Will Hines Dot Net

Here’s a short and cool essay about Stan Musial, the St. Louis Cardinal outfielder who is one of the best baseball players of all time and rarely talked about. He was also famously nice and generous. The opening story about how he was never once thrown out of a game is amazing all by itself. I found it through Rob Neyer’s ESPN blog.

I always want to believe that famous people — actors, atheletes, authors — are “nice.” I don’t know why, but I do. And it’s a relief to learn that sometimes these people in all likelihood were really just genuinely nice people.

Carlos Zambrano’s doctors say his arm cramps are simply a result of low potassium levels. Now I love baseball, but could we please have some REAL injuries? “Low potassium levels” is about as weak as Josh Beckett being benched because of a blister on his finger. In football people have their shins split in half.

Separate point: Classic/smarty-pants books should NOT have essays by professors as introductions. They’re boring and stodgy and alienating. They also tend to contain massive spoilers. If you want those essays at all (to give the book context, to explain its impact) then put it at the end as an epilogue. I’m reading Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here and then smarty pants intro [...]

Fun quote from Bill James, the baseball stats and analysis guru who just published The Bill James Gold Mine, in an interview in Time:

Time: Getting back to the book a bit — you know, many fans sitting in the sports bar look at Bill James, all this baseball math, this “sabermetrics,” and probably think, ‘Gosh, these guys have too much time on their hands. They’re geeks.’ What’s your response to that type of thinking?

Bill James: You’ve got me.

“Yes” is funny.

Amazing! The Red Sox are World Series Champs for the second time in four years. That is crazy.

It’s a long way from 1986.

Manny Ramirez dared to say that if the Red Sox lose the playoffs, it’s “not the end of the world.” Specifically, he said:

“Why should we panic? We’ve got a great team. It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

And so Red Sox Nation, of which I am a proud member, is supposed to be furious with their best hitter talking about being okay with losing. Except I’m NOT angry — I think Manny has the perfect attitude. It’s that same laid-back attitude that lets him NOT get rattled when he’s at the plate in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. He doesn’t care if it’s two [...]

I’d still love to see Derek Jeter get caught in a brothel of terrorist hookers, but it’s impossible to dislike Joe Torre. It’s actually fun to see how much baseball players love him. When Torre came back from surgery for his prostate cancer, it was no less than Red Sox nation at Fenway Park who happily gave him a standing ovation. Last night was probably Torre’s last game in pinstripes. If you like baseball, that’s a big deal.

He’s one of the two best managers the Yankees have ever had, and still manages to carry himself as if he’s just a guy who’s about to re-align your station wagon’s suspension. I like him. In the late 1970s, with Reggie Jackson’s bravado [...]

A whole paragraph of “I”s, just to bump that plug down from the top of my blog:

I met Eddie Money today. He walked in the room and said “Hey, Eddie Money!” as if he were addressing himself. I liked him. DeCoster’s and my sketch show last night was great fun to do, especially for the friend-filled audience. I am training my cats to like seafood, because it annoys me to have to buy only chicken beef or turkey. I saw Big Trouble In Little China (good) and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (sadly, not) this weekend. I read American Psycho (good, then repetitive). I cleaned my air conditioner filters. I saw They Might Be Giants. I saw The [...]

Unrelated opinions you did not ask about, which you likely won’t agree with, and that I am not qualified to offer.

1. College athletes should be paid. Yes, their tuition and room/board is part of that but it’s not enough by a long shot. At UConn last year, tuitition/room/board for out-of-state students was $30 thousand. The basketball program grossed almost $8 million, and that’s not counting money from merchandise. It infuriates me that the coaches, athletic directors and recruiters can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary and sometimes endorsements but the athletes — the vast majority of which will not go to the pros — walk away with just 30 grand in non-cash.

2. Serial killers / mass-murderers should [...]

Ok, I’ve launched the new version of My Fellow Jerks. The colors are ungood right now, but the software is fast and reliable (so far). Thank you Ben Whitehouse and SimplePie. Any advice or comments from anyone who uses that page is welcome.

Separately, my office played softball today. I’m pretty good at softball and most importantly, better than I look like I’m going to be. When walking around, my body stumbles clumsily like it’s a cursed marionette. But when put to task it can be strong and hearty like the dwarves of Middle Earth. Specifically, I mean to say I lined some hard grounders up the middle and reined in a few long flies. This was during [...]

• Last Thursday I went out with my class for drinks. There was a Smiths song on the jukebox at one point. The next morning I woke up to realize I had purchased two tickets to see Morrissey at the Garden in June. Is that weird? I asked Brian and he said “Not if it’s 1989.” How about this: I currently have tickets to see this summer: Morrissey, The Police and They Might Be Giants.
• I have a page that collects a lot of blogs I read called My Fellow Jerks, but I need new software to run it. My current package (lilana) is slow and mysteriously drops blogs that I’ve added to the roll. Any ideas?
• At work we do [...]