The Daily Dose/August 14, 2018
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
And here we go:
In The News
One thing we’ve noticed over the 2018 baseball season is that almost every photo we see shows a lot of empty seats. There’s a reason for this, as attendance is down. At first, everyone blamed the cold and wet weather that attended the start of the season, but it’s summer, the weather’s warm now, and attendance is still down, 6.6% from 2017, with an average attendance of a bit more than 28,000 a game. The last time MLB had an average attendance of under 30,000 was 2003.
Now, it’s not as bad as the Aloha Bowl was years ago, when TV did everything they could to hide 40,000 empty seats, but five teams average less than 20,000 fans per game, and 60% of teams are down anywhere from 179 to 11,000 fans per game.
Our country is changing, and kids today don’t really have the patience to sit a three-hour ballgame. Heck, we don’t, either, honestly, especially with strikouts more common than hits nowadays as defensive shifts and batters who refuse to adjust taking a lot of the fun out of the game.
It will be interesting to see where baseball and the NFL – between PR nightmares and fewer people playing football – will be in a generation or two.
Today At The Site
The Wife is back on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody, and just in the nick of time, too, because Sparrow was going to have stock up on mayo and peanut butter here in a couple of days. To prepare, Sparrow cleaned the kitchen, which included moving the clean clothes off of the kitchen table, where they’d been sitting for the past month.
The Thought for the Day will return.
On This Date
In 1936 – The last public execution in the United States takes place in Owensboro, Kentucky, with the hanging of Rainey Bethea. The crowd was estimated at 20,000 and the executioner, one Arthur Hash, was drunk and ignored the sheriff’s command to open the trap door, a task that ended up being performed by a nearby deputy.
In 1936 – The United States wins the first Olympic gold medal in basketball, at the Berlin Games, defeating Canada 19-8. All games in the tournament were played outdoors, including the final which was played in the rain, which prevented anyone from dribbling. Team USA was coached by Jimmy Needles, a noted west coast coach who earlier had coached a team representing Universal Pictures to the AAU title.
In 1976 – Elton John and Kiki Dee are at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the second of four weeks with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. It was John’s sixth #1 in America and his first in Britain and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart remains Dee’s only #1 in either country. It went to #1 in seven other countries besides the US and Britain and was Billboard’s second biggest song of 1976 behind Silly Love Songs by Wings.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The Triple Crown winner sired by Man o’ War was War Admiral, who won the Triple Crown in 1937.
Today’s Stumper
The governor of Kentucky in 1936 was a future commissioner of baseball. Who was he? – Answer next time!
Shameless Plugs
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: A Vegas Memoir!: Clock in with the graveyard crew at the Monte Carlo Security Department on the glamorous Las Vegas Strip. You’ll meet drunks, reprobates and scoundrels, and those are just the officers! The funniest Vegas memoir ever! Promise!
The Regular Guys: Meet Lenny and Larry, two comedians who team up more or less out of desperation and become the biggest in show business. As funny as you would expect from Gaylon, and poignant, too.
Click here to read previews of both!
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