Baseball Quiz: Here’s a good one for the beach this weekend, or the neighborhood watering hole. Name the top ten in home runs through 1964. Hints: At this time, Hank Aaron was No. 14 at 366. Al Simmons No. 20 at 307. No. 11 had 376. Answer below.
Said Stuff
—Roger Clemens’ trial on perjury, making false statements and obstructing Congress began Wednesday (jury selection), for testimony he gave before a House hearing in 2008 that he never used performance-enhancing drugs. If convicted, Clemens could go to prison.
But as Juliet Macur writes in the New York Times, “one thing sets Clemens’ trial apart from the other drug cases…his former close friend and loyal teammate Andy Pettitte, a man Clemens considered his little brother, could be the witness who brings him down.”
Pettitte, recall, admitted in 2008 that he used HGH in 2002 and 2004 to treat injuries and is expected to testify that Clemens used the drug. He’s a devout Christian and all of his former teammates are in agreement, it’s going to be excruciating for Andy to tell the truth, which could lead to Clemens’ downfall.
In his affidavit, Pettitte said, “In 1999 or 2000, I had a conversation with Roger Clemens in which Roger told me he had taken human growth hormone.”
“Everybody knows that Andy’s a goody-two-shoes that will have a big impact on the jury,” said Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. “He has no motives to lie, no conceivable reason to testify against his best friend. So, if I’m a defense attorney, I would try to get him off the stand as soon as possible to minimize his impact.”
Once, when Andy confronted Roger about his statements on HGH use to him, Clemens “insisted he had told Pettitte that his wife, Debbie, not Clemens himself, had used the drug. Pettitte backed down, but later told his wife, Laura, about it, the affidavit said. In his Congressional testimony, Clemens said Pettitte ‘misheard’ and ‘misremembers’ what Clemens had said about growth hormone.” [Juliet Macur]
I wasn’t going to care about this trial, but it’s the Pettitte dynamic that makes it fascinating.
[Others who could testify are Jose Canseco and former teammate Chuck Knoblauch, both of whom have admitted their own use of PEDs. And, of course, one-time friend and trainer, Brian McNamee, is the chief accuser.]
–Yankee Derek Jeter is four hits shy of 3,000 as of Tuesday’s action. But, as the New York Times’ Jorge Castillo notes, Jeter is becoming known for more than his baseball career. “Jeter” is an increasingly popular name for dogs. How popular? In New York City there are 33 dogs actively registered under the name, vs. just one for “A-Rod.” Growing up my childhood dog was named Ralph, after Ralph Kiner, while I had two turtles, Ron and Bud, named after Mets’ Ron Swoboda and Bud Harrelson. Only one problem. Ron ate Bud…or was it Bud ate Ron? Regardless, it was rather traumatic.
Uh oh…Animal Flashback…as I write I just remembered that during these same childhood years, my brother, six years older, went off for a weekend and I was in charge of making sure his hamster got water and I, err, forgot…and said hamster, err, you know…kind of shriveled up. I’m amazed my brother still talks to me.
Back to dog names, Jeter actually doesn’t come close to cracking the top ten. In Gotham, Max is easily the most popular name. And when it comes to baby names, the Times’ Castillo notes that in 1957, Mickey Mantle won the second of his back-to-back A.L. MVP Awards and that same year, 944 babies were named Mickey.
–Great story developing in Pittsburgh as the Pirates are 45-41, with fans beginning to come back in numbers. Is it possible that their losing streak could end at 18-straight seasons below .500, the worst of any professional sports franchise in all of North America? Developing….
–Attention Mets fans…attention Mets fans…Jason Bay is breaking out of it. That’s right…our long national nightmare could be over. Jason Bay is hitting again!!!
–After batting .318 at Class A Hagerstown, with 14 home runs and 46 RBIs, 18-year-old phenom Bryce Harper was promoted by the Washington Nationals to AA Harrisburg, where he has gone 2 for 7 his first two games, while throwing out two runners in the second contest going from first to second. Nats new manager Davey Johnson said, “Right about now, he needs another challenge. Double A is the perfect spot.”
In his first game, Harper drew 8,092 fans to Metro Bank Park in Harrisburg, a record for the stadium. General Manager Mike Rizzo said Harper will remain at AA the rest of the season and then play every day at the Arizona Fall League. Rizzo added, “It’s important for him to play at every level in our minor league system,” so it certainly sounds like Harper will start in AAA next spring and not open the year in the majors.
–Darren Everson of the Wall Street Journal points out that the San Francisco Giants, despite being in first place thru Tuesday, are on pace to have only one 50-RBI man, Aubrey Huff, who has 43. They have five players who have 24 or 25 ribbies through 87 games. “Over a 162-game season, only 10 teams have failed to have more than one 50-RBI hitter, the latest being the 1992 Angels and Dodgers. (No 162-game team has had zero 50-RBI guys).”
The Yankees had seven last year. Even Seattle, which scored the fewest runs in the majors in 2010, had three.
Only one of the previous ten, incidentally, finished over .500, the 1968 Cleveland Indians, 86-75.
Note to Mets fans. I thought there is no way the Mets didn’t have one or two seasons with just one 50-RBI guy but I looked at ’63, ’65, and ’68, and sure enough there were multiple players. And if you say, ah ha…what about 1972 when Cleon Jones was the only above at 52! Yes, but that was a 156-game schedule due to the early season strike. Doesn’t count, sports fans.
–On Monday, Joey Chestnut won his fifth consecutive Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition on Coney Island, thus matching NASCAR’s Jimmie Johnson, the reigning five-time champ in his sport. It’s a very close call as to who is the better athlete and who has had a bigger impact on the world of sports, but I’m leaning towards Chestnut.
Joey scarfed down 62 dogs and buns in ten minutes, though he received a surprisingly stiff challenge from Pat Bertoletti who mashed 53 into his mouth.
And in the first ever women’s only contest, no surprise there as Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas crammed 40 dogs and buns down her gullet even though she only weighs 105 pounds.
Nathan’s, by the way, sold 453 million franks last year, almost double the 2003 pace. Commented Rich Shea of Major League Eating, “This is one of the greatest marketing stunts ever put forth in the United States.”
But what’s this? Controversy in the men’s competition? You see, Takeru Kobayashi, banned from the Nathan’s contest due to a contract dispute, downed a record 69 dogs at a protest event at a rooftop bar in the Big Apple.
“That wasn’t a competition; that was just him eating,” said Chestnut. “I’ve done 71 practicing by myself.” [Chestnut has the formal record at 68 in the Nathan’s affair, set in 2009.]
Kobayashi downed his dogs simultaneously while the Nathan’s contest was beamed on a big screen television for spectators.
“I’m very happy about winning today…I’m the champion,” he said.
Back to Chestnut, in case you were wondering what his ‘post-game’ eating habits are like after gorging himself on 20,000 calories, he told the San Jose Mercury News he eats lightly at first, choosing yogurt to counter the acidic wieners.
—Poker expert Norman Chad commented in his Washington Post column on the World Series of Poker, which begins this week, that there will be fewer than last year’s 7,319 entrants “because most players usually qualify for the Main Event on the Internet, and, as of April 15, online poker sites in the United States were effectively shut down by the Justice Department.
“For its next trick, the U.S. government will throw a massive burlap over the Grand Canyon while handing down indictments to 11 red-spotted toads suspected of illegal uranium mining….
“Quite simply, people here in America should be allowed to play whatever game they want with their own money in their own homes. Yet, at the moment, in the land of the free, the government is stopping that freedom.
“The U.S. stance here is amazingly dumb. We are a nation trillions of dollars in debt; even more than that if you include what Donald Trump owes. And, yet, rather than legalizing, regulating and taxing online poker – which would provide a civic windfall – we are spending too much taxpayer money prosecuting a handful of alleged scoundrels who tried to manipulate the system.
“Throughout the course of human history, public officials try to outlaw alcohol, prostitution and gambling. Yet no matter how many laws are passed, people always find a way to get liquor, a way to have sex and a way to bet. Why? Because – best I can tell – people want to drink, screw and gamble.
“Me? One day I just want to be able to sit in the basin of the Grand Canyon, on an iPad with a six-pack of PBR, kicking Phil Hellmuth’s butt in no-limit Texas Hold ‘em.”
Mr. Chad has the contest “Ask the Slouch” at his Post perch. If you win, you take home $1.25, cash! [e-mail asktheslouch@aol.com]
Q: If any of your conjugal unions lasted more than six years, did you get credit for a “quality marriage”? (Gerry Kubiak; Greenfield, Wis.)
Q: What is a more impressive eating feat – Joey Chestnut shoveling down Coney Island hot dogs or Daniel Snyder swallowing gazillion-dollar contracts whole? (Paul Martinchich; Pittsburgh)
—Speaking of bad contracts, as Johnny Mac pointed out, if there is any doubt NBA owners have made some incredibly stupid business decisions, one need just look at the Toronto Raptors. They spent $26 million on the following four players last season.
Leandro Barbosa…$7.1 million
Jose Calderon…$9 million
Linas Kleiza…$5 million
Amir Johnson…$5 million
—Tiger Woods formally pulled out of the British Open due to his knee and Achilles issues. So now we wait to see if he’ll be ready for the PGA Championship in Atlanta, Aug. 11-14.
“Scientists in Australia have found the skeleton of a ‘giant wombat’ which lived some two million years ago.
“The plant-eating marsupial would have been the size of a four-wheel drive car and weighed three tons, experts say.”
Holy cow! And how do we know it was just a vegetarian? It’s also believed the “animal was widespread across Australia when the first indigenous people arrived about 50,000 years ago.”
I can just imagine the initial reaction as the Aborigines pulled up in their canoes.
“Hey, this looks like a decent place…Holy [Aboriginal expletive]! What the [different Aboriginal expletive] is that?!”
–Gerald Nachman wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Last month, believe it or not, marked 40 years since Ed signed off. What an impact he had.
“Fans of the nation’s top television talent showcases – ‘American Idol,’ ‘America’s Got Talent’ and ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ – may be shocked to learn that, for 23 years, one television show had the combined impact of those three smash hits. That weekly Sunday night extravaganza, ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’…regularly created pop idols overnight, introduced unnoticed and unlikely talent, and featured fading stars who needn’t dance to justify their presence on the show.”
“American Idol” draws about 30 million viewers for its grand-finale shows. Sullivan attracted 40 million virtually every Sunday night – and the country was half the size it is today.
“Few then had heard of – not to mention ever seen – Carol Burnett, the Supremes, Nat King Cole, Stiller & Meara, Jackie Mason, Eartha Kitt, Sam Cooke, Sammy Davis Jr., Phyllis Diller, Shelley Berman, Shecky Greene, Teresa Brewer, George Carlin, Keely Smith, Myron Cohen, Patti Page, et al. – when Sullivan escorted them into our homes on his national stage. His eclectic taste and a lust for the family audience inspired him to trot out acrobats, elephant acts, ventriloquists, along with the regulation comics and singers – plus, and perhaps most rarefied of all, little-known black performers.
“Sullivan’s major legacy goes almost unmentioned now – his trailblazing efforts to bring black artists to television at a time when it was unusual to see a black face other than an athlete on the small all-white screen on a major mainstream prime-town show. A few black megastars were allowed on TV – Louis Armstrong, Bill Robinson, Duke Ellington – but Sullivan regularly, and matter-of-factly, presented black entertainers he had seen at the Harlem clubs he routinely covered on his Broadway beat for the New York Daily News – people such as Pigmeat Markham, Pearl Bailey, Aretha Franklin, from old-timers like dilapidated Moms Mabley to baby-faced newbies like Richard Pryor.”
When Sullivan started out in 1948, “Critics gleefully lambasted Ed’s wooden manner and jumbled intros, dubbing him ‘the Great Stone Face,’ ‘the Toast of the Tomb,’ ‘Cod-Eyes,’ ‘Mr. Rigor Mortis’….
“Unlike the sleek hosts of today’s talent auctions, Sullivan further enhanced his clunky image by coming up with much-quoted gaffes, such as introducing singer Dolores Gray as ‘now starving on Broadway’ and saying how pleased he was ‘to prevent opera star Robert Merrill.’ He told a paraplegic war hero to stand and take a bow. He praised Jose Feliciano as ‘not only blind, he’s also Puerto Rican’ (backstage he asked Feliciano if his guide dog did any tricks). He introduced ‘the late, great Irving Berlin.’ Blanking out once on the Supremes’ name, he shouted, ‘Here they are – the…the…the girls!’”
I remember some of these, especially the tape of his Dolores Gray intro. Finally, Sullivan turned the mockery around “by inviting impressionists on the show like John Byner and Will Jordan, who created the freeze-dried mumbler that people still remember. The mimics gave Sullivan a lasting identity and over time Ed endeared himself to viewers with his everyman uneasiness.”
He had his faults, such as his famous public feuds with the likes of Jackie Mason, and finally CBS chucked “The Ed Sullivan Show” on June 6, 1971, “as part of a general housecleaning of programs considered not urban enough, heartland mainstays such as ‘Lassie,’ ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ ‘Green Acres’ and ‘The Beverly Hillbillies.’”
There were also a ton of new variety shows on television that had the same guests Sullivan used to have an exclusive on, particularly the musical acts.
But, oh, how Ed Sullivan ruled for 20 years, shaping the nation’s cultural tastes, as Nachman concluded, “For better or worse.”
–The New York Daily News’ David Hinckley said Tracy Morgan should watch the premiere of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in terms of how to get away with being totally insensitive, Morgan being in trouble these days because of his comments about gays and the disabled.
To wit, Hinckley says of one of Larry David’s central bits in Sunday’s premiere that, “Taken literally, it could be one of the most tasteless and offensive sketches in recent TV history.
“David, who plays himself, goes with his manager, Jeff (Jeff Garlin), to a new Palestinian chicken restaurant, Al-Abba’s. [Ed. I’m already laughing just typing this.] They’re both blown away by the chicken, which they agree is the best they’ve ever eaten.
“At the same time, they remark on the palpable anti-Semitic tone of both the restaurant itself and most of the patrons.
“David being David, this doesn’t bother him, but he and Jeff joke that if a Jewish couple wanted to have an affair, this would be the place to go, because there would be no chance they would see any of their Jewish friends there.
“In any case, David sees an attractive Palestinian woman and says he finds her clear dislike for Jews like himself to be ‘a turn-on.’
“ ‘Curb’ being ‘Curb,’ David and this woman end up having sex.
“Where it turns out that her turn-on is yelling incredibly vile and obscene anti-Semitic insults at David throughout the entire process.
“It’s so far beyond tasteless that all the viewer can do is laugh – which presumably is David’s goal.
–Mark your calendar…even if it’s early…Sept. 19…Charlie Sheen gets roasted on Comedy Central, which is also the same night Ashton Kutcher debuts as Sheen’s replacement on Two and a Half Men.
–So I caught a little of PBS’ “Capitol Fourth” celebration from D.C. and saw Little Richard, who is showing his age in terms of his voice. And how old is he? 78! Good Golly.
But did you know that his first hit, 1956’s “Tutti-Frutti,” only hit #17 on the pop charts?! “Lucille” peaked at #21! “Good Golly…” at least hit #10 and his top hit was “Long Tall Sally” at #6. ‘Sup wit dis?! You know, Little Richard didn’t have a hit after 1958, for cryin’ out loud. So not a bad gig the last 53 years, you could then say.
Top 3 songs for the week 7/8/67: # “Windy” (The Association…group is underrated) #2 “Little Bit O’ Soul” (The Music Explosion…blows) #3 “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” (Frankie Valli…awesome…always think “Deer Hunter”…which I keep telling myself I have to watch again soon)…and…#4 “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)” (Scott McKenzie…song has aged remarkably well) #5 "Don’t Sleep In The Subway" (Petula Clark…I love this woman) #6 “Come On Down To My Boat” (Every Mothers’ Son…eh…) #7 “Up – Up And Away” (The 5th Dimension…take me away, Marilyn McCoo!…Ms. McCoo being one of the three or four Most Beautiful Americans of the 20th Century…) #8 “Let’s Live For Today” (The Grass Roots) #9 “Groovin’” (The Young Rascals…Bill Murray’s favorite group, and for good reason) #10 “The Tracks Of My Tears” (Johnny Rivers…did you get his Greatest Hits yet?)
Baseball Quiz Answer: Top ten in home runs through 1964.
1. Babe Ruth 714
2. Jimmie Foxx 534
3. Ted Williams 521
4. Mel Ott 511
5. Lou Gehrig 493
6. Stan Musial 475
7. Mickey Mantle 454
8. Willie Mays 453
9. Ed Mathews 445
10. Duke Snider 407
11. Ernie Banks 376
12. Gil Hodges 370
13. Ralph Kiner 369
14. Hank Aaron 366
15. Joe DiMaggio 361*
16. Johnny Mize 359
17. Yogi Berra 358
18. Hank Greenberg 331
19. Roy Sievers 318
20. Al Simmons 307
If Sievers was in your conversation at all, you are damn good. Demand your friends buy you a premium.
Marty Appel wrote the following in 2007 for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s “Memories and Dreams.”
“The 1960s were considered an age of prolific long ball activity, with names like Rocky Colavito, Jim Gentile, Norm Cash, Roger Maris, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda adding to the festivities. The legendary Rogers Hornsby (who hit 301 and stood 21st on the list in 1964) was the most vocal in decrying the ‘jackrabbit baseballs,’ and Frankie Frisch, another Hall of Fame infielder, also mocked the modern player with regularity.
“The fact was, each era had its unique characteristics, and the players of the 1960s went about their business without giving it back to the earlier players about their bandbox ballparks and inflated batting averages in the 1930s.”
*We will resume Joe D.’s 1941 streak next time. After hitting in 48-straight, it was the All-Star break back then.
