Baseball Quiz: Where were the following Hall of Famers born? Bill Dickey, Bob Feller, Carlton Fisk, Whitey Ford, Lou Gehrig, Bob Gibson, Hank Greenberg, Rickey Henderson. Answer below.
Ball Bits
—National League Central
St. Louis 37-19
Cincinnati 35-22
Pittsburgh 35-22
–Despite spending $350 million between them on this year’s payroll…
Dodgers 23-32
Angels 25-32
Good lord…and the Angels just lost three straight to the Astros.
—Major League Baseball attendance is down about 3% this year, and some are making a big deal of this, but two things. The Marlins are responsible for 40% of the decline by themselves, and justifiably so, while the weather in April and much of May, see the Midwest, could not have sucked more.
That said, ticket prices for many parks are outrageously high and why wouldn’t you stay home and watch the action on television?
–So the Mets sweep the Yankees in the Subway Series, head to Miami to face the 13-41 Marlins, and promptly get swept by the Fish. Oh yeah, that’s how you get the fan base all fired up. What a joke. Miami is 6-3 against the Mets this season and 10-38 against everyone else.
It also turns out the Mets set a team record for most Ks in the month of May, 241, as Major League Baseball’s nine highest monthly strikeout totals are now in the last nine months of play.
–The Nationals placed Bryce Harper on the disabled list with knee bursitis following two weeks in which Harper was constantly dealing with swelling and soreness after he collided with the outfield wall at Dodger Stadium.
But the news for the struggling Nats was better regarding the condition of pitcher Stephen Strasburg, now diagnosed with a “slight strain kind of up his back and the right side,” according to Manager Davey Johnson; a lat injury and not an oblique. After the Nationals were forced to take Strasburg out after just two innings Friday night, the initial reports had him with pain in the shoulder. Johnson acted like Strasburg might be able to take his turn in the rotation, but they should hold him out at least one start. As baseball fans know, the last thing you want him doing is changing his motion to deal with any leftover discomfort.
Of course Washington is struggling big time, 28-29, and for starters they are 3-10 when Harper isn’t in the starting lineup.
And more than a few folks are making the observation (such as the New York Mets’ announcers on Saturday), how does it look now that the Nats shut down Strasburg last season and kept him out of the playoffs, because the team acted like it will have loads of other opportunities down the road?
–Now you know I’m not one to start talking about doubles or triples records until we get past the mid-season mark, and so I’m not going to start saying 20-year-old Baltimore sensation Manny Machado is going to break the doubles mark, Machado having 25 in the team’s first 57 games. [67 is the record.]
But you can’t ignore teammate Chris Davis’ 39 extra-base hits, 20 home runs, 19 doubles. The record is Babe Ruth’s 119 set back in 1921.
–This is a year in which baseball is, will be, wising up when it comes to big contracts for older players. The evidence is just overwhelming. Bill Madden of the New York Daily News, for example, is thinking about the Mets, who will finally have some money to enter the free-agent market in the offseason. Perhaps go after players like Shin-Soo Choo, or Hunter Pence, only Choo and Pence will be 31 and 30, respectively, next year.
“It is a proven fact that most free-agent contracts of five years or more to players 30 or over are bad investments, and it’s getting to the point where almost all big-money free-agent contracts – where in reality clubs are paying for players’ past performances on other teams – are risky business. Let’s just take a look at the biggest contracts in this past winter’s free-agent class and how they’re working out – we’ll exclude Zack Greinke (six years, $147 million) who missed a month of the season with a broken collarbone.”
B.J. Upton 5 years / $75.5 million…hitting .156, 5 HR 10 RBI, 167 ABs
Josh Hamilton 5 years / $123 million… .216, 8-18
Ryan Dempster 3 years / $26.5 million… 2-6, 4.45
Melky Cabrera 2 years / $12 million… .283, 2-21
In other words, in terms of the Mets, Madden is saying keep pursuing the prospect route. Some of the above performances are adequate, but not for the money, and maybe the outfielders the Mets need are in the upper echelons of others’ minor-league systems.
–The Phillies’ Cole Hamels is now 1-9, 4.86, after signing a 6-year, $144 million contract in 2012. He turns 30 in December.
–My man Adam Dunn is hitting .180 with the White Sox in over 1130 ABs. Yikes.
–The Phillies have been waiting for 25-year-old Domonic (sic) Brown to break through, and break through he has…12 home runs and 25 RBI in May and another homer on Sunday, giving him 16 overall. Just wish his parents knew enough to name him Dominic so a (sic) isn’t necessary for casual fans.
–As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Pete Rose, living in Las Vegas, has been earning more than $1 million a year selling his autograph. Since 2005, he has spent several hours per day, 15 to 25 days per month, 12 months per year, signing his name for money. In 2007, he earned a staggering $3.6 million.
–James P. Marsh Jr., a Methodist minister and a Washington Nationals fan, has an op-ed in the Washington Post wherein he writes, “I have only one issue with the ballpark experience, and it’s not with the beer prices. It’s with ‘God Bless America.’”
Good, I thought, before reading the rest. I have voiced my frustration before over this topic.
But then after perusing Marsh’s full column, I realized he was addressing the subject from a totally religious angle.
“At ballparks across the country, we are expected to participate in what can be described only as a prayer to ask God’s blessing on our nation. As nice as blessings are, singing this song doesn’t feel like it has integrity the way signing our national anthem does.”
Well my problem has always been, hey, 9/11 happened almost 12 years ago. The singing of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch served its purpose, and if the holier than thou New York Yankees want to continue playing the tune, whatever.
But for the rest of us, we already express our love of country in the long tradition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I’m at a baseball game. That’s enough.
It’s not about religion to me. I’ll continue to sign-off that other column I do with “God bless America” for all kinds of reasons, as I’ve explained there from time to time.
But baseball should ditch the song…except for Memorial Day and Fourth of July. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is otherwise the only thing we should hear during the seventh-inning stretch.
NBA Fever…it’s Fann-tastic
–So I watched Indiana even up the series against the Heat Saturday night, 91-77, sending it to Miami, Monday night, for the decisive Game 7, and how about all the support LeBron (29 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists) received from Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade? Those two shot 4 of 19 from the field. Just pathetic. It also didn’t help the Heat were playing without Chris Andersen, who was serving a one-game suspension for his Game 5 dust-up with Tyler Hansbrough.
One thing is certain concerning Monday night…the San Antonio Spurs will be interested spectators.
“Can you hear that? It’s the most bizarre and overdue and welcome development. An audible basketball buzz rattling out of San Antonio. The unimaginable is finally happening – years, maybe even a decade later. The universe is finally getting around to loving the Spurs. Suddenly, it’s Spurs this, Spurs that. Spurs, Spurs, Spurs. Tim! Manu! Tony! Pop! The fascination is swelling, the bandwagon is loading up. The San Antonio Spurs are suddenly…sexy.
“OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Maybe it’s not Spurs sexytime yet. But it should be….
“(You) know the tired cliché. You’re supposed to pooh-pooh the Spurs. Admire them, then quietly condescend. You’re supposed to appreciate their talent and their four championships and their selfless tradition, but privately you’re supposed to want somebody else in the NBA Finals. Even when the Spurs are exciting – and they absolutely can be exciting – you’re supposed to say they’re unexciting. You see the Spurs in the championship round, and it’s like realizing your plane ticket is a middle seat. Sure: It’s a perfectly good seat. It’s going to get you there. But it’s not exactly a party.
“The Spurs are Jeff Bridges, the year that everybody realized Jeff Bridges had been completely awesome for a really long time.
“This has forever been the case with these Spurs, embodied by their leader, 37-year-old Tim Duncan. Since Duncan’s arrival in 1997, he has done nothing less than assemble one of the great careers in basketball history. And yet his genius is muted, his efficiency taken for granted, like an interstate highway….
“What makes this Spurs revival special is that it wasn’t so predictable. There was a growing assumption that the Spurs, as talented and smart as they are, had gotten too gray. Oklahoma City, borrowing its model with younger players, was presumed to have taken its place, but got bad luck when Russell Westbrook went down with an injury. Now San Antonio is back again, on the verge.
“In an ideal world, all of these qualities would make a team spectacularly famous, a national obsession. There would be mass jubilation at one of basketball’s greatest franchises returning to basketball’s biggest stage. In an ideal world, this consistency would be considered thrilling. But maybe the San Antonio Spurs are the ideal world, and the rest of us are just waking up.”
—Grant Hill retired after 19 seasons in the NBA. Hill, a seven-time All-Star beset by injuries, finishes up with career averages of 16.7 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 1.2 steals. But during one six-year stretch with Orlando, he played in less than 30 games four seasons due to his chronic ankle situation. No doubt, however, Hill embodied class and as NBA Commissioner David Stern said, “He was always the consummate teammate and professional.”
–The Los Angeles Clippers are now saying, don’t blame Chris Paul for the dismissal of Coach Vinny Del Negro. Paul was furious when the stories hit that he was the one who convinced management it was either him or Vinny, with owner Donald Sterling telling the Los Angeles Times, “This is a players’ league, and, unfortunately, if you want to win, you have to make the players happy.”
Gary Sacks, the Clippers’ vice president of basketball operations, said, “It was my conclusion that a change needed to be made” and that the Clippers needed a new coach.
Paul becomes a free agent on July 1. The Clippers plan on offering him the maximum contract of five years, $107.3 million. Another team can offer Paul a maximum four years and $79.7 million.
CP3 is also ticked over the stories having him selecting the new coach, the Clippers weighing a number of candidates for now.
A source close to the situation told Chris Broussard of ESPN The Magazine:
“He’s angry right now and his anger is directed toward the Clippers organization. Chris is a man of principle and if he feels like you’ve gone against his principles, it will affect how he feels about you. He’s very agitated that his name has been put out there as the reason for Vinny’s firing. He had nothing to do with it.”
–The Sacramento Kings are hiring Mike Malone to be their next head coach. Malone had been an assistant withi Golden State. He is the son of longtime NBA coach Brendan Malone and replaces Keith Smart.
—Larry Drew, days after being let go by Atlanta, is going to Milwaukee to become their next coach.
–The Brooklyn Nets are looking seriously at Jeff Van Gundy, which would be a good selection.
“Thursday night’s revelation that Ronald Holmes, father of former UCLA hoops star Shabazz Muhammad, had been indicted in Las Vegas on mortgage fraud charges raises a number of questions.
“The indictment lays out a rough sketch of Holmes’ alleged scheme, which involved obtaining mortgages to buy and sell houses using fraudulent information and straw bidders from 2006 to 2009.
“To pull off the fraud, Holmes, 51 years old and a former USC shooting guard, allegedly worked with several associates. But the indictment doesn’t name them, and it remains to be seen whether the U.S. attorney’s office for Nevada will pursue others. What is known is that Holmes served six months’ home arrest in 2000 after pleading guilty to a similar mortgage scam in Los Angeles County, as first reported in a Los Angeles Times report in March.
“For hoops fans, the most important question is whether the news will affect Muhammad’s National Basketball Assn. draft status. This spring, the small forward declared for the league’s draft and he has been projected as a lottery pick – meaning among the first 14 players selected.
“The charges against his father, however, cast yet another cloud over the dynamic scorer. The top-recruited player in the nation as a senior, he was suspended for UCLA’s first three games last fall following an NCAA investigation that found he received impermissible travel benefits while in high school.
“And in March, this newspaper discovered that Muhammad was 20 years old, a year older than he and his father – as well as the UCLA media guide – had proclaimed him to be. In an interview at the time, Holmes initially denied his son was 20, saying ‘it must be a mistake.’ Several minutes later, he changed his story and admitted Muhammad’s actual age.”
Muhammad has made recent statements that he was distancing himself from his father. But is it too late? More to come on this tale, no doubt.
The Stanley Cup
–The Blackhawks defeated the Kings 2-1 in Game 1 of their Western conference finals; Boston whipped the Penguins in Pittsburgh, 3-0, in their initial Eastern conference tilt.
But prior to Saturday’s opening game action, the Blackhawks had completed a stirring 3-1 series comeback against the Red Wings to win Game 7 in dramatic fashion, 2-1 in overtime. Chicago was the No. 1 team in the regular season, while Detroit has now made the playoffs 22 consecutive seasons.
–Meanwhile, the Rangers fired Coach John Tortorella and, similar to the Chris Paul situation, when superstar goalie Henrik Lundqvist expressed doubts about remaining a Ranger when his contract is up, that was the signal to management they better act quickly. Simply put, Tortorella’s hard-ass act was wearing thin among all the players. He could be brutal at times in his put-downs, and in the end, it backfired. Despite guiding the team to four playoff appearances in five seasons (technically he was coach 4 ½), Torts is gone.
Golf Balls
–On Saturday at The Memorial, Jack’s tournament, Tiger Woods shot 44 on his front nine, the highest nine-hole score he has posted in competition (he has shot 43 three times). Tiger ended up with a 79, matching the highest score he has shot in a PGA Tour event. His highest score as a pro was an 81 at Muirfield in the 2002 British Open, but the conditions that day were beyond awful. Woods refused to talk to reporters after.
–Jack Nicklaus was asked about the Tiger-Sergio feud and he said, “It’s stupid.” Jack added, “Forget it, guys. Let’s move on.”
The Golden Bear did lay the blame at the feet of Woods and Garcia.
“(In our days) I suppose there were times when you had an issue with somebody and you never read about it. There weren’t 20 people sitting around for one guy to write it.”
In other words, the golf writers wrote about golf, not gossip.
For his part, Tiger, in his pre-tournament press conference, said he had already discussed the Garcia controversy. “That’s already done with,” when asked if he would talk to Garcia when they are both together again in two weeks at the U.S. Open.
–Meanwhile, Matt Kuchar won his sixth PGA Tour event at Jack’s place. We’re suddenly talking a very solid career for the likable Kuch. I’ll go with him for the U.S. Open at Merion.
—Hale Irwin turns 68 today. Irwin’s 45 Champions Tour victories are 16 more than the next-best senior resume, the 29 wins by Lee Trevino and a full 20 ahead of Irwin’s frequent rival, Gil Morgan.
As Golf World points out, for more perspective, consider that the most productive golfer to join the Champions Tour since 2000, Bernhard Langer, 55, has 18 triumphs. [Irwin won 19 tournaments after turning 55.]
The Rutgers Debacle, part cinq
“Julie Hermann says it’s a ‘new day’ for Rutgers after she is hired as the athletic director, yet she and the university find themselves in another controversy.
“In the end, and two weeks before Julie Hermann officially assumes her position as the new athletic director at Rutgers unless somebody stops her, this is what you are supposed to believe about the process that brought her and the school to this moment:
“That out of all the other 60-plus candidates to replace Tim Pernetti as athletic director, out of all the men and women on their original list from schools all over the country, the one who became the only choice for Kate Sweeney, the co-chair of the search committee, the one who is supposed to have blown away the competition, is the one whose name appears in two lawsuits from her last two colleges, Tennessee and Louisville.
“But this is the woman they absolutely had to have at Rutgers, and the sooner the better, even though this was one of the most important athletic hires in the history of the school – and maybe the most important – coming as it did after the firing of Mike Rice for his physical and verbal abuse toward his players, and after the firing of Tim Pernetti, the athletic director who hired Rice.
“The person they decided could make things right, make this a ‘new day’ – Hermann’s words when she was introduced on May 15 – at Rutgers was a woman who cost the University of Tennessee $150,000 because she discouraged her former women’s volleyball assistant from getting pregnant.
“Hermann was also named in a lawsuit filed by a Louisville assistant track coach named Mary Banker, who lost her job at that school after accusing head track coach Ron Mann of sexist behavior and ‘discriminatory treatment.’ Hermann, then an assistant AD at Louisville, originally told Banker in an email, ‘thank God you’re here.’ Later she backed away after Banker took her complaints to the school’s human resources department.
“Banker was originally awarded $300,000, plus legal fees. That award was later thrown out by an appeals court. Her attorneys have now taken the case to Kentucky’s Supreme Court. The point here isn’t whether you believe Mary Banker or Louisville, or believe Hermann….
“The point, or maybe the question is this: How many of the other top candidates for the Rutgers job had controversies such as these in their pasts?”
And we aren’t even talking about the situation involving the letter all 16 members of the volleyball team at Tennessee wrote about their coach and how mean and abusive she was. Hermann never volunteered this and the search firm Rutgers paid $70,000 to failed to ask about it in their vetting of her.
So now on-campus meetings with Hermann scheduled for this week have been canceled, with no explanation from the school.
And in Sunday’s Star-Ledger, you had a front-page story on the fundraising issue; as in many once generous alum are saying they will pull back.
William Bauer, a former president of the Rutgers Alumni Association who has given hundreds of thousands to the school, told the Ledger:
“There are going to be people who are going to say, ‘I’m not going to continue to give like I have until I see what happens. I’m not going to tell you what my approach is.”
Understand, Rutgers spent gobs on the renovation of its football stadium and now that it is entering the Big Ten, is looking to spend $30 million to renovate the basketball arena.
“When I have the opportunity to actually arrive on campus and meet the people who are going to be critically involved with supporting Rutgers, I think they will meet me and know me and know what I stand for,” she said.
She might not get the chance. Many of the big donors are clamoring of the return of Pernetti.
Rutgers has a long history of lackluster fundraising efforts and had the 101st endowment among the nation’s colleges last year, $698.5 million, which ranked below the likes of the University of Delaware, Oklahoma and Michigan State – which all have endowments over $1 billion.
Oh, one other thing…Rutgers admitted it is paying a crisis communications firm $150,000 to help deal with the growing media scrutiny.
—Donovan McNabb has some good advice for Robert Griffin III.
“It’s too much right now; it’s just too much,” he told the Washington Post’s Mike Wise. “I get some of the things he’s doing to draw attention to himself: the Adidas commercials, going out and enjoying the life of a young, famous NFL quarterback. I understand RG has a lot of stuff going on.
“But if you’re coming off ACL surgery, you don’t need to be having a press conference at OTAs (offseason training activities). Every week? Really? It becomes a circus, a sideshow. It takes away from the focus of what those sessions are supposed to be about: the team….
“So when I look up on TV and see him up there talking all the time about how great he’s doing – or doing jumping jacks or someone else talking about his supernatural healing powers – I wonder to myself: Is this about selling tickets to the fans or what?
“I don’t blame him. They’re letting him do it. But at some point, it can be counterproductive. You can set yourself up for more criticism later.”
–This is beyond unreal…another example of just how dysfunctional the Jets are. The other day I was discussing newly signed running back Mike Goodson, he of the serious pending weapons and drug charges, and how I didn’t realize he had a slew of paternity suits filed against him and like, you know, why the hell would the Jets even waste their time with someone like this, let alone give him $6.9 million for three years?!
According to Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post and ESPN, though, Goodson was hit this week with another paternity suit by a Houston woman demanding support for four children he allegedly fathered between 2005 and 2011. It’s the second time this particular woman, Ashlee Wilson, has sued Goodson since 2010.
It also seems Goodson was forced to pay a Houston jewelry store nearly $85,000 after he tried to stiff them for a $37,500 Breitling watch!
–We note the passing of Bill Austin, a Pro Bowl guard who played for the Giants’ 1956 NFL champions, coached the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line for Vince Lombardi’s power sweep and was twice an NFL head coach. He was 84.
Austin was a 13th round selection out of Oregon State in the 1949 draft, but became a mainstay on the O-line for seven seasons. Lombardi was running the offense under Coach Jim Lee Howell, with Frank Gifford running the early power sweep.
When Lombardi became the Packers’ head coach in 1959, he named Austin to coach an offensive line that included Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston as the pulling guards, with halfback Paul Hornung and fullback Jim Taylor running the sweep.
Austin would later be named head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but went 11-28-3 in his three seasons before being replaced by Chuck Noll. He would also coach the Redskins while Lombardi battled cancer, going 6-8 before being succeeded by George Allen (upon Lombardi’s death).
Jean Stapleton, RIP
I loved “All in The Family,” and on Friday, Jean Stapleton died at the age of 90.
Initially called “Those Were the Days,” Norman Lear, who had seen Stapleton in the musical “Damn Yankees” on Broadway, cast her as Edith Bunker for what would finally be called “All in the Family,” which was first broadcast in January 1971.
As Bruce Weber notes in the New York Times, the show took off slowly, “hampered by mixed reviews,” but when it found its audience, “it become one of the most popular shows in television, finishing first in the Nielsen ratings for five consecutive seasons and winning four consecutive Emmy Awards for outstanding comedy series. Ms. Stapleton won three Emmys of her own, in 1971, ’72 and ’78.”
Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton were quite the couple.
“Archie employed the vocabulary of a bigot and wielded the unenlightened opinions of a man from a bygone era who refused to admit the world was changing so much that it was no longer his naturally inherited domain.
“But he was essentially harmless – small-minded but not meanspirited, ignorant but not unfeeling. Critics routinely referred to him as ‘a lovable bigot,’ as if such a thing were possible. Edith loved him, certainly, though he referred to her, in her presence, as a dingbat and was perpetually telling her to shut up. ‘Stifle yourself,’ was how he put it.
“Edith was none too bright, not intellectually, anyway, which, in the dynamic of the show was the one thing about her that invited Archie’s outward scorn….
“But in Edith, Ms. Stapleton also found vast wells of compassion and kindness, a natural delight in the company of other people, and a sense of fairness and justice that irritated her husband to no end and also put him to shame. She was an enormously appealing character, a favorite of audiences, who no doubt saw in the ordinariness of her life a bit of their own, and in her noble spirit a kind of inspiration.”
After “All in the Family,” which Jean Stapleton left in 1979, with the series then becoming “Archie Bunker’s Place” without the rest of the cast, she was never able to get away from the Edith Bunker character as much she tried. Just like Carroll O’Connor, my favorite actor of all time, will forever just be Archie.
Nothing wrong with that, for both of them. They left the world as having been among the greatest television will ever see.
–Last year, Alabama lost the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship to Texas, 3-2. Sunday, it was redemption time as the Crimson Tide defeated Illinois (who had beaten favorite Cal in the semis), 4-1, for the school’s first DI crown.
Cal’s Max Homa won the individual title, but on Saturday, he three-putted the second hole of a playoff to hand the Illini the win.
–I missed last week that the USC women won the NCAA Division I golf championship, with Duke runner-up. Annie Park of USC won the individual title.
–A letter from the Ohio State University board of trustees chastised president Gordon Gee for his ‘joking’ comments about Catholics and cautioned him that should this happen again, he could be dismissed.
It came to light this week that during a December meeting of the school’s athletic council, Gee joked that “those damn Catholics” couldn’t be trusted.
Gee spoke of the years in which the Big Ten Conference courted Notre Dame’s membership. “The fathers are holy on Sunday, and they’re holy hell the rest of the week.”
Gee also joked about the lower academic standards of the Univ. of Louisville and the Univ. of Kentucky. And he joked about members of the SEC not knowing how to read or write.
Gordon Gee is just a real barrel of monkeys, isn’t he? In fact for his body of work, Gordon Gee is hereby given a “Lifetime Jerk” award.
–Pity Denise Garrido. For 24 hours she thought she was the new Canadian representative in the Miss Universe final to be held in December. But organizers admitted on Wednesday that a typo led to a counting error that resulted in Garrido being wrongly named the victor at last Saturday’s event. She was stripped of her sash and crown the next day.
“I was shocked. I’d achieved my dream and suddenly after a day of it sinking in it was suddenly taken away from me.”
The pageant director blamed an inexperienced employee for the typo when transferring the judges’ handwritten scores into a computer program that determines the winner. An independent audit later spotted the error.
Garrido was actually third runner-up to Riza Santos of Calgary. Just off the photos, Garrido should have won, guys.
“If you are a Carl Hiaasen fan you should know that his new novel ‘Bad Monkey,’ out in a couple of weeks, is the best and funniest thing he has ever written. Which is saying plenty, believe me.”
[Awhile back, Denise gave me Hiaasen’s “The Downhill Lie,” which is hilarious. But no more books, readers…I’ll be lucky if I get to read one the rest of my life. Unless I hit Powerball, that is, which I hope to do any week now.]
“A skateboard may have saved a man from being the lunch of a hungry cougar in a Canadian resort town last week.
“The big cat jumped the man from behind while he was walking with a skateboard along a dirt path through woods in Banff, Alberta, on Thursday, according to Bill Hunt, a Parks Canada field unit manager
“ ‘He hit the animal with the skateboard and stunned him,’ Hunt said.
“The man, who is in his mid-20s, was listening to music through earbuds. His jacket hood was pulled over his head, Hunt said, possibly making him look inviting to a cat that is stimulated by motion.
“It was unclear why the man was carrying a skateboard on a wooded path while it was sleeting, Hunt said.”
—Clarence Burke Jr., the lead singer of the Five Stairsteps, died. He was 64. The sibling R&B group was formed in Chicago, 1965, and originally consisted of four young brothers and a sister who played their own instruments as well as sang. Clarence, the eldest, played guitar, wrote many of the group’s songs, and choreographed their dance routines.
The Five Stairsteps had a number of R&B hits, but “O-o-h Child,” released in 1970, was the only top 40 Billboard Pop chart entry, peaking at No. 8. Check out their “Soul Train” performance of this one on YouTube.
–So I’m listening to Willie’s Roadhouse on Sirius XM and hear Vern Gosdin do “This Ain’t My First Rodeo.” I am so embarrassed. That saying has become more and more common as the years go by and didn’t know it was Gosdin who first sang it. Another regret of mine…not knowing enough about him when, unbeknownst to me, I was sitting near him at a Nashville joint (John A’s Little Palace) about 7 years ago. [The customers were buzzing and I asked a guy near me why… “That’s Vern Gosdin.”]*
*Bar Chat 2/7/06…understand that with each server change, and this site has undergone many, gremlins sneak in and, for example, commas become periods…and other stuff. Nothing I can do about this. [And I heard I’m undergoing yet another change soon…whether or not it is seamless is yet to be seen.]
–Another reason to love Kid Rock. For this summer’s 34-city tour, he has $20 tickets (no service charges), and reduced prices for parking and arena eats, including $4 beer.
He was asked by Parade Magazine what the deal was with such reasonable tickets and fare.
“You can’t sing songs about and for working-class folks and expect them to be able to afford sky-high concert tickets.”
And for this, and his body of work to date, we hereby place Kid Rock in the Bar Chat Hall of Fame…the first to be so selected in years, actually.
Top 3 songs for the week 6/7/75: #1 “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” (John Denver…I swear, I miss this guy. The world is full of a-holes and he was a refreshing antidote. By the way, the StocksandNews A-hole meter is now up to 52%…) #2 “Sister Golden Hair” (America) #3 “How Long” (Ace)…and…#4 “Bad Time” (Grand Funk) #5 “Old Days” (Chicago) #6 “When Will I Be Loved” (Linda Ronstadt) #7 “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” (Freddy Fender) #8 “I’m Not Lisa” (Jessi Colter…then who is?) #9 “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” (Major Harris…uhhhh….uhhhh ….) #10 “Philadelphia Freedom” (The Elton John Band)
Baseball Quiz Answer: HOF birthplaces.
Bill Dickey, Bastrop, LA
Bob Feller, Van Meter, IA
Carlton Fisk, Bellows Falls, VT
Whitey Ford, New York, NY
Lou Gehrig, New York, NY
Bob Gibson, Omaha, NE
Hank Greenberg, New York, NY
Rickey Henderson, Chicago, IL
Next Bar Chat, Mon. June 10…oh, I’ll have a little blurb at some point in between. Just a crazy schedule next few weeks.
