Atlanta Braves Quiz (including Boston and Milwaukee Braves): 1) Post-1920, name the three hitters to hit .360 in a single season. [Hint: One of them did it in 1928, his only season in Boston.] 2) Post-1920, who is the single-season hit leader with 224? 3) Who is the only Brave to have 50 home runs in a season? 4) Post-1920, who is the only Brave to have 135 RBI in a single season? Answers below.
St. Andrews
After three rounds…Monday finish….
Paul Dunne (a) -12
Louis Oosthuizen -12
Jason Day -12
Jordan Spieth -11
Padraig Harrington -10
Marc Leishman -9
Jordan Niebrugge (a) -9
Sergio Garcia -9
Justin Rose -9
Retief Goosen -9
Robert Streb -9
Adam Scott -9
Zach Johnson -9
Danny Willett -9
Dustin Johnson -7
It’s going to be fun on Monday, but it never should have gotten to this point. Sunday’s third round action saved what was becoming a fiasco, with Friday’s 3 ½ hour delay and Saturday’s 10 ½ hour one.
But today, it was all about going low, all except second-round leader Dustin Johnson, who has four top 5s in his last four majors. There was no doubt he would add to his lead as he had overpowered St. Andrews the first two rounds and Sunday conditions were tame.
Johnson then proceeded to go out and shoot a 3-over 75, tied for second worst on the day, while everyone else was seemingly shooting 66 or 67.
“They don’t take major championships away from the winners who get a break or two along the way to lifting and kissing the trophy.
“Whoever emerges with the Claret Jug at this 144th British Open on Sunday after the inconveniences this week has presented – with good and bad tee-time draws and Friday’s three-hour weather delay that left 42 players still on the course when darkness set in – is going to be the winner, and there will be no question he has earned it.
“The player who not only plays the best on the golf course, but also beats the rest of the field with the power of the most positive attitude off of it will emerge the winner.
“ ‘Expect inconveniences and to be uncomfortable and embrace it,’ Zach Johnson, who is 7-under and three shots out of the lead, told The Post on Friday. ‘If you don’t have the right attitude at this tournament, then don’t bother to come here.’”
Well, Cannizzaro, the players, and the rest of us then learned Saturday morning that we were headed to a Monday, not Sunday, finish as the winds played havoc with play, allowing for just the final groups in round 2 to finish. I can’t believe how ESPN filled six hours of air time before play resumed at 6:00 pm local time Saturday. A frustrating experience for everyone and the players were far from happy, openly inquiring why they couldn’t play 36 on Sunday, especially with all the summer daylight in Scotland.
But the R&A was adamant…Monday finish it would be, screwing the travel (and viewing) plans of many.
“Golf’s oldest governing body, which oversees the game’s oldest, most venerable major championship, should know better.
“This was not the USGA trying to shoehorn a U.S. Open into the hottest window of TV time to satisfy the networks despite impending bad weather about to wreck the tournament schedule. This was not the Masters green jackets manipulating rules as they go along (see the controversial Tiger Woods drop incident in 2013).
“This was the Royal & Ancient – the governing body that oversees the ‘home of golf’ – inexplicably turning the game’s prestigious event into an amateur hour sideshow on Saturday morning, potentially putting a stain on the integrity of its 144th British Open.
“The R&A decision to hustle the 42 players who hadn’t completed their respective second rounds on Friday onto the Old Course at 7 Saturday morning, while winds were gusting to 45 mph off the North Sea, was as preposterous as it was curious.
“It cost some players, including tournament leader Dustin Johnson, at least one shot and maybe more before R&A officials suspended play just 32 minutes after it resumed. In a place where it doesn’t get dark until 10 p.m., what was the rush?….
“Play lasted just 32 minutes before the R&A determined the course was no longer playable because the wind was blowing golf balls off the greens. During those 32 minutes of play, there were 52 holes played by the 42 players who were a total of 21-over par with only three birdies.”
“Nae wind, nae golf, as the old Scottish saying goes. Except when a severe (but not extreme) links day pushes greens over the edge and disrupts the Open.
“For the third straight major at St. Andrews, winds that no self-respecting Scot would fear caused a stoppage. The Open could not be played at the Home of Golf, but tourists and locals played at nearby wind-exposed courses like Kingsbarns, the Castle Course, Crail and the Fairmont St. Andrews. A golf-shop staffer at one course laughed when asked if they had halted play because of moving golf balls, saying: ‘We don’t keep our greens fast enough for that.’….
“It’s a highly charged debate, but I believe the quick speeds are part of the R&A’s strategy to combat a distance explosion that would render the Old Course otherwise defenseless against the length of the elite modern player.”
The R&A blew it. The fallout will be considerable.
—Tiger Woods missed another cut at the majors, 76-75, +7…seven shots from the cut line. ESPN analyst Paul Azinger said, “It’s hard to watch the greatest player of this generation be a middle-of-the-pack hack. You almost want to say, ‘who are you and what have you done to Tiger Woods?’
“He’s saying all of the things he should be saying. He keeps saying he’s close. He might be delusional.”
—Awesome job by David Duval, whose game has been so in the wilderness he was ranked around 1,200 in the world (seriously) coming into this week. I watched as he bogeyed 17 on Saturday, second round, and needed a birdie on 18 to make the cut and he did, the first time since 2008.
Then he goes out on Sunday and fires a 5-under 67 to end the day T-33. Great stuff.
–Recently I said Louis Oosthuizen’s “Q-rating” was rising and I imagine some of you thought this was nuts. Well, this week you see another great performance on his part, thus far. He’s super likeable and he’s now a draw for U.S. event sponsors. If he wins Monday, he deserves a U.S. commercial or two. You could have fun with him, advertisers.
–You know how the other week I talked about the state of the game in terms of how important college golf has become? Case in point…Paul Dunne. Where do good Europeans come to play and refine their games in their Wonder Bread years? The U.S.
My recommendation would be that the top five finishers in the NCAA Championship receive an automatic card for the Web.com Tour. [You won’t find this totally terrific idea anywhere else….so help pass it on.]
Should the player, say a freshman, opt to stay in school another year or two, his eligibility would remain until he decides to take it.
—Tom Watson said farewell to the British Open, having previously announced next year’s Master’s will be his last there. It was a nice ending for the 65-year-old, 76-80, +12, but it still brought back memories of what could have been the greatest sports story of all time…six years ago at Turnberry. One bad swing.
—Sir Nick Faldo bid farewell to St. Andrews and competitive golf with a one-under-par 71 in the second round, which was admirable following an opening 83. Faldo missed the cut by ten.
But he busted out his old Pringle sweater that he wore in his first Open win back in 1987 for the last picture on the Swilcan Bridge.
–And Arnold Palmer said goodbye to The Open Championship when he appeared in an event at St. Andrews on Wednesday. Talk about touching. Arnold is 85 and it was 55 years ago, 1960, that he made the move to play in the British Open, which signaled to all American players then that they should do the same.
Palmer finished second in ’60 and then won it in ’61 and ’62. These performances were critical to the growth of the game, worldwide. Yet another reason why Arnie, despite ‘only’ winning 7 majors, is the real King of golf.
Ball Bits
–Saturday, Seattle’s Robinson Cano, in the midst of a miserable season that he now says has been impacted by a stomach parasite, going back to end of last year, that is sapping his strength, drilled two, 2-run homers in his return trip to Yankee Stadium to lead Seattle to a 4-3 win. Friday, Alex Rodriguez hit No. 19 on the season (673 career) as the Yanks won 4-3.
Sunday, King Felix Hernandez and CC Sabathia hooked up and the Yanks prevailed, 2-1, as both Felix and CC went six innings, allowing one run each in sweltering heat, the Yanks eventually winning on Mark Teixeira’s 8th-inning home run, 2-1.
“To date, Rodriguez is the Comeback Player of the Year – on and off the field. But this is Rodriguez and, well, do you believe all of this? It is Rodriguez, so you end up asking are we forgiving or gullible, tolerant or ignorant?
“After all, Rodriguez turns 40 a week into the second half. He has two surgically repaired hips. He hardly played at all in 2013-14. His awesome offensive production, which includes elite exit velocity off his bat, does not make sense for a player of that profile.
“Rodriguez ended the first half with a better OPS (.898) than he produced over this first Yankee season (.888) in 2004 when he was 28. If we learned anything from the recent scourge in that sort, when something is hard to believe, then – at the very least – we should have skepticism.
“Rodriguez is tested often, and MLB has the toughest program of the four major sports. I hope the on-field production is natural – a historic athlete finding greatness, in part, because his body and mind were put in a better place by a year away from the game.
“I also hope A-Rod’s more self-effacing, gregarious, giving persona is real, too, because he does have so much to offer the game in both wisdom plus been-there, don’t-do-that counsel. But, again, we were down this path in 2009 with Rodriguez – caught steroid cheat who then went on his best behavior. Until he didn’t.”
Sherman has A-Rod as his most intriguing player of the second half, in a group including Bryce Harper (can he carry a team with serious fortitude issues) and Houston rookie shortstop Carlos Correa….
–…Correa, who doesn’t turn 21 until Sept. 22, already has 8 homers and 23 RBI in 35 games to go with a .290 batting average.
In Sunday’s 10-0 win over the Rangers, the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel improved to 12-4, 2.12, with 7 innings of shutout ball, striking out 13.
—Mike Trout’s crazy week continued on Friday. After Trout won the All-Star game MVP award for the second straight year, he flew home to New Jersey for two days, before flying back to California, where the 23-year-old superstar smacked a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to lift the Angels to a 1-0 walk-off win over the Red Sox in Anaheim.
–Have to note a Friday night game that had Houston defeating Texas 3-2, with the Rangers banging out a franchise-record 15 hits in a game when they scored 2 or fewer runs. Astros starter Colin McHugh got the win with six innings of one run, 11 hit ball (all singles). A bizarre one.
–What a stupid deal that was in Washington Friday night…a computer failure involving a bank of lights that went out three times over the course of three hours and five innings. So the game was suspended with the Nationals leading the Dodgers 3-2.
And then they completed it Saturday afternoon and former Met Matt den Dekker had a two-run pinch homer in the eighth for the Nationals to give them a 5-3 win. Good for Matt, always liked the guy.
In the ‘nightcap’ Saturday, Clayton Kershaw threw another masterpiece, going eight scoreless, 3 hits, no walks, 14 strikeouts as the Dodgers won 4-2.
And on Sunday, L.A.’s Zack Greinke threw another eight scoreless (3 hits, one walk, 11 strikeouts) as the Dodgers beat the Nats and Max Scherzer 5-0, though Scherzer allowed only one run in six innings.
So Greinke’s scoreless streak is now 43 2/3 and his ERA just 1.30. His next start will be in New York against the Mets…so make that 50- or 51 2/3.
–The Mets went into the All-Star break feeling good about themselves, winning 7 of 9 to get to 47-42, two games out of first, but also with a continuation of their brutal stretch, schedule-wise.
After losing the first two, the Mets entered play on Sunday with the worst team batting average in baseball, .234. They were 27 of 30 in on-base percentage, .298, and 28 of 30 in runs per game.
But they won an outrageous 18-inning contest today, 3-1, despite going 1-for-26 with runners in scoring position. They are now something like 3-for-62 with RISP. We are waiting for Elias to tell us how historic this is.
As they head to Washington, the enormity of this win can’t be discounted.
–The other day I mentioned former Yankee (and Cub) Joe Pepitone and didn’t realize his 1975 tell-all autobiography, “Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud,” was being reissued.
In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, he has a chat with Dan Epstein, and Pepitone remembers playing pool against Frank Sinatra, smoking marijuana with Mickey Mantle, and hanging out with mafia members in New York’s club scene. And he also details hiding the drugs he regularly got from fans in Wrigley Field’s ivy while playing for the Cubs in the early 1970s.
“The Bleacher Bums at the Cubs’ ballpark, they’d hit me in the back with a (expletive) football during warm-ups, and I’d turn around and play catch with them. One time, someone hit me in the back with some foil, all wrapped up, and there’s like four joints in it. I went and stuck it in the ivy on the outfield wall, but I remembered where I put it. Once they saw me do that, the regular Bleacher Bums started throwing things at me every day; I’d get hit with a little packet, I’d look and there’s a gram of coke in there. I was like, ‘Holy (expletive)!’ Right into the ivy with it! I’m telling you, I got speed, I got everything. Used to be I was always the first person at the ballpark, and the first one to leave; next thing you know, people are wondering why I’m hanging out at the ballpark so long. Leo [Durocher] goes, ‘You still here?’ ‘Yeah, I gotta get a rubdown from the trainer!’ Then I’d be out in centerfield with my shorts on, looking through the ivy to find my dope. I loved Chicago! With the (expletive) I was getting in centerfield, I woulda played for nothing!”
–July 19, 1960…Juan Marichal makes his major league debut for the San Francisco Giants, 9 innings, 0 runs, 1 hit, 12 strikeouts. The Giants beat the Phils 2-0.
–The L.A. Clippers have had a nice stretch. They retained DeAndre Jordan and now signed free-agent forward Josh Smith to a one-year deal for the veterans minimum of $1.5 million; Smith choosing winning over money.
I’ve always liked this guy. In 11 years with the Hawks, Pistons and Rockets, he’s averaged 15.1 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.0 blocks and a steal in 33.6 minutes per game. Great pickup for the Clippers.
–From the AP: “To understand how the business model of NBA salaries is unlike ever before, consider the cases of Reggie Jackson, Khris (sic) Middleton and DeMarre Carroll.
“Nonetheless, those three players received a combined $210 million in deals this summer: Jackson got $80 million over five years from the Detroit Pistons; Middleton a five-year, $70 million deal to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks; and Carroll a four-year contract worth nearly $60 million to join the Toronto Raptors.
“A few years ago, such deals would have been considered baffling. These days, they seem fair….
“Thanks to a $24 billion television deal that takes effect before the 2016-17 season, already skyrocketing salaries will soon reach new heights….
“The salary cap for this coming season was supposed to rise considerably – to $67 million; it reached $70 million. The salary cap for the 2016-17 season might be $90 million. For the season after that, perhaps $110 million or more.
“These days, players who might not have been considered stars are getting what would recently have been star-level deals. John Wall of the Washington Wizards, one of the league’s elite point guards, aired his complaints.
“ ‘I’m getting the same as Reggie Jackson,’ he lamented as quoted by CSN Washington.
“Wall, a two-time All-Star, is going into the second year of a five-year, $85 million deal. Jackson cashed in after averaging nearly 18 points in 27 games with Detroit this past season, a breakout that followed three and a half seasons of largely unheralded work….
“Under the current C.B.A., player salaries are supposed to take about 50.4 percent of the league’s basketball-related income. This past season, income grew more than expected, so the league wrote a check to the NBA Players Association to cover the difference – roughly $57 million.
“(Commissioner Adam) Silver thinks that might look like peanuts next year.
“ ‘We could be writing a check moving close to half a billion dollars to the players association,’ Silver said. ‘That’s not, of course, the ideal outcome from our standpoint.’
“Silver added: ‘It’s happened because the revenue we generated was much higher than we had ever modeled. But we’re also learning that when you have all that money coming into the system, team behavior isn’t necessarily predictable, either.’”
—Mark Cuban said he met with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer at the league meetings in Las Vegas last week and they “cleared the air on a few things” surrounding the DeAndre Jordan free agency issue.
“I told him exactly what I told other owners, I didn’t have a problem with his Hail Mary approach to keeping a player. I understand why they did it. And even how they did it. They got their player back. End of story.”
–ABC is adding 8 Saturdays of NBA action next season, beginning Jan. 23, 2016 and running twice a month through the rest of the schedule, with games starting at 8:30. Hopefully the college basketball lineup on those nights is more enticing.
–After threatening to boycott training camp over his contract situation, the Dallas Cowboys and receiver Dez Bryant reached an agreement on a five-year deal worth $70 million, including $32 million in fully guaranteed money, which in turn includes a $20 million signing bonus. And then the guarantee kicks up to $45 million if Bryant is still on the team’s roster on the fifth day of the league year in 2016.
Bryant set a Cowboys single-season record with 16 touchdown receptions last season and he has 56 through his first five seasons, third most in NFL history through a player’s first five years.
–Denver signed receiver Demaryius Thomas to the same five-year, $70 million contract, with $43.5 million guaranteed. Thomas, like Bryant, has been given the franchise tag and he skipped the team’s offseason program.
Thomas is a three-time Pro Bowl selection. For the last three seasons, he is in the top three in receptions, receiving yards and TD catches. His 1,619 receiving yards last season set a single-season franchise record. With Peyton Manning at quarterback, he’s had three consecutive seasons with at least 92 receptions. He’s also only the third player in league history to have three consecutive seasons of at least 1,400 yards receiving and at least 10 touchdowns.
–Regarding Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, there is still no definitive word on his condition and when he’ll be able to play. JPP hasn’t signed the $14.813 million franchise tender, so he’s not even on the roster technically. It gets complicated. Basically, JPP won’t sign the tender until he’s sure he can pass the team’s physical.
–It was pretty incredible how 67,000 bought tickets to honor Brett Favre at Lambeau Field on Saturday. The Packers inducted him into their Hall of Fame and retired his No. 4 jersey, after seven years in exile.
Green Bay and Favre had a messy separation in 2008, and then he returned from a second retirement as a member of the rival Vikings in 2009, defeating the Packers twice that season.
But Saturday, he received a 2 ½ minute standing ovation.
–Defensive genius and former Giants head coach Bill Arnsparger died Friday at the age of 88.
Arnsparger spent three seasons at the helm of the Giants starting in 1974 (2-12, 5-9, 0-7…7-28) before being replaced midseason in ’76 by John McVay.
But this record was in no way a reflection of the great career he had in football as one of the greatest defensive coaches in football as a member of the Colts and Dolphins coaching staffs under head coach Don Shula.
Shula said in a statement released by the Dolphins: “He molded two championship units, the No-Names and the Killer B’s, and was innovative in the way he used personnel… If there was a Hall of Fame for assistant coaches, he would be one of the very first inductees.”
Arnsparger spent 12 seasons in Miami, going to four Super Bowls, winning two, and his defenses ranked first or second in nine of those 12, which is remarkable.
His “53 defense,” five down linemen and three linebackers, helped usher in what is called the zone blitz.
Arnsparger did have a successful three-year head coaching stint at LSU, 1984-86, where he went 26-8-2, including three bowl games (two Sugar Bowls), three AP Top 20 finishes, and the 1986 SEC title, the school’s first in 16 years.
–In the college game, Auburn defensive coordinator Will Muschamp will make at least $5.1 million over three years. At the same time, Florida, where he had been the head coach, owes him $6.3 million over three years, so his total pay is about $3.8 million a year. Good lord.
After missing 11 races due to a devastating accident that cost him a broken right leg and left foot, Kyle Busch has come back to win three of the last four Sprint Cup races, capturing his 32nd career win in Loudon, N.H., today. It now seems certain Busch, despite all that missed time, can make the Chase for the Sprint Cup field. This would be an awesome feat.
–French Formula 1 driver Jules Bianchi died over the weekend, nine months after suffering severe head injuries in a crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix.
Bianchi, 25, had been in a coma since crashing his Marussia into a recovery vehicle at October’s rain-hit race.
Bianchi becomes the first F1 driver to die from injuries sustained in a Grand Prix since Brazilian triple world champion Ayrton Senna was killed at Italy’s Imola circuit in 1994.
The accident happened when Bianchi’s car slid off the track and into a crane picking up German driver Adrian Sutil, who had crashed at the same spot one lap earlier.
An investigation of the accident found that as Bianchi went off the track into the run-off area, he “applied both throttle and brake together, using both feet” over-riding the fail-safe mechanism. His front wheels had also locked.
The report said that Bianchi “did not slow sufficiently to avoid losing control.” [BBC News]
–The Japanese government suddenly announced on Friday that it was scrapping plans for the proposed Olympic stadium and starting all over, just five years before the 2020 Tokyo Games. Costs had ballooned to $2 billion, nearly twice the original estimate.
The 80,000-seat stadium was predicted to be the most expensive ever built, but it ran against the “compactness” promised by Tokyo’s Olympic plan.
So the government is reopening the design competition and a winner will be announced within six months.
–A manatee was spotted in Chesapeake Bay, a rarity. If you see it, feed it some sea grass.
–Brad K. passed along this one from the Daily Mail’s Gemma Mullin:
“A drunk squirrel caused hundreds of pounds worth of damage at a private members club when it turned on a beer tap and knocked over glasses and beer bottles.
“Sam Boulter, 62, thought the bar in Evesham, Worcestershire, had been ransacked by burglars when he opened at 8pm on Sunday evening.
“But the branch secretary at Honeybourne Railyway Club was stunned when a squirrel emerged from a box of crisps ‘staggering around.’”
The squirrel had emptied an entire keg of Caffrey’s ale on the floor. Boulter said, “He must have flung himself on the handle and drank some as he was staggering around all over the place and moving a bit slowly….He looked a bit worse for wear.”
–Director of Shark Attacks for Bar Chat, Bob S., passed along a piece from Cape Cod online where a 7-foot great white trapped itself on a sandbar as the tide went out and was rescued by about 40 or so beachgoers who poured water on it as a state shark scientist, Gregory Skomal, arrived.
Skomal initially thought the shark was dead and he was talking of performing a necropsy when the shark started kicking.
Normally great whites seen off Cape Cod average 13 feet in length. This year Skomal said he’s seeing smaller ones.
Skomal was able to tow the shark out to sea and let it go.
So Bob S. was wondering if this elevates ‘Man’ any on the All-Species List and I reluctantly move Man up one notch to No. 328.
–And then there was the big story on Sunday that “Three-time world surfing champion Mick Fanning was attacked by a shark Sunday during a competition off the coast of South Africa but escaped unharmed.
“The World Surf League canceled the J-Bay Open shortly after the attack, saying in a statement that ‘the safety of our athletes is a priority.’
“Fanning, who battled the shark for a few seconds before swimming away, was visibly shaken after being rescued by crews on jetskis and boats.
“ ‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Fanning, who was nearly overcome with emotion on multiple instances during his interview with the World Surf League’s official website. ‘I’m just tripping…. To walk away from that, I’m just so stoked.’
“Fanning, 34, was in the water in Jeffreys Bay – off South Africa’s eastern cape – waiting for his turn to compete when the shark attacked him.”
The brief video is scary…but the shark only damaged his board and leg wrap. [ESPN.com]
–Authorities in Austin, Texas are looking for a monocle cobra in connection with the death of a man there this week. Austin police said in a release Wednesday they believe Grant Thompson, 18, owned a monocle cobra, but they have not been able to locate it.
Thompson was found unresponsive Tuesday night in his vehicle in a Lowe’s parking lot in Austin. He died shortly after at a nearby hospital.
Authorities believe he was bitten by the snake and that the cobra had been inside Thompson’s vehicle.
For all we know, said cobra could now be with El Chapo in Sinaloa, Mexico. Or he could be keeping low until the heat is off in Lowe’s garden center.
–I was very surprised by this one. Frankly, I had no idea Cape May, N.J. had a zoo, but the Cape May County Park & Zoo has been selected as the 13th-best zoo in the world, according to TripAdvisor.com. It’s fifth among U.S. zoos.
The San Diego Zoo topped the world rankings; it was followed by Loro Parque in Puerto de la Cruz, Spain and the Singapore Zoo.
Well I’ve often talked of the Singapore Zoo as a great one, and I’ve been to the following also on the world list. 5. Tiergarten Schoenbrunn (Vienna) 6. Henry Doorly (Omaha…fantastic). 14. Berlin (this is where I saw Knut the polar bear). 15. Taronga Zoo (Sydney/Mosman…with views looking back across Sydney Harbor).
But I’ve never been to the San Diego Zoo, which is stupid (Bobby C.). And it was surprising the Bronx Zoo (which admittedly I haven’t been to since I was a kid) isn’t in the top 25.
“Elephants had it rough during Angola’s long civil war. Rebels shot them for food and ivory that they traded for arms. When fighting ended in 2002, few elephants remained. But others have since migrated in from countries such as Botswana, where there are so many jumbos that they scarcely have room to swing a trunk.
“When they first galumphed into Angola, the elephants faced an unfamiliar menace: the millions of landmines left over from the country’s decades-long conflict.”
“Since then, however, it seems that elephants in Angola have learned to sniff out and avoid landmines, says Jose Agostinho (who works for a demining charity). The number killed by them was high in the early years after the war, but it has fallen sharply…
“The landmine-death rate has fallen even as the elephant population has increased in Angola’s most heavily mined province.”
Well I noted this trait a number of months ago in relation to the U.S. Army’s Research Office, which has been testing the ability of a group of tame elephants to find traces of TNT, amid decoy odors.
“The elephants passed with ‘flying colors,’ says Jessica Brown, who ran the project….
“An elephant that has survived or seen a landmine blast can alert an entire herd to the danger with a gesture or very-low frequency rumble, says Joyce Poole of ElephantVoices, an American-Norwegian NGO.”
Yet another reason why ‘Elephant’ is a stalwart No. 2 on the All-Species List. But, alas, as The Economist notes, “much of their hard-earned knowledge may be lost because of a surge in elephant poaching – a danger that is less easily sniffed out and avoided.”
And so I’m dropping ‘Man’ back to No. 329. Pulling a great white into the water, or even beating one back, a la Fanning, isn’t enough to move Man up.
–It’s not clear to me exactly in what form he’s doing it, but Berkeley Breathed is bringing back ‘Bloom County’ and Opus. He announced the return on his Facebook page and we’ll see where it goes from here. Opus fans are pumped.
Top 3 songs for the week 7/24/65: #1 “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (The Rolling Stones) #2 “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” (Herman’s Hermits) #3 “I Can’t Help Myself” (Four Tops)…and…#4 “What’s New Pussycat?” (Tom Jones) #5 “Cara Mia” (Jay & The Americans) #6 “Yes, I’m Ready” (Barbara Mason) #7 “What The World Needs Now Is Love” (Jackie DeShannon) #8 “Seventh Son” (Johnny Rivers) #9 “Mr. Tambourine Man” (The Byrds) #10 “You Turn Me On” (Ian Whitcomb…As strong a top ten as you’ll find, with #s 1, 3 and 9 all in the top 100, if not top 50, all time…)
Atlanta Braves Quiz Answers (all post-1920…I could have made it post-1900…Hugh Duffyholds a lot of the overall franchise marks but he played in the 1800s): 1) .360 batting averages: Rogers Hornsby, .387 (1928…his only season in Boston); Rico Carty, .366 (1970); Chipper Jones, .364 (2008). 2) Tommy Holmes has the single-season hit mark with 224 in 1945. 3) Andruw Jones is the only one to hit 50 home runs in a season, 51 in 2005. [Hank Aaron had six seasons of between 44 and 47.] 4) Eddie Mathews has the single-season RBI mark of 135 in 1953, surprisingly low.
