From off the top of my head and other strange places….
As my beloved Indians won their 21st consecutive baseball game yesterday, the home broadcast team turned Darth Vader on us. After the Tigers manager and catcher were ejected for arguing balls & strikes (forbidden by the rules), the next at-bat featured the pitcher throwing a pitch the replacement catcher completely missed, and the ball hit the home plate umpire in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. Matt Underwood, the Indians play-by-play announcer, said, “and that’s gotta raise some eyebrows.” Color commentator Rick Manning, to my surprise, did not protest this insinuation. That was uncalled for. There’s no way that was intentional. Not even a terrible, garbage-dump franchise like the Texas Rangers would do that. Hopefully when the broadcast of tonight’s game against Kansas City begins, Underwood will apologize.
During this winning streak, Indians players and manager Terry Francona have been adamant that they aren’t paying attention to the length of the streak. Despite those words, it is obvious at least one player is – Jose Ramirez. His Twitter feed gives him away. He responded to a critical fan after Monday’s win with “we’re just focused on 20 in a row” (which they would get with Tuesday’s win). He also responded to the mild controversy of what really is the all-time longest winning streak. The Indians of today and the 1935 Cubs won 21 in a row. The 1916 NY Giants went 26 games in a row without a loss, but the 14th game of that run was a tie – a game that was suspended after 9 innings with the score tied. The next day, that game was re-played as part of a doubleheader, nullifying the tie game. So, technically, the Giants won 13 in a row, played a tie, then won the next 12 in a row. Ramirez tweeted a picture of a guy with a “what are you talking about?” look on his face, with Ramirez’s caption reading, “When they tell me a tie is part of a winning steak.” Does this mean anything? Not really. But it does betray the words of the team that nobody is thinking about the streak.
Justice was served by the few citizens of Charlotte who actually voted in the primary election this week. Turnout was about 10%. Mayor Jennifer Roberts lost the primary to Vi Lyles by double digits. In the last 12 months, Roberts exposed herself as a whiny, thin-skinned, blame-shifting champion of divisiveness that aspires to be a dictator. Her departure is welcome news. The only thing Lyles has to do now is avoid getting arrested. With 2/3 of registered voters in Charlotte being Democrats, Republican city councilman Kenny Smith has about as much chance of winning as a snowfall occurring in Miami. But that is OK. Lyles has a reputation as a collaborator and should be able to work with the council and city staff, and perhaps actually accomplish a few things. What a refreshing change that would be. There is also a youth movement afoot. While Lyles is 65, there were 4 winners in the City Council primary that are 35 or younger. I hope many of them win in November. In this climate, when politicians at every level of government are more interested in driving the other party out of existence than actually conducting business, the more new & younger people, the better.
Missing research – I wrote on Facebook that our home finally joined the masses in “cord-cutting” – getting rid of the cable and going to streaming TV on the phones/laptops. We went with DirecTV Now. I’ve heard a lot of people vilify them over the years for rotten customer service. We never had any problems with them when we had a dish at our old condo; in fact, we found their service to be excellent. We can’t have a dish in our current apartment due to trees blocking the Southern sky, and complex regulations put in place designed to prevent people from having satellite TV if at all possible (cable company is probably paying them to do this). So we signed up for the DirecTV streaming. I have found 2 problems. 1) For whatever reason, not all local channels are available. The FOX and ABC affiliates are available, the NBC and CBS affiliates are not. Also, the major sports leagues have prohibited streaming of games. So if you have no cable, just the free digital box that lets you get only local channels, you can watch the Sunday Night Football game on NBC. But if you have paid for streaming video, you cannot. That seems a little bass-ackwards to me. You would think the paying subscribers would get more content than the free options. Oh, well. I’m not a big fan of Cris Collinsworth anyway, so I just listen on the radio.
The location of the OTHER political convention was announced. As we all know, every 4 years there is a Democrat National Convention and a Republican National Convention. There’s another political convention those years, but no one calls it by that moniker. But make no mistake, it IS a political convention. It’s just called the Olympics. Where international sporting events are held is all about politics and nothing about the games. How else does Qatar get to host the World Cup? Look at some of the recent and near-future Olympic hosts: Greece, China, North Korea, France, Russia – notice a pattern? Mostly countries that are Communist, Socialist, or unfriendly to the USA. Knowing this, I was a little surprised that Los Angeles won the bid to host the 2028 games. But then I remembered California is doing everything it can to turn itself from a US state to an independent Communist country. Then it made more sense.
The USA isn’t perfect. Far from it. Have you noticed that every human being that works in a corporate office thinks Dilbert is patterned after their office? Too bad corporate executives aren’t paying attention. If the Washington pinheads manage to shape a more business-friendly government, a whole bunch of people are going to ditch the corporate world and go into business for themselves.
People always talk about being overwhelmed. Just once, I would love for someone to tell me they are whelmed.
I hate to break the news to vegans, but human beings ARE more important than animals. For proof, see Genesis 1:26.
I saw an article the other day that General Motors has designed the first self-driving car that can be produced on an assembly line without needing customization before leaving the factory. All they have to do now if finish the software. This is great news for people like me that cannot obtain a driver’s license. It’s now increasingly likely that sometime while I’m still alive, this type of vehicle will be available for me. Driving Miss Daisy with a computer playing Morgan Freeman. The only problem I foresee is that if I’m on a long trip, will I be able to tell the computer to pull into the rest stop because “I gotta go make water”?
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