Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Cleaning out the inbox

The cleaning of the inbox continues with a few notable articles to peruse at your leisure.

Bruce Markusen's Card Corner for the Baseball Hall of Fame starts out with a reference that I should have seen, never have previously, made me howl with laughter and will now never leave me with his comparison of the Phillies slugging outfielder Johnny Callison with the actor Edward Winter- best known to fans of MASH as Colonel Flagg!
Markusen's article made me laugh with the remembrance of some of the best lines of Winter/Flagg. "The Wind just broke his leg" along with the career of Callison, who had the Phillies not blown the pennant in 1964, would have been the likely National League MVP.



SABR is in the middle of an extensive series that looks at ownership history for each team and it is tremendously interesting to read about the attendance and the triumphs and failings of the various teams through the years.
The series has just started, but the Indians and Giants have already been posted.

ESPN writes about one of my favorites in Dale Murphy in a long article.
Dale Murphy seems to be one of the rare people in public life that seems to be exactly as his image portrays and the article also looks at the generation that grew up watching him on WTBS.
Author Wright Thompson has written several terrific articles for the Worldwide Leader.

The Altoona Mirror writes about the history of the team's theme song "Everybody Loves Curve Baseball".
Played every time the Curve scores a run as well as other times during the game, the song is sung by a Slovakian group and the words are written to the music of a Slovakian hit.
I'm not sure that you can go to a Curve game and not hear or remember - Everybody Loves Curve Baseball.


In the Canadian Football League, a huge rivalry was once played for a trophy that now isn't awarded at all.
The Harold Ballard trophy was awarded to the winner of the season series between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts and it was named after the unpopular owner (who named it after himself) of the Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
That seems awkward to start with- an owner that owns a team in each city that generally doesn't care for each other with Toronto looking down on Hamilton's working-class status, Hamilton disliking Toronto's metropolitan status along with never forgiving the Leafs for always (along with the Buffalo Sabres) foiling Hamilton's perpetual efforts to bring an NHL team to their town.
Add to that the bombastic and cheap owner, it was almost as if Canada had their own "Mr.McMahon" 30 years before the heel owner existed.

Last Saturday's football game between Texas Tech and Houston left me a little conflicted as the former SWC rivals played in a non-conference game in Lubbock.
While I've been a Red Raider fans since I was a child, I actually watch more Cougars games now with scheduling.
I did watch as a reasonably passive observer, the SWC Roundup did an excellent job at looking back at the series between the schools and their game history.
I would have liked a look at their 1976 game in which both teams entered the game in the top ten in the nation and Houston's 27-19 win would be the tiebreaker in deciding which team would represent the SWC as champion in Dallas for the Cotton Bowl against undefeated Maryland.
Houston would defeat Maryland in that game 30-21.

We wrap with Philadelphia Magazine's ode to Mayonnaise and why it says millennials have killed that condiment.
I sure would not report its demise, but then again I'm not of that age bracket either!
I won't be stopping my use of it, that is a promise that I can easily keep!




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