Go, Mariners! Part III: You Get What You Pay For

Alvarez launches game-winner, Oct. 13.

	2022 Record	MLB rank (of 30)	2002 Team payroll	MLB rank
Seattle Mariners	90-72	9	$107 million	22
Houston Astros	106-56	2	$176 million	10

[MLB Teams With Highest 2022 Payrolls: Dodgers on Top | BetMGM]

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A Few Random Thoughts on “Drink the Kool-Aid” as a Political Metaphor

Recently, in the agonizing run-up to this God-forsaken election [1], I’ve been coming across the idiom “Drink the Kool-Aid” much more often than I’d like or even expect. Accordingly, I took it upon myself to express my indignation. Before clowns got creepy Then I thought: Do I even know what it means, really? Where did the phrase come from? I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure people who have been using the phrase were sure. (I’ve become forgetful in my geezerhood.) And so, like so many of us do when we aren’t sure, I resorted to Wikipedia: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is an expression used to refer to a person who believes in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards. The phrase often carries a negative connotation. It can also be used ironically or humorously to refer to accepting an idea or changing a preference due to popularity, peer pressure, or persuasion. The phrase originates from events in Jonestown , Guyana , on November 18, 197...

Missing Baseball, Part II

Part II There was another player, Steve Bilko, who captured our fancy not so much by his skill, which was considerable, but by his size and power. According to Warren Corbett, “ Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told writer Gaylon White that his best playing weight was 254, but he sometimes topped 270.” [3] Bilko was up to the majors, and down, for all of his fourteen-year career. He had three great years with the Los Angeles (PCL) Angels from 1955-57, winning the Triple Crown in 1956. Consulting Baseball Reference, I see that he went up to the Majors with two teams in 1958. There is no record of his playing for Portland, and I wonder why he sticks in my memory so. It must have been his reputation,...

Perfect! Have a Nice Rest of Your Day!

Perfect Estote ergo vos perfecti June 20, 2023 Mass at St Aloysius this morning was said by the young, slender, darkly-bearded, glasses-wearing priest (Still haven’t gotten his name. In previous sermons he’d revealed that he comes from a Texan Hispanic family.) His enunciation is clear when reading from the Gospels and his short homilies that follow are quite good. Anyway, here was the reading for today: Gospel, Matthew 5:43-48 43 'You have heard how it was said, You will love your neighbour and hate your enemy. 44 But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even the tax collectors do as much? 47...

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