boswell, Tyler Kepner
Baseball’s Rule 21(d): “Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.
Pete Rose: Player 1963-86 and Manager 1984-89 broke this rule, betting on baseball games, including games he managed. After lying about his betting on baseball for 15 years, he signed a deal in 1989 with MLB Commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti that banished him from the sport forever.
Hall of Fame: A permanently ineligible player cannot be considered for the Hall of Fame. Had Rose not bet on baseball and not been banned, he would have easily been elected to the HOF. See His Accomplishments if you doubt that.
Rose has sought ‘parole’ in the past (5 times?), but neither Commissioners Fay Vincent nor Bud Selig ever considered rescinding the banishment. Now, 25 years later, there is a new Commissioner of Baseball, Rob Manifred, and it is likely he will have to decide if Rose should be reinstated. (Reinstatement would not mean automatic entrance into the HOF as Rose would still have to be voted into the HOF in the usual manner by the Baseball Writer’s Association of America.)
The Debate:
1. Rose has served his time and should be reinstated.
2. Rose broke a cardinal rule and should not be allowed back in baseball.
3. Rose should remain out of baseball but be voted in or out of HOF by the BBWAA just as any other rule breaker (PEDs, etc.).
Two articles that address these issues that are worth your time:
Tyler Kepner, NYT: Pete Rose’s Statistics: 4,256 Hits and a Big Error, where in Mike Schmidt says Rose has served his time and should return to baseball. Paul Molitor disagrees.
Thomas Boswell, WaPo: Consider Pete Rose for HOF, but don’t let him back in baseball, where in Boswell says ‘No Way’ Rose should be let back in, but he could/should be considered for the HOF.
My thinking on this ‘debate’ has changed, particularly after reading the Boswell article. I agree with his reasoning and conclusion that Rose should not be reinstated. Not so sure about the HOF issue, however.
Where do you stand? Please so state in the Comment section of this post.
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Reminder: If you haven’t submitted you picks for the 2015 MillersTime Baseball Contests, tempus fugit.
26 Thursday Mar 2015
Posted in Articles & Books of Interest, The Outer Loop
Tags
"Return to Mylai", Katie Orlinsky, Mylai massacre, Symour M. Hersch, The New Yorker, Vietnam War
Pham Thanh Cong, the director of the My Lai Museum, was eleven at the time of the massacre. His mother and four siblings died. “We forgive, but we do not forget,” he said. Credit Photograph by Katie Orlinsky – The New Yorker
Having recently returned from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia and being continually disturbed, and sometimes mystified, about the US role and legacy in that part of the world, I was attracted to the current issue of the New Yorker and Seymour M. Hersh’s article Return to My Lai: The Scene of the Crime – A reporter’s journey to My Lai and the secrets of the past.
Hersh, as you may remember, particularly if you ‘came of age’ during the Vietnam War, broke the story about the My Lai massacre, which, in part, led to a reexamination of our role in that war and in that part of the world.
Now, 47 years later, Hersh returns to Vietnam and specifically to My Lai and discovers things he did not know when he uncovered and wrote about the My Lai massacre.
Check out: Return to My Lai
Also, in a companion ‘article’, there are photographs by New Yorker photojournalist Katie Orlinsky, who accompanied Hersh on this trip. Check out: The Memory of My Lai.
25 Wednesday Mar 2015
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
Tags
"A Sad Apology", "Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong", "You Can Go Home Again...Almost", Millerstime, Sam Wo's Chinese Restaurant, Thommie Award, You Can't Go Home Again
For real.
Normally I wouldn’t brag, but my wife Ellen insists I post the following:
While looking at my email in the middle of the night recently (I know, bad form), I saw this: Congrats! You’ve won a Thommie Award for outstanding work on your blog “MillersTime”. I thought it was spam and almost deleted it.
But I took a chance and opened the email. Don’t we all like winning awards?
I saw that a group named Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong was looking for writers who have commented on whether or not you can go home again (the adage taken from Wolfe’s 1940 novel You Can’t Go Home Again).
In choosing MillersTime as “our first recipient of the prestigious Thommie Award” — for excellence in literary interpretation — they cited me for “rescinding (my) initial comment regarding Thomas Wolfe’s faultiness.” They cited my post A Sad Apology and quoted from what I had written:
In October of last year, I wrote, “Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again – almost.”… . Sam Wo’s is closing. You can read about the details as written in the SF Chronicle, but basically, the place is so far from being acceptable to the Health Department, that it would take a mammoth rebuilding to keep it open… … And so my apologies to the also deceased Thomas Wolfe. After going ‘home’ to Sam Wo’s for the last 50 years, that is now no longer possible.
Basically, after returning to my favorite San Francisco Chinese Restaurant, Sam Wo’s, I wrote a review (You Can Go Home Again…Almost), saying it was still a good restaurant, and, therefore, Thomas Wolfe was wrong in his famous adage.
Not long after that post, I was ‘forced’ to write another one acknowledging the closing of Sam Wo’s. I think it was that post (A Sad Apology) that accounted for my winning of the Thommie Award.
I sincerely want to thank the Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong folks for this ‘prestigious’ Thommie Award.
12 Thursday Mar 2015
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
Tags
"Cut Snake", "Paco de Lucia", "Set Fire to the Stars", "The Fool", "The Salt of the Earth", "Warsaw 44", "Wild Tales", #MiamiFF, 32nd Miami Film Festival
We spent an all-too-brief time this past weekend at the Miami Film Festival. As we found and enjoyed in last year’s Philadelphia Film Festival, we loved the idea and actuality of seeing three films a day, often very different films.
The main drawback, of course, is the lack of time to savor each film. Still, I suspect we will make a habit of going back to both Philly and Miami, where it is possible to get into almost every film, assuming just a bit of advanced planning. And the costs are reasonable.
Six of the seven films we saw over two plus days are ones that are worth considering if you love movies.
Here are very brief notes on them:
12 Thursday Mar 2015
Posted in Go Sox
Tags
A Prediction for MLB in 2015, baseball, New Rules for 2015, Speeding up the Game, Spring Training
I was in Jupiter, FL Monday and Tuesday to take in a couple of Spring Training games, and I noticed something that I suspect we’ll see continue in the regular season this year.
Now I know, Spring Training is not indicative of the regular season. And you can find at least a dozen reasons to question what I’m about to say. But if I were a betting man — and I have been known to make an occasional wager on both baseball (and blackjack) — I would bet on the following statement:
04 Wednesday Mar 2015
Posted in Articles & Books of Interest, Family and Friends
(Todd Endo, 73, portrait by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Todd Endo, a long time friend, was featured in an article in the Washington Post last week. In A Japanese American in Selma, he describes how a trip to Selma 50 years ago changed his life.
Todd is returning to Selma this week to compare 1965 to now and “to make a connection again.”
I look forward to hearing about his return trip to a place that had such an impact on him and suspect he’ll find a very different Selma.
Or maybe not.