Day: September 2, 2018

Shohei Ohtani today became the first player in a century to hit at least 15 homers and pitch at least 50 innings

UncleScoopy

Shohei Ohtani today became the first player in a century to hit at least 15 homers and pitch at least 50 innings (in the same season)

Well, technically 99 years, so not quite a century. The last guy to do it was Babe Ruth in 1919.

And it’s even more difficult for Shohei because he doesn’t bat when he pitches. (He never started any inter-league games.) On the other hand: (1) he came nowhere near the Babe, who pitched 133 innings and smacked 29 homers; (2) Ruth only hit three of those homers in games he pitched.

No player has ever hit more than 9 homers in a season in games he pitched.

Too bad about the injury. Through May 20 he was 4-1 as a pitcher, and was hitting .321 with a .986 OPS. He may still win rookie of the year, despite missing a month as a hitter, and three months of pitching. He never pitched in August, but he batted .328 with an OPS over 1.000 as a full-time DH. I’d say the kid can play!

“Only 18 percent of Trump voters believe using the n-word is racist and just 42 percent find the term offensive.”

UncleScoopy

“Only 18 percent of Trump voters believe using the n-word is racist and just 42 percent find the term offensive.”

Least surprising poll ever. Racists insist they are not racists. Have you ever heard an obvious racist admit it? Even white supremacists, who are racist by definition, insist they are not.

In my senior years I am discovering that America is not the open, generous, pragmatic place I hoped and even believed it to be. I have already discovered that the group of people resistant to or incapable of rational thought is a FAR larger assembly than I had ever dreamed. I previously had thought that the ignorant, racist element of our society was insignificant, perhaps 5% of the populace.

Boy was I wrong.

It is traumatic to think you have arrived at the wisdom of maturity, only to determine that your most deeply-held and longest-held beliefs about the essential goodness of your country are just so much hogwash; and to see that so many people are incapable or unwilling to see the cruel, arrogant, and fundamentally twisted way that our current government has demeaned a country built by the wisdom and compassion of men like Lincoln and the Roosevelts.

John McCain’s Funeral Was a Council of War—Just as He Meant It to Be

UncleScoopy

“John McCain’s Funeral Was a Council of War—Just as He Meant It to Be”

I did not love you, John McCain, but I salute you for your service – not as much for your vaunted military heroism as for having the courage to place principles above party and profits. I usually disagreed with your positions, but you were a tough motherfucker with a conscience, a sense of humor, and a gigantic pair of balls, and I curse whatever power rules this universe for taking you away when we need you.

For all of your flaws, and they were myriad, you were one of the few powerful men in America to realize what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Donald J. Trump.*

(* With thanks to the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson for having waded through the murky haze of the afterlife, trudging always against the current of time, to provide the words of that second paragraph. Greetings, Doc, from the other side of the fog. Sorry to report we need your words again, for Nixon is reborn, and he’s worse than ever.)