Chicago Cubs Quiz: 1) Who holds the single-season record for runs scored with 156 in 1929? [This is tricky] 2) Tossing out fraud Sammy Sosa, name the five Cubs to hit 46 or more home runs in a single season. 3) Who is the Cubs only lifetime 200-game winner? 4) Post-1900, who holds the single-season strikeout record for a hurler? Answers below.
NBA Finals
—Following Game 5…Matt Moore / CBSSports.com
“The Cavaliers lost 104-91 to fall behind 3-2, facing elimination Tuesday night in Cleveland, and were outscored by 11 points with (LeBron) James on the floor. He dropped 40-14-11, and it wasn’t enough. How? How can one man put together such a series, such a game, do so much for one team and rise to the occasion time and time again and it not be enough?
“James now has three of the five 30-10-10 performances in NBA Finals history. He has played 228 of a possible 250 minutes, scored 183 points with 62 rebounds and 44 assists. The Cavaliers have been outscored by 22 points with James on the floor in this series. James has been a destroyer of worlds, put in performances worthy of reshaping the logo in his image, some of the best individual basketball performances since you-know-who and his Bulls stalked the trophy, and it hasn’t been enough.
“When the San Antonio Spurs pasted the Miami Heat in Game 4 of the 2014 NBA Finals shooting 57 percent from the field, the Spurs were asked if they could possibly play any better. Their answer ‘You can always play better.’ When asked how, they shrugged and said ‘Make all the shots?’
“The Spurs didn’t need to play better. They didn’t need to make all the shots. This year, in these Finals, LeBron James may honestly be faced with the need to somehow play better.”
–Also after Game 5, Cleveland Coach Dave Blatt said Timofey Mozgov’s role reversal was simply a matter of flow – and wasn’t personal – after Mozgov went from a star to an also-ran in one game.
Mozgov played only nine minutes, for crying out loud, after having 28 points, 10 rebounds, in the Game 4, 103-82 loss…the game where LeBron struggled.
Blatt offered: “It’s no disrespect to anyone, certainly not to Timo, who has done a great job for us. That’s just the way that we played it tonight, and Timo will be back and he will not lose his way or lose his head just because he didn’t play a lot tonight.”
—So in Game 6, Mozgov played 33 minutes, scoring 17 points and pulling down 12 boards, but it wasn’t enough. Golden State wrapped up its first title in 40 years with a 105-97 victory in Cleveland.
Stephon Curry and Andre Iguodala each scored 25, though Curry was a pedestrian 8 of 19 from the field (3 of 11 from three). Draymond Green contributed a triple-double (16-11-10).
As for LeBron, he was just 13 of 33 from the field and only 2 of 10 from downtown, though he had 18 rebounds and nine assists.
Iguodala was selected series MVP, the first time a player who didn’t start a regular-season game won the Finals MVP.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, “What really wins is the combination of great offense and great defense. We had the No. 1 defense in the league. We had the highest-scoring team in the league. We were No. 1 in assists. We were No. 1 in field-goal percentage defense.
“When you get that combination, then you’re going to be pretty good.”
Golden State was the best team all year and deserved the title. But, yes, it could have easily been a different outcome had Kyrie Irving, let alone Kevin Love, been healthy.
Credit Kerr, though, for making the big change, going with a smaller lineup for Game 4 and the Warriors down 2-1.
But once again it’s time to talk of LeBron’s legacy. Two titles in 12 seasons, 2-4 in NBA Finals.
“No one doubts LeBron is the greatest player of his generation. But, at this point, he’s the only player to ever earn that honor who hasn’t dominated the NBA Finals while in his prime – a prime that’s ending sooner rather than later. Is it his fault for not making his teammates better? Is it his team’s fault for not getting him better teammates? These questions are irrelevant and will stay irrelevant if LeBron ends up with a pedestrian amount of NBA championships. There’s no nuance involved in questions about legacy. It’s about numbers, pure and simple.
“Two titles in 12 seasons. Michael Jordan had five in his first 12 years with the Bulls and six in 13 seasons overall. He waited six years for his first title, while it took eight years for LeBron to get his. But Jordan then went six-for-six in each of his last full seasons with the Bulls, while LeBron is only one-for-three after winning his first (though he’s made the Finals in each of those years).
“Two titles in 12 seasons. Magic had five in his first eight seasons and went to the Finals nine times in the 12 seasons he played before contracting HIV. Larry Bird had three wins in his first seven seasons, but none in his final six (though he has injuries and Len Bias as excuses)….
“(LeBron) is still only 30 years old and has at least five more years of his prime. Given how close Cleveland came to a title in 2015 and how they’ll certainly be a free-agent destination with LeBron’s Nike banner hanging back in the city, he’s almost assured of winning more titles in Cleveland… Then again, you’d have expected that star-studded Miami team to win more than two titles in four years.
“Even though LeBron is just 30, he’s an old 30. All those seasons take a toll, especially for someone so physical. He’s played over 1,000 games in the NBA, including the playoffs, not to mention his three Olympics, world championships and exhibition games for Team USA….And given that LeBron plays like a running back, it doesn’t bode well for longevity. He’s not Tim Duncan, in other words. He’s talented enough to adapt his game to the inexorable march of time, a la MJ, but can he?”
–Reader Shu says David Blatt will be fired. I can see that. LeBron could certainly engineer this. But I’d like to see LeBron be player-coach next season. [I know that’s ridiculous, but why not?]
–Two things I won’t miss for a few months. Steph Curry playing with his mouthpiece (irks the hell out of me), and this new term “volume scorer.” Almost as bad as “score the basket.”
–The last time the NBA finals attracted 20 million viewers was 1998, when Michael Jordan’s Bulls beat the Utah Jazz with 29 million watching. Through Game 5, the average this year is at 19.2 million and it’s assumed far more watched Game 6, which is always the case in the finals of any sport.
Last year, for example, in the first six games of the Giants-Royals World Series, no more than 13.4 million watched any single game. But Game 7 was watched by 23.5 million. [Richard Sandomir / New York Times]
Stanley Cup Final
“When the Stanley Cup finally made it onto the ice at the United Center, its arrival was accompanied by the strains of ‘Fanfare for the Common Man.’
“But while the majestic entrance was made for such a moment, make no mistake there is nothing common whatsoever about the Chicago Blackhawks.
“In fact, as NHL commissioner Gary Bettman strode onto the red carpet next to the great silver trophy, the United Center’s sellout crowd still standing as it had been since the final moments ticked away in the Blackhawks’ 2-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday, he told the fans in the stands and the players and coaches on the ice what most already knew.
“ ‘I’d say you have a dynasty,’ Bettman said.”
Yup, in this modern, salary-cap era, three championships in six years qualifies, just as the San Francisco Giants’ three World Series titles in five years does too.
For Chicago, it was the first time they won the Cup at home since 1938. Defenseman Duncan Keith, with 21 points during the playoffs, including the opening score in Monday’s 2-0 clincher, was the unanimous winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy, given to the most valuable player of the postseason. Corey Crawford had his fifth career playoff shutout and allowed just 10 goals in the six-game final series.
The Blackhawks are 42-14 in Games 4 through 7 of playoff series since Coach Joel Quenneville took over in 2008.
For Tampa Bay, the league’s second-leading scorer during the regular season, Steven Stamkos, was held without a goal in the finals.
The U.S. Open…enter Chambers Bay
“Brace yourselves, golf fans, for a completely different type of U.S. Open.
“Gone are the long skinny ribbon fairways of traditional Opens, flanked by grim, industrial-strength rough. Replacing them are broad fairways and skinny ribbon tee boxes, allowing markers to be punched into the ground almost anywhere, perhaps even on a bit of a tilt, to create holes that vary dramatically in distance from day to day. The challenge of the fairways, some as wide as 100 yards, are their slopes and the fast-running turf, which can catapult balls in unpredictable directions. The fairways blend almost imperceptibly into the undulating greens since both are planted in the same fescue grass.
“ ‘The first time you play it, it’s like St. Andrews,’ said Phil Mickelson, referring to the site of next month’s British Open. ‘You don’t know where to go. You don’t know what mounds do what to the ball.
“ ‘Then the more you play it, the more you like it and you appreciate it, you understand where the balls are going to go and what type of shot is the highest percentage shot and how to get to certain pins and so forth.’”
The course has 200 feet of vertical rise, which with all the ups and downs will take a toll on those less physically fit.
“(Chambers Bay) embodies everything that is wrong with municipal golf, and it’s not even cheap. Consider:
“Cost: The initial construction bill of $13 million ballooned to an obscene $21 million by the time it opened in 2007….
“Green Fees: At $209 per round (plus 14.4 percent tax), Pierce County residents still are being fleeced. But that looks like a bargain compared with the $299 fees for out-of-staters. So much for ‘affordable’ municipal golf.
“The debt bomb: For all of that money, there’s still no clubhouse. There’s not even enough room for the staff in the double-wide trailer that serves as the temporary (permanent?) clubhouse. But then, how can you justify building a clubhouse when the golf operations are saddled with debt and in the past have sustained seven-figure yearly losses?
“Poorly planned: Golfers must take a bus from the bag drop to the practice tee, then a second bus to the first tee. That sounds like government planning.
“Oh, wait. It was.
“Fan un-friendly*: Despite being built to host big tournaments, it will be a terrible course for spectators. Good luck trying to get to the course on the narrow, two-lane, residential streets near Chambers Bay. Plans to bring people in by train were derailed, ensuring nightmarish traffic snarls…Once there, fans will find the course’s large mounding difficult to walk, and access to narrow portions of the course will be restricted….
“Un-playability: Chambers Bay has sold its soul to the USGA. Everyday playability has been sacrificed for the sake of one tournament, with knee-high fescue rough and a ridiculous sinkhole of a bunker in the middle of the layup area on No. 18. Chambers Bay is the antithesis of the design approach that municipal golf should embody….
“Add it all up and this year’s U.S. Open at Chambers Bay has the makings of a disaster. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But the case against Chambers Bay is pretty damning.”
*On a baseball telecast, Joe Buck, who will anchor Fox’s broadcast with Greg Norman, said that when they held the U.S. Amateur at Chambers Bay as a dress rehearsal for this week, 12 spectators broke their ankles!
—Chambers Bay’s greens actually contain three different kinds of grasses. They are mostly fescue (for the first time on the PGA Tour’s regular tournament circuit, as well as the U.S. Open). But also part bentgrass, and now Poa annua. So it will sure look different on television, so they say. And we’ll see how they roll.
–John Paul Newport says Jordan Spieth and Justin Rose are the two prime favorites because of their “patience and strategic smarts.” Rory McIlroy is a mystery after his recent two missed cuts in Europe.
I’m taking the easy way out and going with Spieth. Mark R. has Jason Dufner.
–Adam Schupak of Golfweek has a good point. The winner of the NCAA Division I Championship should receive an automatic invite to Augusta National.
But as Schupak observes, the NCAA championship “remains the Rodney Dangerfield of amateur golf. [This year’s winner, Bryson DeChambeau of SMU], for instance, earned fewer ranking points in the World Amateur Golf Ranking than Jon Rahm received as medalist at the World Amateur Team Championship, a limited-field event restricted to three players from any country and organized by the R&A and USAGA, the same governing bodies that administer the WAGR.
“ ‘That field doesn’t even sniff the NCAA’s,’ Georgia Tech senior Ollie Schniederjans said.
“College golf has become a global game, and the NCAA championship represents amateur golf’s deepest field (not since John Harris in 1993 has a U.S. Amateur champion been older than college-age).”
–Golfweek’s College Player of the Year for the men was Maverick McNealy of Stanford. For the women it was Leona Maguire of Duke.
Starting in 1999, among the Players of the Year to have success on the PGA Tour are Luke Donald (Northwestern), Charles Howell III (Oklahoma State), Graeme McDowell (Ala.-Birmingham), Hunter Mahan (Oklahoma State), Bill Haas (Wake Forest), Ryan Moore (UNLV), Rickie Fowler (Oklahoma State), and Russell Henley (Georgia). Two others, Justin Thomas (Alabama) and Patrick Rodgers (Stanford), are knocking on the door.
–Seth Waugh on Jordan Spieth and his choice of caddie.
“All you need to know about him is that he chose Michael Greller as his caddie. Jordan could have gotten a fancy caddie with a big name, but he went with a sixth-grade math teacher because he felt like this guy could make him a better person more than a better player. And not many guys do that. Michael is at times a friend, at times an employee, at times a teacher – about life, not necessarily about golf – and at times a parent. Jordan’s got some quirks, and he went through his 20-year-old period of getting overly angry. Michael knows that, understands that, and can bring him back at the right time. In the right way. But boy, they’re having fun, like two best friends on a road trip.” [Golf Digest]
–Columnist Thomas L. Friedman (contributing editor to Golf Digest, aside from his perch at the New York Times):
“I have to say, this Masters cured me of Tiger Woods. I am not interested anymore in his game, in his swing, in his latest swing coach, in his personal life – in anything he does – because it brings me no joy. The only thing he said that I enjoyed was after his final round, when he told his CBS interviewer that he would not be playing again the next week.
“Honestly, I don’t like hitting people when they’re down, and I certainly take no joy in seeing him decline. No one can take away from Tiger that he is one of the greatest players to ever play this game. But it is so obvious that the hitch in Tiger’s swing today is not in his takeaway, it’s in his soul. The only teacher he needs is one who will tell him to stop looking at his swing on tape and just look at his demeanor in a mirror. If he ever again rediscovers his joy in his game, and learns to share it with those of us watching, the effortlessness will follow. I hope it happens while he still has the physical skills to win, but until then, CBS, please keep your cameras focused on that kid from Texas (Jordan Spieth).”
–The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt first broke this story.
“The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating whether front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, hacked into internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.
“Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.
“The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.
“The attack would represent the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team hacked the network of another team.”
Major League Baseball said it was “aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation.”
No Cardinals officials have been disciplined in any way as yet, though it makes sense the commissioner’s office would wait until all the facts are in.
“Law enforcement officials believe the hacking was executed by vengeful front-office employees for the Cardinals hoping to wreak havoc on the work of Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager who had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals until 2011.” [Schmidt]
Luhnow uses a computer program he first initiated with the Cardinals that takes a series of variables and “weights them according to the values determined by the team’s statisticians, physicist, doctors, scouts and coaches,” according to a Bloomberg Business article on the team published last year.
The Cardinals were concerned Luhnow took their ideas and proprietary baseball information to the Astros, and they gained access into Houston’s computers by finding a master list of passwords Luhnow and other former Cardinals associates now with Houston used when they were in St. Louis.
Luhnow, when asked about the breach and its impact on how he deals with other teams said, “Today I use a pencil and paper in all my conversations.”
As Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com puts it, “While it’s great that baseball is apparently so alive and well in Kansas City (both of them), it’s a shame that the American League team has a very good chance to look almost exactly like Ned Yost’s starting lineup.
“The Royals have a very fine team built around defense and their bullpen, and they have several excellent everyday players, too. But this isn’t right. Nor is it fair.”
Currently, eight Royals are in position to start for the A.L. team; the entire starting lineup save for Alex Rios, who has missed most of the first half with an injury and has done nothing. Yet he is fourth among outfielders.
Royals manager Ned Yost said in response to the current balloting, “There’s nothing wrong. Vote! The votes are the votes. If you don’t like it, go out there and vote. Our fans have gotten out and voted.”
There is still time for other cities to weigh in with a little more gusto but baseball obviously doesn’t want the game to become such a farce, especially with it deciding who wins home-field advantage in the World Series.
Starters are to be announced the weekend of July 4-5.
–The vaunted Washington Nationals starting staff as of Monday had allowed opposing hitters a .274 average, fourth highest in baseball. Granted, they are now without Doug Fister and Stephen Strasburg due to injury (both should be back shortly), but those two were hardly world-beaters when they were in there.
So here are the ERAs for what was to be the starting five.
Max Scherzer 1.97…great…earning his contract
Jordan Zimmermann 3.74…disappointing
Gio Gonzalez 4.82…awful
Fister (7 starts) 4.31
Strasburg (10 starts) 6.55…hideous
And that’s how the New York Mets are able to stay in the race, sports fans. Speaking of which…
–…Two nice wins for the Metropolitans back-to-back; Sunday’s comeback from an 8-3 deficit to win 10-8 against Atlanta, and Monday’s two-run, 11th-inning rally for a 4-3 win over Toronto at Citi Field, snapping the Blue Jays’ 11-game winning streak. Rookie hurler Noah Syndergaard struck out 11 in six innings in a no-decision against the team that traded him, along with Travis d’Arnaud and a promising rookie outfielder, for R.A. Dickey and a bag of donuts. GM Sandy Alderson fleeced the Jays.
And then on Tuesday, the Mets won another nail-biter, 3-2, as Matt Harvey recovered from his four-game slump to pitch seven scoreless against the powerful Jays lineup, while Bobby Parnell recorded his first post-Tommy John surgery save.
Toronto had scored 88 runs during its 11-game winning streak heading into Citi Field and the Metsies held them to five in two.
The Mets, 36-30, are now 26-11 at home. But now it’s up to Toronto for two games there, tonight and Thursday.
–Texas rookie Chi Chi Gonzalez was on the mound Tuesday night against the Dodgers and had a 2-0 lead heading into the ninth, only to give up a two-run tying homer to Justin Turner. The Rangers won it with a walk-off in the bottom of the inning, though Gonzalez got a no-decision.
However, in his first four starts in the big leagues, the 23-year-old has yielded just 3 earned runs in 30 innings for a 0.90 ERA.
–The Yankees’ Nate Eovaldi was lit up by his old team as the Marlins destroyed the Yanks 12-2 on Tuesday, with Giancarlo Stanton going yard again. Stanton now has 24 home runs and 62 RBIs in the Marlins 66 games, with 6 homers and 15 RBI in his last nine.
–The Cardinals beat the Twins 3-2 to move to 43-21, with Michael Wacha advancing to 9-2, 2.48.
—Baltimore annihilated the Phillies 19-3, Tuesday, hitting a team record eight home runs, while the pathetic Phils, 22-44, had their first winless road trip of at least eight games since Aug. 1883…yes, 1883.
–In what was hardly a surprise, the San Diego Padres fired manager Bud Black with the team a very disappointing 32-33. Far more was expected of this team after they added outfielders Will Myers, Matt Kemp and Justin Upton, along with pitcher James Shields in the offseason.
Black was in his ninth season and finishes his Padres career 649-713.
–Johnny Mac notes that Clayton Kershaw is 103-52, 2.52 ERA for his early career. But Babe Ruth was 94-46, 2.28 on the mound. And using baseballreference.com’s similarity scores metric, Babe is No. 1.
–In the College World Series, Arkansas and Cal-State Fullerton are out.
The winner of Florida vs. Miami plays Virginia (2-0), while the winner of TCU vs. LSU takes on Vanderbilt (2-0).
Last time I reported on the shark attack off North Carolina that slightly injured a young girl who was on her boogie-board. She was extremely lucky given the visible damage.
But as I went to post I hadn’t learned of the far more serious attacks late Sunday afternoon off Oak Island, between Myrtle Beach and Wrightsville Beach.
While we have fun in this space with animal attacks, there are some I refuse to bring up, such as bees overwhelming a human, or pit bull maulings that are almost always the fault of their human owners, not the dogs.
So in the case of Sunday’s incidents, I’m just reporting the facts.
“Emergency officials have taken to boat and helicopter in a hunt for the shark they say attacked two teenagers in waist-deep water in coastal North Carolina on Sunday, leaving them both severely injured with lost limbs.
“The two teens, a boy and a girl, lost limbs in separate attacks reported about 90 minutes apart on Oak island…
“The girl, from Asheboro (N.C.), was vacationing with her family in Oak Island while the boy, from Colorado Springs, was visiting relatives in the area.”
It was the first shark attack in recent memory for the town. [North Carolina saw four of the 45 unprovoked shark attacks in the U.S. last year.]
“Sunday’s first attack, on the 12-year-old girl, happened at about 4:40 p.m. near Ocean Crest Fishing Pier, officials say. She lost part of her arm and suffered a leg injury. In the second attack, reported at about 5:50 p.m. near the 55th Street beach access – about 3 miles northeast of the fishing pier – a 16-year-old boy lost his left arm.
“By the time emergency crews arrived, the boy’s friend had already started lifesaving treatment on the beach, officials say. According to witness accounts, several bystanders rushed to help the teens by wrapping their wounds with makeshift tourniquets.”
It was a similar situation with the girl. Clearly, without the immediate attention to the wounds, the outcomes would have been worse.
Both victims were only about 20 yards offshore in waist-deep water. The latest word on their condition was “stable” for the girl and “good,” for the boy (who bravely went on television yesterday), but as one doctor said, “They have a really long road ahead.” Surgeons amputated the left arm of the girl below her elbow. Unfortunately, the boy’s left arm was amputated below his left shoulder. [Winston-Salem Journal]
The AP reported on Tuesday that the two paramedics called for the first attack were literally back in the station for one minute when they received the second call.
–The U.S. women advanced to the next round of the World Cup with a 1-0 win over Nigeria, but that’s just one goal over its past two games. Amy Wambach got the lone tally.
–Qualifying for the 2018 Men’s World Cup is underway and there was a stunning early development. Guam, which back in 2002 during the tournament qualifying lost games 16-0 and 19-0, defeated India, 2-1, after picking up their first ever qualifier win last week against Turkmenistan.
If Guam progresses from this round they play in an additional round, which sees 12 teams split into two groups of six.
The top two teams from each group will qualify for the World Cup.
–Forgot to note last time that Kurt Busch won Sunday’s water-logged NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Michigan International Speedway; Busch’s second win of the year, 27th for his career.
Truex, who won the previous race at Pocono, has 14 top 10 finishes in the first 15 races of the season, the first since Richard Petty in 1969 to do so.
–Just have to follow up on my comment last time on the opening of “Jurassic World.” For the record it was the first film to take in more than $500m globally. China accounted for 20% of the total haul, $100m.
–Police shot and killed a black bear in Plainfield, N.J., near here and where I spent the first seven years of my life. It was in a neighborhood that is not where you would expect to find bears.
—Red foxes are being spotted all over the Jersey Shore these days, especially on some of the boardwalks. In Ocean City the culprit is ‘Man.’ Customers of one popular restaurant (Brown’s) are feeding the animals the shop’s homemade donuts.
But if that’s not bad enough, as reported by Jeff Goldman of NJ.com, the restaurant’s owner, Jim Brown, said “beachgoers have been snapping towels in the direction of the foxes in an attempt to incite them.”
–Dr. W. noted the other day that Man has to be ranked last, perhaps ahead of just the European Cuckoo (Wiki says it’s now called the Common Cuckoo), a brood parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, meaning, as the good doctor says, the cuckoo is the bird equivalent of our species who gets all of the other flora and fauna of the planet to do their dirty work for them.
As for my reference to the sand crab being below Man, J. Mac said I could not have been referring to the sand crabs found along the Outer Banks off North Carolina. Well, he has a point. They are lovers of beach music and rather industrious, but I was referring to the Jersey Shore kind who I always found kind of ugly and useless…but I can be turned on this one.
–Well, not all the dangerous zoo animals that escaped from a flooded Tbilisi, Georgia zoo were rounded up. A man has been killed by a lion near the city’s central square, AFP reports. As of this writing, the lion hasn’t been tracked down.
–Back to the shark attacks, according to the CDC’s database, between 2001 and 2013, sharks killed an average of 1 person per year in the U.S., same for alligators and bears. Snakes kill six and spiders 7 each year.
But 20 are killed by cows (mostly farm workers)*, while bees, wasps and hornets are responsible for 58 deaths per year – mostly due to anaphylactic shock after a sting, as reported by the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham.
*The numbers exclude deaths due to vehicle collisions, including with deer.
–Mets great Keith Hernandez is still being paid for his work on “Seinfeld.” He had bit parts in “The Boyfriend: Part 1” and “The Boyfriend: Part 2,” plus the series finale.
Keith said, “So I’m going to say I get a check every month,” he told NJ.com. “Nothing less than six weeks….It used to be almost $1,000. It diminishes as the years go by. So it gives me around $3,000 per year. I’ll take it. For doing nothing. So you can imagine what Jerry gets.”
Top 3 songs for the week 6/14/80: #1 “Funkytown” (Lipps, Inc…godawful…doo doo doo…doo doo doo doooo…) #2 “Coming Up (Live at Glasgow)” (Paul McCartney & Wings) #3 “Biggest Part of Me” (Ambrosia…have a story behind this one can’t tell…maybe if you waterboard me…)…and…#4 “The Rose” (Bette Midler…if you are playing this over dinner this week, you have problems…) #5 “Against The Wind” (Bob Seger…I’m sorry, I like Seger but the music in this era could not suck more…) #6 “Call Me” (Blondie…witness this one…or anything by her…) #7 “It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me” (Billy Joel…just totally mailed it in…) #8 “Little Jeannie” (Elton John…ditto…sure ain’t “Your Song”…) #9 “Cars” (Gary Numan…oh puh-leeze…) #10 “Steal Away” (Robbie Dupree…so I had graduated and was doing nothing…went to the track to play the ponies…saw the great Niatross actually lose a qualifying heat for the Meadowlands Pace, though he barely qualified and won the final…and instead bet on “Cousin Brucie”, who won, so with Niatross finishing out of the money and like every dollar in the pool being bet on him, it was my best horse/trotter bet ever…I don’t think I’ve had a winner since…35 years…)
Chicago Cubs Quiz Answers: 1) Rogers Hornsby scored 156 runs in 1929, his first season for the Cubs, after St. Louis and one with Boston (N.L.). He hit .380 that season, 39 HR 149 RBI, MVP. But it was also his last full season in baseball at the age of 33. Hornsby had six straight batting titles with the Cards, 1920-25. 2) Five to hit 46 or more homers aside from Sammy Steroid. Hack Wilson, 56 (1930); Andre Dawson, 49 (1987); Dave Kingman, 48 (1979); Ernie Banks, 47 (1958); Derek Lee, 46 (2005). 3) Only 200-game winner in franchise history, Charlie Root (1926-1941…201-156…also 0-4 with St. Louis Browns in 1923…never made an All-Star squad). 4) Post-1900, strikeouts in a single season: Ferguson Jenkins, 274 (1970).
Next Bar Chat, Monday…what will be saying about Chambers Bay?
