How did our high hopes for the MLB season turn out?
Well, the Oakland Athletics finished at the bottom, 50-112, .309 winning percentage. That’s bad, but it isn’t quite historically bad: Wikipedia’s list cuts off at .300.
Kansas City finished slightly better: 56-106, .346.
Colorado: 59-103, .364.
And the White Sox: 61-101, .377 winning percentage.
Another one down, another one down, another one rides the bus bites the dust…
Buck Showalter out as manager of the Mets.
I was initially a little confused by this: was it a firing, or a retirement, but later articles make it clear it was a “forced resignation”.
ESPN:
Also ESPN:
New York is 74-87 and 29½ games behind National League East champion Atlanta.
Lawrence asked me last night which of the remaining teams I favored to go 0-17.
My answer: da Bears and Carolina. I don’t believe the Vikings are that bad, and Denver at least has a coach who’s won a Superbowl.
How did that work out for me? Actually, pretty well.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
da Bears
Carolina
da Bears play Washington on Thursday this week, while Carolina plays Detroit at noon next Sunday. Right now, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network favors Washington (but not overwhelmingly) and Detroit (overwhelmingly). I’ll be joining FotB pigpen51 in rooting for the Lions, and the entire civilized world in rooting for an asteroid strike on FedEx Field.
The baseball season’s ending, and we all know what’s coming: the ceremonial throwing out of managers.
The San Francisco Giants started today: Gabe Kapler out. SF Chronicle.
The big problem seems to be that the Giants pretty much fell apart:
Sort of on the margin for sports firings (and from ESPN, who I have a high barrier for), but I’ll allow it: an oral history of Lane Kiffin’s legendary “tarmac firing” (which really wasn’t) from USC.
I’m allowing this because there’s a couple of quotes that struck me:
Kiffin
It’s 5 a.m. The sun’s getting ready to come up. I’m sitting in the backyard, and I said to my wife, “When I go to bed, I don’t want to wake up.” She’s got a little more perspective, and she said, “You have three children upstairs. Don’t ever say that again.”
Men: marry that kind of woman.
Kiffin
I saw a podcast the other day on the rapper Macklemore, and he’s talking about, he’s winning the Grammy. He’s on stage. He’s got everything. And he’s not fulfilled. And later, he’s in rehab. He’s making coffee in the morning for people. He’s serving others. And he says, “I felt more fulfilled doing that than when I was on stage.”
Dianne Feinstein. NYT. LAT. WP.
This doesn’t quite qualify as an obit, but I don’t have any place else to put it (other than a separate entry, which I’d rather not do) and I feel like it is close enough for government work. The Las Vegas Police department has made an arrest in a 27-year old cold case.
But:
The other point that I think should be made: an arrest is one thing. A conviction is another. More from the tabloid of record.
Edited to add: A two-pack (see what I did there?) of additional coverage from the NYT and the LAT.
“Dwight, shouldn’t you be linking to the actual Las Vegas newspapers?” Well, yes, except: the Las Vegas newspapers are generally not great. Though they have had some good columnists working for them in the past…but for the record, here’s the Review-Journal coverage.
Also not quite an obit, but within this blog’s area of coverage:
This is just a very preliminary report from the NTSB: we probably won’t get the full report for two years or more. And no, I’m not noting it because moose. RoadRich can argue with me in the comments if he knows more, but I believe this is one of the biggest killers of pilots out there, especially pilots of small aircraft: trying to take off with an overloaded aircraft, or an aircraft out of balance.
I’m aware of Dianne Feinstein’s death. At this point, it’s breaking news, and I don’t want to blog much until this shakes out.
There will probably be more later on today.
I should have put this in this week’s update, but I didn’t think to check the schedule until after I posted.
Denver (0-3) plays da Bears (0-3) at noon on Sunday.
Minnesota (0-3) plays Carolina (0-3) at noon on Sunday.
This means a few things:
1. I will probably try to post the loser update on Sunday afternoon after the games end, assuming I’m not napping.
2. We’re going to have two 0-4 teams. Unless there’s a tie, which I would not rule out.
3. It looks like Sunday is the last day of the MLB regular season, so I will probably post a special loser update on Monday for that.
Sir Michael Gambon, British actor. The NYT is still in “A complete obituary will appear shortly.” mode.
This isn’t a normal flaming hyenas watch, as the subject isn’t quite a politician. But I think the exceptional circumstances justify this.
Jose Torres used to be a politician. At one point in his life, he was the mayor of Patterson, New Jersey. Fortunately, he was convicted of using city workers and city money to renovate a warehouse being leased by his daughter and nephew.
He spent 13 months in the joint. But that’s not why he’s a flaming hyena.
Would you like to guess what happened next?
If you guessed “he tried to run for office again” take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square. Last year, he filed to run for mayor.
But it gets better.
Yes! Not only did he try to violate the order, he actually sued when he was told he was violating the order.
Mr. Torres is now facing a criminal contempt of court charge.
“It takes remarkable brashness to flout a state court order and then attempt to strong-arm the city clerk, via civil litigation, into allowing an impermissible campaign to proceed,” [State Attorney General Matthew] Platkin said.
“That is bold. And, according to the grand jury, it is also indictable.”
I’m not sure “brashness” is the word I’d use. I think I’d call it “stupidity”. But oddly, it’s only the second most stupid thing I’ve seen this week.
(I’m still trying to decide if I want to link to the most stupid thing I’ve seen this week. It does relate to some of this blog’s areas of coverage – cocaine and aircraft. But the details are pretty R-rated, and I actually sort of feel bad for the subject.)
In his 23 seasons with the Orioles, from 1955 to 1977, Robinson became known as the Human Vacuum Cleaner for his ability to snare just about anything hit his way.
Charging topped grounders or bunts, backhanding smashes, ranging to his left or his right, he won 16 consecutive Gold Glove awards as the American League’s leading fielder at third base. Only the pitcher Greg Maddux, with 18 Gold Gloves, has exceeded Robinson’s total.Robinson played on four pennant-winning teams, two of them World Series champions. He was the most valuable player of the 1970 World Series, in which the Orioles beat the Cincinnati Reds in five games, for his spectacular plays and for his hitting: He had a .429 batting average and hit a pair of home runs. (The Orioles also beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in four games in the 1966 Series.)
Robinson had 2,848 hits, 268 home runs and a career batting average of .267. He was the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1964, when he hit 28 homers, had a league-leading 118 runs batted in and batted .317, all career highs. But he was best known for his fielding.
Robinson was named an All-Star every season from 1960 to 1974. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, his first year of eligibility, with almost 92 percent of the votes.
Edited to add: Dave Barry on Brooks Robinson.
Phil Sellers. He was a dominant player for Rutgers in the 1970s:
He was called “Phil the Thrill,” and, with Sellers leading a team that also included Eddie Jordan, Mike Dabney and Hollis Copeland, Rutgers kept improving. During Sellers’s junior year, when he averaged 22.7 points and 9.4 rebounds a game, Rutgers had a record of 22-7 and played in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, losing in the first round.
Rutgers was undefeated in 26 games during the 1975-76 regular season, Sellers’s senior year. Late in a conference tournament game against St. John’s University that preceded the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, Sellers clashed with his coach, Tom Young.
“Give me the ball,” Young recalled Sellers saying when he described the incident to The New York Times in 1983. “I said, ‘Phil, we’re going to run our offense.’ He said it three times, ‘Give me the ball.’”
Sellers scored six points in the next 90 seconds, and Rutgers won.
Rutgers then won its first three games in the N.C.A.A. tournament, despite subpar scoring performances from Sellers, to raise its record to 31-0. But the Scarlet Knights lost the semifinal game to Michigan, 86-70, with Sellers scoring only 11 points against the strong defense of Michigan’s Wayman Britt.
Sellers’s college career totals of 2,399 points and 1,115 rebounds are still Rutgers records.
Terry Kirkman, of the Association. This is another one of those groups that was a little before my time – though I have heard of Terry Kirkman – so I’m going to leave comment on this up to my music consultant.
David McCallum. THR. Tributes from Deadline.
David McCallum made every moment count, in life and on set. Let’s raise a jug and celebrate a funny fantastic authentic man. I’ve only got 3 autographs. Connery, Tony Bennett and McCallum. I felt the same way as Steve McQueen in this picture from The Great Escape: Wow! It’s David… pic.twitter.com/ve6hFvFkQD
— Michael Weatherly (@M_Weatherly) September 25, 2023
I was a little young for “UNCLE” first-run (and I don’t recall it being in re-runs on any of the Houston stations) and I’ve never been a big fan of “NCIS”. But I did kind of like Mr. McCallum. I have no idea what his politics were, which I think is worthy of praise in the current era.
And this kind of made me choke up a bit:
So did this:
Donations can be made to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
(Mr. McCallum served in the British military. But his second wife’s father was a Marine who fought at Iwo Jima.)
Other credits include “The Master”, “Babylon 5”, “Hell Drivers” (which I have to admit sounds interesting: check out that cast), “A Night to Remember”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women and War”.
Dick Clark, one-term Democratic Senator from Iowa. He was famous for walking 1300 miles during his 1972 campaign.
Matteo Messina Denaro, Italian Mafia boss.
In 2020, Mr. Messina Denaro was convicted in absentia for his role in the high-profile murders of two of Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992, and for deadly bombings the next year in Milan, Rome and Florence that prosecutors believe were part of a Cosa Nostra strategy against the state.
He also received a life sentence for his involvement in the kidnapping and death of the 12-year-old son of a Mafia turncoat after the boy was strangled and his body was dissolved in acid, and in the death of a police officer.
He’d been “underground” since 1993, but was still running the “family business”. The authorities tracked him down because he was being treated for cancer: