Cleaning out the Inbox

    The inbox cleaning starts with WTOP reporting that affiliated baseball could be returning soon, perhaps as soon as the 2026 season, to Frederick, Maryland, and Harry Grove Stadium.

Frederick lost their High A team after the great minor league implosion of 2021, despite leading the Carolina League in attendance for years.

MLB insisted that Frederick would not retain their team due to its stadium amenities or lack thereof, but I've been to worse stadiums that retained their teams (Lynchburg, VA).

Recent renovations to Harry Grove Stadium have apparently pleased the powers that decide these things and have given the thumbs up for a return to affiliated baseball.

The article doesn't mention any rumored teams that would move to Frederick, but if I had to place a wager on the likely franchise, I'd bet on either the Aberdeen Ironbirds (High A Baltimore) or the Wilmington Blue Rocks (High A Washington).

The Athletic writes of the ownership and support of Leeds United (English Football) by NBA player Larry Nance Jr., who calls himself the "Tallest Leeds United fan in the world".

Nance bought a small share in the team from their owners, the San Francisco 49ers, and travels to as many games as possible after the NBA season.

Nance looks at his ownership as a fan more than an owner and discusses how he doesn't have or want any pull in personnel decisions.

Nance currently plays for the Atlanta Hawks, and while on the sidelines, injured, during the Hawks' two play-in playoff games, he wore two different Leeds jerseys.

The Ringer has some thoughts on the streaming service Max changing its name to HBO Max.

The name change is very important since Warner Bros. changed the name to Max from HBO Max originally.

Like the Haslem's brain-dead idea to change the Cleveland Browns uniforms only to return them to their original design as soon as they could, Warner Brothers is the latest to learn that you can freshen things without screwing up what people like and remember about your product.

The change becomes official this summer.

The James Webb telescope recently saved images of auroras from the planet Jupiter, which are described as "Hundreds of times brighter than the Northern Lights seen on Earth".

This occurs as Jupiter (like Earth's version) receives high-energy particles that the sun ejects from solar storms, but Jupiter's are even brighter due to the planet capturing particles that are ejected into space from volcanoes on its moon Io. 

Cleaning out the Inbox

  Time for another inbox cleaning as we lead off with Alison Kosik of CNN explaining how companies are using "Shrinkflation" to keep the offers high.

The term is used when a company subtly changes the amount of product in a container without announcing the decrease to the public.

Of course, containers have to list the amount of product inside but they don't have to say when their particular unit has decreased in amount.

Even the same decrease can make a difference in profit margin for the manufacturer, so this happens far more often than one would think.

Jeff Heimberger sends this note of an orange lobster found on its way to a Red Lobster restaurant.

We often seem to make note of these rare lobsters when they are caught in the wild and the orange color looks very similar to how the lobster looks after it has been cooked.

I'm not sure how orange ranks on the list of color scarcity but "Cheddar" will be living its life in the Myrtle Beach SC aquarium.

Newsweek writes of a recent finding of a fully intact Burger King behind a wall of a mall store in Concord, Delaware.

The "Time Capsule" Burger King looks to me to be an early nineties franchise and the mall hopes to be leasing the space soon.

The article has lots of pictures of the abandoned BK and while the store is intact, it has been used by a maintenance crew that runs hoses through the store to water plants inside the operating mall.

The Athletic writes of comedian Richard Lewis and his massive Ohio State football fandom.

Lewis, who starred in his own sitcom "Anything but Love" with Jamie Lee Curtis for four seasons from 1989-92, is currently appearing with friend Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO for its upcoming twelfth season and is an OSU graduate from the class of 1969.

Weather.com tells of recent damage to the James Webb Space telescope from micrometeorites.

NASA had known from the start of the project that micrometeorite damage was unavoidable but hoped it would be minimal and not happen so quickly.

The damage to one mirror on the lower right side of the telescope cannot be corrected but hasn't been an insurmountable problem thus far for the Webb, which has the ability to see 'back into time' with pictures of stars and systems never before seen in human history. 

Cleaning out the inbox

The inbox cleaning begins with three passings of note from the entertainment and sports worlds.

Florence Henderson passed at the age of 82.
Henderson,who along with Shirley Jones,was the mother of the nation's children in the 70's from her iconic role as Carol Brady on "the Brady Bunch" was known for being a Broadway star and comedian before landing the role for Carol Brady,which brought her lasting fame,if not a bit of typecasting.
Henderson was also known to people my age after the Brady Bunch with her long time association with Wesson Oil.
I mean those commercials were around for years and often featured Henderson singing the "Wessonality" jingle and floating around the kitchen.
Henderson never really left the spotlight in the 40+ years after the Brady Bunch's cancellation,as she was involved with every reincarnation of the show as well as more stage work,guest appearances on television and lots of game shows spot when game shows still ruled morning television.
I'm not sure anyone under 60 wasn't a little sad upon hearing of the loss of Florence Henderson.



The other entertainment loss was actor Ron Glass at the age of 71.
Glass was best known for his role of Harris on the 70's sitcom "Barney Miller",but gained cult fame over the last decade for the role of Shepherd Book on the cult sci-fi drama "Firefly".
I wasn't a massive Barney Miller fan,although in the three channel days,I watched my share of it,but I did enjoy the brief run of Firefly and its movie sequel Serenity.
Glass acted in various tv shows that didn't really catch on such as an 1980's version of the Odd Couple with Demond Wilson of Sanford and Son...

The sports loss was Ralph Branca at the age of 90.
Branca won 21 games in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers,but was better known for allowing "the shot heard round the world" home run to Bobby Thomson in 1951.
Branca never was the same pitcher after the home run as he would win just 20 games over the next (and final) five years of his career after a back injury the following spring..
Branca came off bitter and angry in my opinion on the HBO documentary on the 1951 pennant race between the Giants and Dodgers with an insistence that Thomson knew the pitch that was coming via a stolen sign in the famous game,but watching the program it was pretty easy to see that Branca and Thomson had become friends over the years and seemed to enjoy being linked together in baseball history...

The New York Times writes about the huge James Webb Telescope that will be launched in 2018 to see even further out into space than the Hubble telescope.
The Hubble was expected to be out of use by the time of the Webb's entry into space,but it looks like the two will be in service for at least a few years together.
The Webb's rotation will be around a million miles away from Earth and with its infrared equipment will be able to see things that even the Hubble would be unable to see.

Some of you that listen to the podcast might remember when we had Ricky Cobb of the Super 70's Sports show on the podcast.
Ricky gets some great guys and he recently landed my favorite ABA player of all time in Dan Issel to do his show.
It's a great hour and basketball fans of all ages should enjoy it.
I wrote a post on Issel back in 2008 as a member of our Forgotten Superstars universe and it can be found here.

SABR always has great articles from contributors that offer biographies of players that are forgotten by the regular fan.
This one was just listed on the site features 1970's righthander Lynn McGlothen,who would die in a fire in 1984.
McGlothen was an erratic pitcher that was once compared to Bob Gibson.
McGlothen never approached the level of Gibson,but did have his good days with an All-Star game appearance.
My favorite memory of McGlothen comes from his 1977 Topps baseball card as he is wearing the 1976 Bicentennial hat of the St.Louis Cardinals.
A few teams wore the "Cake Pan" hats in the 1976 season (The Pirates continued to wear theirs for years after) and the 1977 cards are the only cards to features those hats for teams other than the Pirates..