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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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,...

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...

The Astronaut and the Acid Head

The Astronaut and the Acid Head August 18, 2019 First, a short warning: This piece is about books, with only passing references to real life, (if there is such a thing. ) First, I recommend a book by Scott Kelly: Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery. This memoir was a lot better than I was expecting when I picked it off the Current Shelf at the local library. Scott Kelly spent a year on the International Space Station. (You might have seen the PBS documentary about it: ( https://www.pbs.org/show/year-space ). Meanwhile his identical twin, Mark (husband of Gabby Gifford), also an astronaut, stayed on the good old Earth. It’s a good mix of the gee-whiz tech stuff with the personal insights of an intelligent and talented man. Please don’t be put off if you’re not particularly interested in science or space. Actually, a second-hand recommendation might be more ...

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