The Daily Dose/October 19, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience…
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME: Dear Baseball: You appear to be farting around with the baseball again this postseason. It’s been reported and here and there and players are prancing around after smacking one they were sure was going out, only to see it caught on the warning track.
Now, in some respects, it doesn’t matter. It’s still three strikes and you’re out and ties are still broken with extra innings and not home run hitting contests. But in some respects it does matter. You regularly change the makeup of the baseball and you no longer have a sport, you have a spectacle, an activity that is as dependent on whatever type ball is in play as it is the talent of the players.
We know this is the second decade of the 21st century and the nature of entertainment is – as it always does – changing. We deserve better than this, though.
Fly In The Ointment: And there’s evidence your tinkering isn’t working. Despite your micromanagement, regular season attendance has gone down the past four years and it would have been the past five years except for an increase of four fans per game in 2014. World Series TV ratings have been in the toilet for years, too. 2018’s highest-rated World Series game (Game 5) had 17.6 million viewers, about four million less than this past Sunday’s Dallas Cowboys/New York Jets game.
A Long Time Ago, In A Stadium Far, Far, Away: Long ago, more or less when you started doing business with FOX, you dismissed your past to focus on whatever would get more fans right now.. Too bad, because that, and your record book, are two of your prized possessions.
Broad Historical Context: Now there have, of course, been different eras of the game. The first major league game was played in 1876, eleven years after the Civil War ended. Eras are inevitable, however, you keep messing around with the composition of the baseball, you are going to make both the past and record book irrelevant.
Here’s A Thought: If you are going to deaden the ball, do it year round. All these home runs and strikeouts are not the way the game is meant to be played. Baseball is a game of skill, not brute strength. Slowing the ball up would force hitters to hit to the opposite field again, put a renewed premium on fielding and maybe even cut down on the infernal number of pitchers that are used every game.
Yer pal,
Gaylon
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest on the razor blade front. Today’s Diary.
The race is on to see if we run out of razor blades before early December when the retailer gives a 25% off day and we stock up for the year…There are two blades left in the medicine cabinet and the one in service right now has about a week or ten days remaining so, honestly, it’s doubtful, unless we want to use them too much and start inflicting pain and drawing blood while shaving.
Honestly, I thought we’d make it thru the year with a surplus, like we did last year when we had three or four left over…I keep track throughout the year and as early as spring it was clear we’d be pushing it and the past few weeks it’s been plain we’ll run out… I was never sure why until this morning when I saw a chick razor in the shower, the first I could recall seeing in a while: The Wife has been using my razor all year!!!
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
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On This Date
In 1789 – John Jay takes the oath of office as chief justice of the United States. Originally President Washington had offered Jay the position of Secretary of State, which Jay had declined and Jay would preside over the court’s inaugural session the following February. Business was slow back then as his court heard only heard four cases during his tenure, and Jay and other members of the court spent no small amount of time holding court in their judicial districts. Jay served until his resignation in 1792 and was later elected governor of New York.
In 1981 – Rick Monday of the Los Angeles Dodgers hits a go-ahead home run in the top of the ninth inning as the Dodgers defeat the Montreal Expos 2-1 to win the pennant in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. The Expos had scored a run in the first and the Dodgers tied with a run in the fifth. The game had been scheduled for Sunday, the day before, but snow and cold postponed it and Olympic Stadium was only about two-thirds full. The Dodgers would later beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.
In 1959 – You Better Know It by Jackie Wilson is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Hot R&B chart – for its only week. The song Wilson’s fifth of eight consecutive Top 10 hits to start his soul chart career and his second of six soul chart #1s and the song also peaked at #37 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Wilson had a heart attack while performing in 1975, likely caused by high blood pressure caused by Wilson’s habit of taking salt tablets and drinking lots of water before shows so he would sweat more. He died in 1984.
Quotebook
If you honestly want what is good, the people will want the same.
Gorew Vidal
Creation
Attributed to Confucious
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Bob Beamon broke the long jump of 27 feet, four and 3/4 inches that had been established by Ralph Boston of the US in 1965 and tied by Igor Ter-Ovanesyan in 1967.
Today’s Stumper
What was Jackie Wilson’s biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100? – Answer next time!
