Road Trip: Wrapping it up

     The final day of the final leg of the road trip season was here and it started at Buc-Ees, the legendary gas station (don't call them a truck stop, no trucks are allowed) directly off I-40.

I'm not sure words can describe the activity all around when you enter a Buc-ees and that's before considering the mass of items, all of which seem to have the face of a very pleased beaver!

I had a list of things to bring home for Cherie, Rachel, and Posey, including their famous beaver nuggets, which are bigger versions with extra sugar of Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops cereal.

I found all of their requested items but one and I used the rest of the time to check out the available food options since we would be stopping back for lunch.

The next drive was to Knoxville, home of the Tennessee Volunteers, to stop by Bargain Antiques.

Bargain Antiques is yet another former department store that has found new life with antiques.

I found a few things, a Kroger cloth grocery bag for Cherie, who always likes to pick up bags from grocery stores away from home, a small Green Lantern key chain ( from a booth with ninety percent off that cost me only fifty cents), and a Tennessee basketball program.

What I found most interesting was the parking lot which was so slanted that parking at the bottom of the lot must have felt like hiking up a mountain!

We hopped back on I-40 for lunch at Buc-ees, and because we had stopped by twice, we had some ideas about the food offerings.

Buc-ees has an amazing number of different sandwiches among other made-to-order items and I decided to try two different sandwiches in the smaller size.

I ordered a fried chicken sandwich (similar to Chick-fil-A) and a turkey sandwich.

The chicken was very good and the turkey was good but a bit chewy.

Driving home on a sunny day allowed us to take our time and make a few stops along the way with the best stop at Snoopers Antique Mall in Wytheville, Virginia.

I found two items there, two Topps posters from 1970's releases.

In the 60s and early 70s, Topps usually had an insert of some type in each pack of that season's baseball cards and in 1970, it was posters.

The 9x10 posters were printed on very thin paper and needed to be folded into eighths in order to fit the posters into a standard pack of baseball cards.

As a result, there are few in outstanding shape today as even if you haven't touched them since 1970, the materials are still vulnerable, which is the main reason that I never tried to collect the posters (or the other years that Topps used posters as the bonus prize).

However, for the price (four dollars each), and the condition (the seller had them flat and in plastic), I could not resist adding a Hawk Harrelson ( with the Indians and their red wishbone C caps) and Don Mincher (in the Seattle Pilots uniform that would not see the field in 1970) to my collection.

There were a few other shops in the area but I found nothing that I purchased, so the trip was over other than rolling the final miles out for the trip home. 

2024 was a good season for me.

I saw seven new ballparks in Portland, Maine, Worcester Massachusetts, Somerset New Jersey, Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, Florence Kentucky, and Omaha, Nebraska to raise my total to eighty-nine.

It's starting to become harder to add stadiums with few close enough now for a day trip.

The closest stadium to the north (Non-MLB) is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (in Manchester) with the exception of Brooklyn and Staten Island as there is no way I'm fighting that type of traffic for a minor league ballpark!

There are preliminary plans to add New Hampshire early next year along with a stop in Boston at Fenway Park, so that would move me to ninety-one but unless a longer trip comes into the picture (unlikely at this writing), New Hampshire and Boston may be the only new additions for 2025.

The closest stadium to the south that I need would be in South Carolina (Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Charleston, or a new stadium opening in Spartanburg for 2025). the nearest to the northwest would be any of the Indiana fields (Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, or South Bend), and the adjacent southwest stadium is even farther away in Memphis!

I've also added quite a few to the visited states list in 2024 with stops in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas for the first time.

However, the states that could be feasible to see for the first time are becoming fewer in number.

I suppose if I ever made the drive to Omaha again and if I wanted to drive somewhat out of the way, I could add Minnesota and/or Wisconsin.

South Dakota is only two hours away from Omaha, so I guess that could happen, and if I ever decided to add a Georgia park (or the new stadium coming to Chattanooga Tennessee), it wouldn't take much to add Alabama but as you can see, the low-hanging fruit has been picked!

It's been a surprisingly good road season with many memories made, and some cannot be repeated.

2025 has a high standard to meet. 

Cleaning out the Inbox

  The inbox is well overdue for a cleaning that doesn't involve tributes to recent passings, so here are some recent notes from the inbox.

The Athletic writes of the "ghost" of Jim Valvano that hangs over the Wolfpack basketball program thirty years after his passing and forty years after the NCAA championship won by Valvano's "Cardiac Pack".

The article digs deep into the N.C. State tradition, Valvano's successes and failures, the issues with each of his successors with the Wolfpack, and shows how hard it is for a once-proud program to rebound once you hit the depths of a conference.

N.C. State did reach the tournament this season under Kevin Keates, losing by nine points to Creighton in the first round.

SABR is reviewing the career of the late Nate Colbert, who recently passed away and they do it by looking through his various Topps baseball cards.

Colbert's rookie card is in the 1969 set and pictures him without a cap as so many in the 1969 set are shown.

Marvin Miller and the players union told the players in 1968 to not allow Topps photographers to take their pictures until the company would renegotiate their contract with the players for appearing on their cards.

This forced Topps to dig into their archives for pictures without hats of many players that had changed teams since the union-suggested refusal to pose for photographs.

This stance affected the 1969 set as most of the photos back then were taken during the previous season's spring training.

The Louisville Courier-Journal visits the oldest living Kentucky Derby winner, Silver Charm who won the Derby in 1997 and is now twenty-nine years old of age.

Silver Charm also won the Preakness and appeared to be on the verge of winning the Triple Crown but was overtaken deep in the stretch by Touch Gold, losing by three-quarters of a length.

Silver Charm would win the Dubai World Cup in 1998 and currently resides at Old Friends Farm in Kentucky, where he can be visited by the public.

The Athletic scores with an article on the Grimsby Town team that resides in English "soccer"'s league Two but surprised everyone with a run to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, one of England's two yearly tournaments.

Grimsby Town's wins included a stunning victory over Southampton, who resides in the Premier League before losing to the Premier League's Brighton Albion & Hove in the quarter-finals.

If you watched the series "Welcome to Wrexham", you may remember that it was Grimsby Town that upset Wrexham and kept the series stars in the National League with Grimsby Town winning promotion to League Two.

We wrap with Smithsonian Magazine's article on Corned Beef and just how much of a connection that really exists with the Irish.

The article discusses why the Irish doesn't care for Corned Beef and just how the link between the two occurred to people outside Ireland.

Cleaning out the Inbox-Baseball

Before I start, please allow me to mention this to Blogger and Google- the new Blogger Interface SUCKS!

This will be the third rewrite of the same post as the new version wouldn't allow me to save, move pictures, or even label.
I've returned to the "legacy" version which has served me so well for 13 years, but Google/Blogger plans an elimination of this by late July and a forced move to the new version.
I'm sure that they are working on the flaws and hopefully fix them before then because if not, I'll be looking for a new home for TRS.
This is supposed to be fun and it's not fun to spend hours writing the same thing three times because what you expect to be reliable lets you down.
On to what's more fun to write and hopefully for you-read.


Bob Watson's recent passing (I'll have more on Watson in the next passings post) made me think of the contest to see who would score the one-millionth run in baseball history in 1976.
The contest sponsored by Tootsie Roll (what a way to have kids pay attention!) and Seiko would give prizes to the player that scored it and prizes to various fans had more interest than one would think and came down to Watson in San Francisco and Dave Concepcion in Cincinnati racing around the bases as fast as they could in an attempt to be number one million.
The 2015 article from the New York Daily News looked back at the contest and then estimated that MLB's two-millionth run was on track to be scored sometime in the 2020 season, but I've been unable to find any other notes on the status.

Will Clark's era in San Francisco was before my start of Giants fandom, but I've always been a fan of Clark, who had such a beautiful swing from the left side of the plate, is starting to gather some steam as a potential induction to the Hall of Fame and this article from The Athletic uses the oral history format to speak with "the Thrill's" teammates to talk about Clark's Giants tenure.
While I am a fan of Clark, I'm not sure I'm quite on board for a Cooperstown train.
His Giants numbers are certainly of that ilk, but after leaving San Francisco ( the surprising thing is the numbers declining after leaving Candlestick Park!), Clark hit more than 20 homers only twice and exceeded 100 RBI once along with some problems staying in the lineup with nagging injuries.
As a fan, I'd like to see Clark in, but honestly, I think his numbers fall a little short.

Slate takes a swing at one of the oldest myths from the life of Donald Trump- Was he a baseball player of the level that would have major league teams scouting him in the middle 1960s?
In what would surprise few, that doesn't appear to be the case in the slightest, although Trump did play on his high school team as what appears to be an extremely light-hitting first baseman.
The "best" part was reading the Trump claim that he appeared to be "the best player in New York State" and the even better- "Pro Ball was in the equation until a Giants tryout with a young player named Willie McCovey".
Yes, as in Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.
For the record, when Donald Trump was a high school senior for this supposed tryout, Willie McCovey was entering his sixth year in the big leagues, was coming off a season that saw him smack 44 homers to lead the National League, and had already hit 108 homers in his career.
Insert your snicker here.

Sports Illustrated writes of the "sports card boom" during the pandemic and what is "Fueling it", which is "Box Breaks" online.
Box Breaking is basically this- someone breaks a box of cards, oftentimes as much as a case of cards, and after you purchase a team either on a straight purchase or in an auction, you receive all of the cards from that particular team from the opened product.
The auction is streamed live online to keep everything above board and apparently it is very popular.
I've never participated in any of these, although I'm not against it, I don't see it happening anytime soon!

The Athletic writes about baseball cards as well with an article about Topps and mostly about the card that every modern card traces back to in the 1952 Topps set.
The 1952 Topps set was the first with stats, thicker card stock, and is far closer in size to the modern baseball card than those of the leader in the industry before 1952 in Bowman.
Bowman sued Topps over the set for using players that Bowman had exclusive contracts with, but by the time the suit hit the courts (which Topps would lose), Topps had shoved Bowman aside for dominance in the hobby and would buy the Bowman company in 1956.
Honestly, while the Topps sets of the 50s are the sets that started baseball cards toward the trail traveled today, I've never been a huge fan of those seasons.
I like the simplistic look of 1957, but the photographs often look like they were taken at dusk and for some reason, they seem to fade easier than other sets of the era and that's my favorite set of the decade.
If I'm placing 1957 against the sets of the sixties, it doesn't beat the top five (in order 1965, 1963, 1968, 1967, and 1962) and would be in a tough battle to lead the bottom five (my sixth choice would be 1966).

Cleaning out the inbox

Time for cleaning of the inbox as things built up even faster than usual this time!

We start with the passing of former Brown wide receiver Michael Jackson, who died in a motorcycle accident early Friday morning.
Jackson, who spent five years as a Brown before finishing his career with three years in Baltimore after the move, was traveling at a "high rate of speed" and hit a car that was backing out of a driveway.
Jackson and the driver of the car were both killed.
Jackson was a big play receiver for both teams with his career season being the first season in Baltimore with his only 1,000 yards receiving season to go with 14 touchdown catches...

Last year, Dan Parlegreco put out a draft preview that was available on Amazon, but this year he didn't have the time to do that, so instead, he's written this detailed review that grades each team and gives an undrafted free agent that has a chance to make the team.
Very well written and for those of you (like myself) that like draft reviews as much as previews, it is a great read...

Marty Mulcahey writes on boxing for UCN and he wrote a great article as part of that site's pre-fight buildup for the Canelo Alvarez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr fight that ranked the top ten all-Mexican fights ever.
Great matchups such as Barrera-Morales, Barrera-Marquez, Zarate-Pintor, Zarate-Zamora, and more are all discussed.
Such an article for a Spanish language network would have such potential for a "Legendary Nights" type series.
Now if I could only speak and understand Spanish...

The SABR baseball card page is taking votes and ranking the Topps baseball card set of the 1960s.
I voted in the 1970's voting and that was much harder to vote on.
For the record, my top three votes went to in order-1965,1968 and 1963.

My friend, Dr.Lisa Alexander sent me this very interesting article on Ernest Hemingway's intrigue with boxing.
Hemingway has always been noted as a boxing fan, but I never knew just how much he enjoyed it or that he actually sparred with pros and thought he was a high-quality fighter!
There is a note in the article with former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey talking about why he avoided sparring with the famous author...

I've written and talked before about one of my favorite TV shows in Person of Interest and now with the show in the past, its stars are beginning to move to new roles.
Both Amy Acker (Root) and Sarah Shahi will be starring in the new series in the fall.
Acker will be starring in "The Gifted" on Fox, which is a show with two parents taking their two children on the run from the government to protect their children, who possess superpowers...
Shahi will star in an NBC vehicle entitled "Reverie" that will feature Shahi as a former hostage negotiator and expert of human behavior that now helps people trapped in a virtual reality program.
That series will also co-star Kathryn Morris, the former star of "Cold Case" which was another favorite of mine...

We wrap up this cleaning with a tip of the cap to NBC, who canceled the time travel series "Timeless" after one season and decided three days later to change their mind with a renewal for a second season.
Timeless had a little below-average rating, but not awful and with a solid fan base that went all out for renewal, deserved the nod, although they aren't doing the show too many favors in not returning it to the lineup until the summer of 2018.
I also liked another time travel series that I wish would have been renewed in "Time After Time", but ABC cut that show off after just five episodes.
I'll never understand why networks buy pilots for science fiction shows that will always need time to build up a "canon" along with growing an audience, only to cancel them after a season or two.
Time After Time had just an eight-episode run like it would have killed ABC to show the final three episodes at least?
Shows in this genre' always need time to nurture and if the networks are hesitant to sign at least a two-year deal to start (three would be better), I'd be hesitant to ship my show there. 

Cleaning out the inbox-Baseball Version

On a beautiful day for baseball (and the Giants home opener),it's time for an all baseball cleaning out the inbox!

ESPN discusses an opinion that Buster Posey is now the best defensive catcher in the game.
For years,the Cardinal backstop Yadier Molina had gotten that nod,but with the advent of the numbers crowd and their interest in catchers pitch framing abilities,I can see where Posey has risen to the top of the heap.
Between his offensive numbers and defensive capabilities,Posey is the best catcher in the game.

Two articles from the SABR Baseball Card Blog grabbed some attention.
The first dealt with former Pirate fireballing southpaw Bob Veale.
Veale was one of more overlooked pitchers of the 1960's with the Reds Jim Maloney and was one that few wanted to face due to his power arm and sometimes less than accurate control.
Veale also wore glasses and the article shows his various Topps cards and the different looks in the them....

The other article deals with the 1968 Topps baseball game insert set.
The game was built with Topps packs as one card was found in each 1968 pack.
I never played it as a game,but I did always like the cards and tried to collect them as much as I could.
In this years Topps Heritage set,there is a similar set available as short print inserts with the current players.
It's a nice touch and I'm going to try to get that set sometime...

The baseball hall of fame brings a pair of links to the party with one writing about well-traveled outfielder and designated hitter Rico Carty.
Carty had two interesting facts in 1970 as he won the batting title hitting .366 as an Atlanta Brave and as the first player to be voted as an All-Star game starter as a write-in candidate and only one of two ever (Steve Garvey 1974 was the other).
Carty was also a DH for the Indians and put together three strong years in Cleveland.
Carty's knees was the main reason that he became a DH and that wasn't uncommon for the first era of the hitting specialist that saw so many aging stars that could still hit,but not field or run keep a place in the game.

The second was really interesting as it took an in-depth look at the move that Bud Selig managed to buy the Seattle Pilots after just one season (1969) in Seattle and move the team to Milwaukee.
It discusses the Pilots problems,how Milwaukee filled their interim time after the loss of the Braves and all the maneuvering that landed the Pilots in Wisconsin.
One thought to ponder when you play the what if game is what would have happened had Selig never brought baseball back to Milwaukee.
How many of all of these changes to the game would have been different with someone other than Bud Selig as the commissioner?

Hardball Times writes about the career of the recently deceased Bill Hands and does so through his baseball cards.
Hands was an excellent number two starter for the Leo Durocher led Cubs of the late 60's and early 70's and it shows one of those awful Topps airbrushing jobs with Hands shown in a painted over Twins uniform,yet clearly pitching at Wrigley Field long before interleague play was in place.
Hands passed at the age of 76.

We wrap up with the Petaluma Press Democrat writing about their hometown resident and San Francisco Giant home game host Amy Gutierrez.
Gutierrez enters her tenth year doing Giants games and even though I'm not always a fan of sideline reporters,Gutierrez rarely enters the field during the game,stays on the outside for the most part for her new segments and then does the postgame interview.
She does an excellent game of blending into the AT&T Park experience and meshes well with Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper as part of the best local broadcast crew in the game.
Gutierrez talked about her time with the Giants,her children's book series and the issues that come with the job with raising two children.

Cleaning out the inbox

Time to clean out the inbox with a few things that have piled up!

The 1968 Topps set is a real love or hate it with its "Burlap" background.
I like it,but my favorite set of the 1960's is 1965 with 1963 and 1968 battling for the place spot.
With the set being my birth year,you would figure that would be a set that I would work on,but the oppressive cost of the Nolan Ryan and Johnny Bench rookie cards have scared me off through the years.
1968 Topps also has my favorite insert set of all time with the Baseball Game set that came one card per pack in that years set.

The 1968 Topps design is back in the headlines this season as it is the chosen design for the Topps Heritage line.
Heritage is pretty much the only major league cards that I buy to have a set of for personal collection and for the occasional major leaguer that I would see on the trail.
Topps takes a gander at their own product here.

I'm working on a future post on one of my all time favorites-"Mr.Perfect" Curt Hennig and found this terrific article from SI in 2016 that looks back at the "Perfect Athlete",but does it with his son,current WWE wrestler "Curtis Axel" Joe Hennig.
That adds a special spin on the article as it talks just as much about Hennig the man as the wrestler and it allows his son to be more than just the current performer.
I found it quite absorbing...

Rolling Stone writes about the 40th anniversary of Slap Shot and why it is the quintessential sports movie of the 70's.
One of the best parts of the movie (besides the Hansons!) is just looking around an average small city in the 1970's and what it looked in an era when I was a child.
Slap Shot is truly a funny movie and ranks with some of the best sports movies made for fun and laughter..
Toe Blake! Eddie Shore! Old Time Hockey!

Wired has an oral history of the O.J.-Made in America documentary,which not only I recommend,but won an Oscar for best documentary.
It focuses on the making of the film and the people being interviewed more than Simpson,so if you've seen the film,it is a nice companion piece and if not,a good starting point for knowing a few of the interviewees before you start....

Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer writes of the rise from almost nowhere for Ashland tight end Adam Shaheen,who could be drafted as high as the third round in the NFL Draft,depending on what draft meister that you choose to read.
The 6'6 tight end is a former basketball player,which seems to attract players to the tight end position...

1978: The Final Two

It was 1978 and a ten-year-old Shawn was enjoying the summer of playing baseball and hanging around the neighborhood.
Fifth grade was looming at Fountain Rock Elementary, which might be the best year that a person can have at school- which is being the oldest kids at school, yet young enough to still be able to relax, have fun, and enjoy still being a kid,

However, I had a problem.
And to me, it was a huge one-I was close to finishing my first ever Topps baseball card set.
Now, one wouldn't think that would be an issue, but it was one for one reason, but first some background.

From the beginning of Topps' start to make baseball cards in 1952, Topps would release their set in a few different series, which enabled them to add players that were traded, late rookie arrivals, and stars to make them still worth buying.
This helped stretch Topps's product to last the entire summer and kids always needed more cards.
The problem with that was that by the last series, kids were going back to school, the baseball season was winding down and football season was starting, which meant demand was less and fewer stores ordered them, which resulted in all those sets having the now dreaded high numbers, where even common players aren't inexpensive in those sets.

In 1974, Topps changed policy and released their entire set all at once, figuring that with a huge set all at once, kids would need more time to complete the set and it wouldn't hurt sales.
That part was true, but in my case, something unforeseen occurred- My dad knew I was down to two cards and decided to quit buying cards for me!
The logic was sound as the set had 726 cards in it, so my chances of gaining one of the two cards that I needed were a cool 363 to 1 per pack.
In 1978 dollars, the packs were either 20 cents (or 25, I cannot remember) and Dad felt he was tossing money away along with accumulating extra cards against those odds.

It wasn't like I needed big money stars out of the set-I had all the stars of the day, but needed two outfielders-Sixto Lezcano of the Milwaukee Brewers and Jerry Turner of the San Diego Padres.
Lezcano was thought of as a coming star and he was coming off his best year to date with 21 homers in 1977.
Still, it was a common card because Lezcano's rookie card was the year before.
Turner, on the other hand, was the epitome of journeyman outfielder having hit .246 with a career high of 10 homers in 1977.
Those cards being commons meant little because this was the day before card shops and card shows, so I was limited to the one or two people that I could trade with and if they didn't have them, it wasn't looking good for the finished set.
There was still hope though, the one person in the neighborhood who had more cards than me (By a huge margin) likely had Lezcano and Turner, so I cut my way through my grandmother's yard to reach his house.

I mentioned the numerous games of basketball that I played against Chris Mullin in my post a few years ago on the Kentucky Colonels and when it came to cards, everything in the neighborhood ran through him.

I had one thing going for a decent stash of 1960s stars that had been given to me by my grandmother's nephew and those helped me get some good stuff in return at times.
The object of Chris Mullin's desire on this day? My 1962 Brooks Robinson and Chris was willing to part with Lezcano and Turner for Brooksie!
Even at 10, I knew that was a bad deal, but I felt cornered in, so I did what most kids did -ran home and asked Dad for his advice.
His advice? "Do it, in the long run, the set will be worth more".
So I did and was then laughed at by Chris, who did pull a fast one for himself, but I still was thrilled to have finished the set.

Let's look back 39 years later at Beckett and see if Dad was right.
Keep in mind the set was not mint and neither was the 1962 Robinson, but for the purpose of this, we'll assume that they are.

Doug Hopkins sent these with the warning they are rough averages from different sources.
1978 Set:100.00
1978 Jerry Turner and Sixto Lezcano combined .70
1962 Brooks Robinson ranging from 12.50-20.00

All things considered, Dad was right, but the story has a sad ending.
Dad got into baseball cards and my collection was communed with his and when he sold his stuff years later, my 1978 set went along with it.
The funny part is that I never forgot Sixto Lezcano or Jerry Turner along with the story and when I bought Strat O Matic for the PC and those two players appeared, I made sure to use the pictured cards from 1978....

Cleaning out the inbox-Sports Edition

The cleaning of the sports version of the inbox begins with this as Hardball Times discusses those wonderful two player cards from the 1960s that Topps used so often and still uses today in the Topps Heritage sets.
The article mainly talks about the 1966 card "Power Plus" which paired Phillies outfielders, Johnny Callison, and Wes Covington.
It makes a great point as the card would have been better had it been Callison teamed with Richie (Dick) Allen as a more potent power pair.
One of my favorite all-time cards is one of those- the above picture of Rocky Colavito and Leon Wagner from the 1967 set.
Colavito is an all-time favorite with the red hats and sleeveless jerseys with Chief Wahoo on them, what's not to like about this card?!!

Awful Announcing writes of the rise and fall and then rise again of Max Kellerman at ESPN.
I've always liked Max's boxing work, although I don't share his affinity for dull boxers like Andre Ward and Guillermo Rigondeaux, I've always respected his opinion on boxing.
I remember the first time, I saw Max on the Friday Nights Fights and wondered "who the hell is this guy"?
It took only a short time of time for me to see Max knew the game and his work was solid...

ESPN writes of the long battle for the remains of the "world's greatest athlete" Jim Thorpe between his family in Oklahoma and the town that changed its name in order to get the remains in Jim Thorpe Pennsylvania.
It's interesting and I think very fair to both sides in telling the story of both Thorpe and the dispute.

I missed the HBO boxing card with another Andre Ward squash match vs Alexander Brand since I was in Lake County.
All accounts show that it was another boring Ward win.
I'll be back later tonight or tomorrow night with my trip to Lake County with the lovely Cherie.

Cleaning Out the Inbox-Non-Sports edition

I told you that there was a large amount of items in the inbox and here we are for part two with more of a non-sports slant.

Another Apollo astronaut has passed away with Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell being the latest.
Mitchell,who was best known for his personal experiment with ESP while on the mission,started the Institute of Noetic Sciences to better study the paranormal.
Mitchell was 85 and leaves the living Apollo astronauts numbering just seven,The Atlantic memorializes Mitchell here.

A man that was part of my life almost on a daily basis for years passed at the age of 88 as Sam Spence died on Saturday.
Who was Sam Spence?
Spence was the composer and the man behind all of the great scene setting music for NFL Films and their iconic soundtracks to football that made so many fans from the 1970's on.
Spence might not have been the name that came to mind when you were humming some of those sounds that meshed so perfectly with the highlights,but clearly he had a huge impact...


The Blood-Horse may be a magazine about horse racing and that may be a sport,but the article Taking Shergar is about more than the horse.
The great Irish racehorse Shergar was kidnapped in 1983 and was never seen or heard from again as the most famous cold case in Irish history.
The article discusses the various theories on how and why this happened (The IRA is a huge suspect) from an insider perspective with one of the main detectives on the case...

Some volunteers in Miami spent time restoring the Ferdinand Magellan,the famous railway car that was used by Presidents to get around before airplanes became commonplace.
The car was the main mode of transport for Presidents Roosevelt,Truman and Eisenhower before being retired in 1954.
The car has been in Miami since 1959 and didn't need a ton of structural work,but had a few dings taken out and some paint touchups to keep rust away!

Here is a list of great restaurants that didn't survive the 1980's.
I ate at all but three on the list,but four hit home for personal reasons.
Burger Chef was my first job,Gino's was a favorite stop of my dad's on the way home from Orioles or Bullets games,Howard Johnson's was a staple of the Pennsylvania and Ohio travel areas when we visited Ohio and Bob's Big Boy?
Well,that one was my favorite Aunt Becky's favorite and myself and Cherie went there with them when Cherie was carrying Ryan in one of the craziest days of our lives!

This is a sports story from Hardball Times,but it's more about how the Topps company got into selling baseball cards as a business and the decisions behind it.
Topps is celebrating its 65th year with baseball cards and it's a good read even if you don't collect cards...

That just about cleans things up for a while,so hopefully you found something interesting worth linking to!!!

Cleaning out the inbox-Mostly Non-Sports Edition

We clean the inbox out with a mostly non-sports edition today....

We start with a look at a true Presidential child rebel in Alice Roosevelt Longworth,
Politico had an article on the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt after the controversy involving the Obama children and their less than thrilled appearance at a Thanksgiving photo op.
Alice was quite wild in her day and her romps through Washington were not only scandalous,but entertaining as well!

I follow Amity Shlaes on Twitter,the author of a biography of Calvin Coolidge that I want to read soon
Shales recently mentioned the SONO-a noise canceling device that works with your windows to dull down the outside noise and add to the quiet.
As someone that is greatly aggravated by outside noise,I'd love to have this and make an attempt to see if SONO works.
The premise seems sound (pun intended),but I'd bet its expensive....

As a board game guy as a kid,I found this article of Grantland's to be quite interesting.
I had never heard of the game called Diplomacy,but it seems like the type of game that isn't as much fun to play as it is challenging.
Not sure that I'd give it a try,but interesting to consider...

Another Grantland article discussed pro wrestler C.M.Punk and his reasons for leaving the WWE.
Not sure who and what I believe as pro wrestling has always been a con game on many levels,but a thought-provoking read as Punk talks the medical treatments and injuries along with the other issues with the WWE.
The piece was written before the announcement of Punk signing with UFC and their mixed martial arts league...

We finish up with a note sent to me by my friend Denise Nicarry of the death of Sy Berger at the age of 91.
Who was Sy Berger?
As the article states,he was the father of modern day baseball cards as the man behind Topps and their baseball card dynasty.
If you ever were into cards at one time or another-you owe a thanks to Sy Berger.....

That cleans out the box for now,Back tonight with the Devils.....