Cleaning out the Inbox

      The inbox may ebb and flow, but it never stops, so it's time to clean and move some things out adequately!

Ryan sends this from the 13th Dimension on the greatness of Frank Gorshin's portrayal of the Riddler on the original Batman series.

Dan Greenfield's thoughts on the Gorshin Riddler are all similar to mine, and I've thought for years that if you were creating a Batman series or film and you could magically pluck anyone from any time that played a role in any Batman related vehicle, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler is the one slam dunk to retain that role above any challengers that was originally from the 1966 TV series.

Gorshin's Riddler is that good.

The Premier League is changing its game ball manufacturer.

Puma will provide the official league ball for the 2025-26 season.

Nike had been the provider of the official ball for twenty-five seasons and, along with Adidas, had been the top two companies involved with worldwide soccer, but Germany-based Puma has begun to make strides in an attempt to catch up.

Puma has been supplying the game balls for Serie A (Italy) and La Liga (Spain), but the English Premier League brings even more prestige and visibility as the most widely watched league in the world.

ABC News wonders about the ethics of bringing back extinct animals.

Recently, scientists announced the revival of the Dire Wolf, and the article questions (without judgment either way) if it is ethical to bring back animals that became extinct.

It's interesting to consider, although I'm more concerned with returning a dangerous predator that may not have a natural enemy to the modern environment!

The Athletic writes of one of the better shots that you will see by someone off the floor.

In 2013, photojournalist Gary Knox tweeted to keep an eye on sixth-grader Paige Bueckers, rating her as the best player of her age he had ever watched.

Twelve years later, the Dallas Wings selected Bueckers as the top overall pick in the WNBA draft.

Good call. 

KC Yesterday writes of the story behind the June 1979 roof collapse of Kansas City's Kemper Arena, which hosted the NBA's Kansas City Kings at the time of the incident.

The article discusses the engineering issues that led to the collapse and how equipment that could have been replaced might have avoided the problem.

Kemper would reopen within a year, and the Kings would play their games at their previous home, Municipal Auditorium, until the roof was fixed.

Kemper Arena is still around after being converted to a youth sports facility. It is now known as Hy-Vee Arena, and a local grocery chain owns the naming rights.

Road Trip: Take the long way home

     It was time to leave Omaha and we were driving in a different route than the one that brought us to Omaha as we would be dipping south through Kansas, driving across Missouri, and into southern Illinois before rejoining our original route in Indiana which would take us across Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania briefly and then home.

We were taking this route for two reasons.

First, it allowed Cherie and I to add Kansas to the visited states list and to visit the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Earlier in the trip, we had considered day trip drives to the Truman Library on one day and the Eisenhower on another but we decided to do the Eisenhower version on the way home as it was a little farther away than the Truman Library.

This would be a fortunate decision as the path to the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, turned out to be one filled with two-lane highways and lonesome towns, and I'm sure that I would not have enjoyed that trip a second time to return to the hotel!

Roughly three hours later, we arrived in Abilene and the Eisenhower Library.

The Eisenhower Library isn't a one-building unit as in the Truman version; rather, it's like a college campus with separate buildings holding the library, museum, boyhood home, a building holding Mr. and Mrs. Eisenhower's graves, and the gift shop.

The gift shop is the first building that you see and is the closest to the parking lot, so after taking a look around there, we walked across the campus to the museum, where we were greeted warmly by someone inside, welcoming us.

As I moved around the museum, I recalled that there had been a few renovations through the years and even though the renovations were fairly recent, it felt a little dated which was odd since the Truman Library is actually a few years older.

The exhibits weren't old, the facility just had a dated feel to it, and I couldn't shake why it did.

After the tour, we took the above photo of the statue located in the middle of campus and walked towards the front area, considering a tour of the boyhood home but we didn't want to wait for the tour and moved to the building with the President and First Lady's tomb.

This was where things really felt dated and the building had the smell that you sometimes have when you move into buildings that are filled with old items.

I found the musty smell a bit overwhelming and left quickly for the gift shop, where I bought a magnet and a few items for others and escaped back to the road.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that I was disappointed with the Eisenhower Library, that would be a stretch but while I would consider visiting the Truman (and maybe the Hoover) Library again in a few years, I'm not sure that I would need to return to Abilene to visit again.

We moved toward Kansas City, with our only stop at a rest area McDonald's for a box of Chicken McNuggets that Cherie and I split, passing by Topeka, Lawrence, and Manhattan ( home to the University of Kansas and Kansas State).

Traffic was a bit tight in Kansas City for a while, which stymied our plans to stop and eat, but we did drive by Kemper Arena (the home of the old Kings and Scouts), Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Chiefs, and Kaufman Stadium, the home of the Royals.

From the interstate, we could look directly into Kaufman and peer into the field.

Kansas City is reportedly moving toward a new facility in either downtown Kansas City (Ugh) or another interstate-friendly park across the state line into Kansas, so if I ever make this trip again, I have Kaufman marked down as a priority!

After we crossed over Kansas City, we stopped at our third Brass Armadillo and I found a Kansas basketball program from 1986 and a few things to put back for Christmas.

The most interesting thing at this Brass Armadillo was this "delightful" statue of Oscar the Grouch,
which is not only strange, but it's incredibly creepy looking!

It was about five feet tall and at $295.00 was quite a steal (sarcasm included)

We decided to hold off on eating again to get as far as possible before it got dark in an attempt to leave Missouri for the night and we managed to do that as we finished our day in Greenville, Illinois at a Comfort Inn with a takeout from a nearby Domino's.

We took our time the next day, moving across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, before stopping in St. Clairsville Ohio for the night.

I might have been able to make it home with a little under four hours to go but the sun was starting to go down and as I would have been getting tired, we would have reached the longest, darkest, and most desolate part of the trip, so we decided to stop for the night.

We walked around the mall that is on-site with the hotel, ate lunch at Quaker Steak & Lube, and finished our trip in the afternoon, arriving home with a waiting Rachel and Posey.

It was the longest trip that I had ever taken in miles and the second longest amount of time away from my house in my life and I'd like to thank Cherie for putting up with me and having such a good time together, Ryan and his family for welcoming us and all of their logistical help, and to Rachel for staying home and taking care of our Posey.

So, three months after it's over, I've noted everything for posterity.

My grandson is now over three months old, and something might come as a surprise to you.

It's hard enough being away from your family in these times when communication is easier and cheaper than it has ever been since the beginning of time.

You can pick up the phone and pay the same amount to call anywhere in North America, and it costs the same as calling your next-door neighbor.

With the internet getting better and faster daily, visual communication is also easier and cheaper than in any time known to man.

And I can only imagine the difficulties in timely communication at any other time, so I feel somewhat fortunate.

Yet, it feels somewhat strange to me.

It doesn't feel real.

I love getting Archie's pictures and updates, and Ryan has been excellent at keeping us informed and as involved as we can be.

But it still doesn't quite feel different, and maybe it shouldn't, I'm not sure.

It'll be an interesting journey, and we are barely out of the starting gate.

Now that the Omaha series is completed, I'll try to write a bit over the next month or so on my two baseball trips of length (Ohio and Tennessee) and maybe my day trip to Somerset New Jersey for the AA Patriots.

Hope you enjoyed reading this series. 

Cleaning out the Inbox

   Time for the latest version of Cleaning out the inbox with a few interesting articles that I have read recently.

The Kansas City Star writes of the famous "Scout" statue that overlooks the downtown area of Kansas City.

The statue was dedicated in 1922 and the article writes of why the Scout is missing its quiver as well as other notes of the famous statue.

The short-lived hockey team for two years in the 1970s was named after the statue, but as I learned from the recent book by Troy Treasure on the Scouts-  "Icing on the Plains"- Scouts was not intended to be the team's original name as the plan was to name the team the "Mohawks" as a way to honor Missouri and Kansas fans for the new franchise, but it was squashed by the Chicago Blackhawks for being too similar to their name.

The Athletic writes about the star pass rusher of the Chicago Bears, Khalil Mack, and his time with the Buffalo Bulls in the MAC days before being becoming an impact player in the NFL.

I've always enjoyed the stories of players from smaller schools that become massive professional stars and how they were overlooked by the power five schools.

I wondered how I wrote about Mack, his 2013 encounter with Ohio State and see how I evaluated Mack's future.

The Athletic with another note on the town that loves its high school football in Massillon, Ohio.

There is such a professional look to the Tigers, who have a television network, a stadium, scoreboard, etc that could easily house a Group of Five school and have their facilities immediately upgraded.

It's another great piece that looks at the good and occasional bad that comes with having so much local pride and interest in a high school program.

One more from The Athletic, as they take a look back at the 50th anniversary of the tragic Marshall football plane crash.

The author talks to Craig Greenlee, a player that could have been on the plane, had he not left the team after the previous season.

He tells more of the other lives affected, but a note that I found interesting came in the comments.

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but the timeline does match as it's mentioned that in 1969 Ken Griffey Sr. was ready to commit to Marshall to play wide receiver for the Herd, but his girlfriend told him that she was pregnant (with Ken Jr.)  and Griffey decided to make money with the Reds rather than go to college.

We wrap up with the news of a reappearance of an Earth rocket booster that took Surveyor 2 to the moon in 1966.

The booster dropped off the capsule and sped past the moon and into a solar orbit to occasionally return to Earth.

The booster's orbit around the sun made its orbit similar to that of Earth and to the astronomers, it began to fall into place that this was an Earth object, not a random asteroid as originally thought.

The booster was the second NASA relic to return to Earth after a Saturn V stage returned to Earth orbit in 2002.