Monthly Archives: February 2021

MillersTime Baseball Questions Are Back !

28 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures, Go Sox

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Yes.

And the first Spring Training games are today, Feb. 28, 2021.

Opening Day is scheduled for April 1. (Hopefully that will not turn into an April Fools’ Day hoax.)

Despite some concerns about less interest in baseball this year, there seemed to be good support for continuing the MillersTime Baseball Contests.

So here we go with the four contests for this year:

2021 MillersTime Baseball Contests

Contest #1:

How will the COVID-19 virus affect the 2021 MLB season? Include some Overall Predictions as well as some Specific Ones. Creativity is encouraged. I’ll choose the five best submissions and have MillersTime baseball contestants vote on the winner.

Prize: Your choice of one of these books: The 25 Best Baseball Books of All Times.

Contest #2:

Pick your favorite MLB team (or the team you know the best) and outline how they will do in the 2021 season compared to last year. Again, include both general predictions and specific ones in your submission and your reasons for those predictions.

Prize: Join me for a Nats’ game next year, or I’ll get tickets and try to join you for a regular season game of a team of your choice anywhere you choose.

Contest #3:

Fill in the Blank:

In 2021:

  1. Which teams will have the most wins in the AL & NL__________________ ___________________
  2. Which team will be the King of New York _______________________(Tim M.)
  3. Number of hitters who will strike out more than 200 times (three did in 2018, none did that in 2019)_________________(Zach H.)
  4. Who will be the Manager of the Year in either the AL or NL (name one) _________________
  5. Which Al & NL teams will have the most improved record from 2020­­­­­­­­­­___________________ ___________________

True /False:

In 2021:

6.______Every team below the league average in payroll (currently $118,485,369) will miss the playoffs. (These teams currently are the Twins, Reds, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Royals, A’s, Rangers, Brewers, Tigers, Mariners, Rays, Marlins, Orioles, Pirates & Indians). (Zach H.)

7.______Dodgers & Padres will combine to win 200 or more games. (Dawn W.)

8.______There will be more HRs in 2021 on per game basis than in 2019 or 2018. (In 2019–6,776 home runs, all-time high for MLB. Broke previous record (2017) by 671 homers for an average of 1.39 homers per team game. (In 2018–5,585 home runs for an average of 1.15 homers per team game (Steve K.)

9.______No MLB Team will play all 162 games.

10.______No MLB pitcher will have an ERA below 2.00.

Prize: Join me for a Nats’ game next year, or if you’re not able to make it to DC, perhaps I can make it to where you live, and we’ll see a regular season game together.

Contest #4:

Assuming there is a World Series in 2021,

  1. Name the two teams who will make it into the WS
  2. Which one will win?
  3. In How many games?
  4. Explain in some detail what will be the biggest specific factor determining the winner?
  5. Tie-Breaker: AL & NL Division winners?

Prize: One ticket to the 2022 World Series or two tickets to the 2022 All Star Game in Los Angeles.

Additional Details:

  1. All winners and those whose questions were chosen for this contest get the ‘one-of-a kind,’ specially designed and updated MillersTime Baseball Winner T-Shirt.
  2. Enter as many or as few of the contests as you want.
  3. If you get a friend (or foe) to participate in these contests, and he or she wins and mentions your name in the submission, you’ll get a choice of receiving one the 25 best baseball books as your prize.
  4. Any two-generation submission that wins will get a special prize.
  5. GET YOUR PREDICTIONS IN EARLY. In case of a tie, the individual who submitted his/her prediction first will be the winner. In previous years, this has been a factor in declaring a winner.
  6. Submissions should be sent to me by email: Samesty84@gmail.com

Deadline for Submissions: Opening Day, noon (EST) April 1

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Should the MillersTime Baseball Contests Continue?

16 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures, Go Sox

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Photo by Ellen Miller

Well now that that Super Bowl thing is over, and those of us who wanted the Chiefs to win have recovered, it’s time to focus on baseball.

Pitchers and catchers are gathering this week and full Spring Training, though with restrictions, will be underway shortly.

It’s hard to imagine what the 2021 MLB season will be with the continuation of the COVID virus – how many games will actually be played; will fans be able to attend games; and if so, will they; how much enthusiasm has faded for baseball, which was already in decline in some ways; and if there is a credible season, what teams will do well; and what players will shine; and which will falter?

Let me know if you are interested in the continuation the MillersTime Baseball Contests.

If you are interested, please help on the questions. Are there totally different types of questions to ask this year and which, if any, questions from the past continue to be part of the contests (e.g., How will your favorite team do in 2021; T/F questions; WS contestants and winners)?

Please send me any thoughts you have. Use either the Comments section of this post or send them to me at Samesty84@gmail.com.

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At Last: A Movie We Enjoyed

07 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures

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by Richard Miller

The last two times Ellen and I posted reviews about films was in April and May of 2020, and all of those were films we had seen at home. (If you didn’t read or don’t remember either of those posts, you might find some films of interest in this link. (See: Our Movie Reviews Are Back, 4/7/2020 and Eight Films & One Guest Review, 5/9/2020). As you may recall, Ellen in particular, is not a great fan of watching movies at home.

Nevertheless, we kept trying to find films, generally ones recommended by other MillerTime readers. (See: Favorite Movies & TV Progams in These Times, 6/18/2020 and Second Rounds of Contributors Favorite Films & TV Programs, 8/25/2020). The few we did like were already well-heralded, and our recommendations would lend little to drawing your attention to them.

Last night, however, we hit on one that we both thought worthy of mentioning to others:

The Dig (Directed by Simon Stone, on Netflix)

Ellen rated it ***** and said, “it was the best thing she’d seen since the coronavirus quarantine began, and we stopped writing about films.”

I rated it **** 1/2 and agree it was the most satisfying film we’d seen in many months.

The story is adapted from a novel by John Preston and is fictional account about the 1939 excavation in Suffolk, England of an archeological site on the property of Edith Pretty, just as World War II was about to begin. (This excavation did in fact take place and has been called “one of the biggest archeological finds of the 20th Century.”) Neither Ellen nor I had read the novel nor knew about this ‘expedition’.

For us, The Dig hit on many of the factors that we like in a film: a good story that does more than entertain; one that educates and provokes; one with fine acting (particularly by the two leads Carey Milligan as Edith Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, the excavator); and a film that has wonderful cinematography with images that remain in one’s mind well after seeing the film. It is visually beautiful.

Perhaps the film may be more suited to a slightly older audience, one not looking for fast moving scenes and exciting action. The director chooses to move away from the main story of this coastal England countryside dig to include some secondary characters. Fortunately, he returns to his main themes of the discovery and outcome of this dig and questions of who owns history, issues of class inequality, and portrayal of British life, all done in an understated way.

You don’t need to know any more than that, but if you’re interested in some of the background information, you can check out:

The True History Behind Netflix’s ‘The Dig’ and Sutton Hoo, Smithsonian Magazine.

Sutton Hoo – Recreating an Archeological Discovery from the Ground Down, NYTimes.

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The Best $50 I’ve Spent All Year…Even Though It’s Free

03 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Escapes and Pleasures, The Outer Loop

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Thanks to Hugh Riddleberger’s recommendation in December, I signed up for and began to read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American which arrives in a daily email (actually it usually seems to arrive well after I’ve gone to sleep).

Richardson is a history professor at Boston College has also taught at MIT & U of Mass, and is the author of a number of books, her most recent being How the South Won the Civil War.

It is the most informative single piece of reporting on the daily political news that I have found. She is able to put together day after day not just what is happening in our country but is able to put it in context.

During the final month and a half of the Trump administration, it was without a doubt the most comprehensive and important account of what occurred each day that I read.

It will no doubt not appeal to all readers of the MillersTime website, but for me, it is the first thing I read each morning, after having read a variety of news sources before going to sleep each night. And I always find insights that I had not discovered elsewhere.

In her own words, Heather Cox Richardson writes about her Newsletter:

About Letters from an American

Historians are fond of saying that the past doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes.

To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here.

That’s where this newsletter comes in.

I’m a professor of American history. This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.

These were the same questions a famous observer asked in a book of letters he published in 1782, the year before the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War.

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur called his book “Letters from an American Farmer.”

Like I say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.

If you want to check out a few of her daily writings, you can get access to her recent and past daily emails here.

But what about the headline of this blog post?

Letters from an American is free for simply adding your email address to her site. But I believe it is worth paying for, contributing to her for the hard work she does each day. As the sources for news and daily information are both shrinking (fewer local newspapers for example) and exploding (particularly through social media), I am pleased to support her work even though I am not at present using any of the added features the $50 a year subscription offers me.

I believe you can start receiving her daily emails by going here, where you have several options, including free access, $5 a month, or $50 year. The latter two options have added features to the daily emails.

Richardson has promised: Letters from an American will always be free, but we also have a community behind a paywall to expand on the ideas in the Letters without the help of trolls. If you’d like to join us for discussion and more thoughts from me, you’re most welcome. It’s $5 a month.

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