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The Knox County School Coupon Book includes a coupon for a pay-per-view movie from Xfinity. My wife and I plan to redeem the coupon when we get the bill for the movie we watched on Sunday. I feel like we got a bargain because we chose one of the more expensive movies. The HD version of “Moneyball” cost $5.99 to rent.
The movie tells the story of the Oakland A’s as they assemble a team of “misfit toys” at bargain prices. The general manager and his assistant sign players who are good at getting on base but have been overlooked by other teams for various reasons. I had no recollection of whether or not the A’s made it to the playoffs in 2002. As a result, the pennant race in the movie was exciting. The filmmakers also did a great job of building suspense as the A’s attempted to break the record for most consecutive wins during the regular season.
My wife and I like to see as many of the nominated films as we can before the Academy Awards ceremony. Best Picture nominees “The Help” (which we’ve already seen), “The Tree of Life” and “Midnight in Paris” are available on demand. For some of the others, we’ll have to make another trip to Downtown West.
Peanuts and Cracker Jack
The Christmas gifts that my friend Bean and I exchanged had a childhood flair to them. I sent him peanut butter and jelly from Blackberry Farm, the world-class resort in Walland, Tennessee. Coincidentally, our mutual friend Jimmy Kimmel received a surprise trip to Blackberry Farm for his birthday last November.
Bean sent me a fantastic framed photo of the New York Mets winning the 1969 World Series. That event sealed my fate as a lifelong Mets fan.
Perry Simon is a lifelong Phillies fan, so it’s understandable that he hates the Mets the same way I hate the Phillies. The other day he posted a link to a great story about Mr. Met, the lovable mascot for my team. I was amused by Perry’s take:
Here’s a whole article on the travails of Mr. Met, the cheery mascot of the troubled New York Mets. I’m not sure what the point of the thing is, but Mr. Met always seemed to be a pretty lame mascot to me. I mean, what does he do? He’s a guy with an enormous baseball for a head. Um, okay.
Perry’s comments are hysterical because the mascot for his team is the ridiculous Phillie Phanatic, a cross between Big Bird and a radioactive aardvark. Without his Phillies shirt, who would know what the Phanatic stands for? Even in street clothes, it would be obvious that Mr. Met lives and breathes baseball.
Seven, Eleven
St. Louis loves the Cardinals the way Knoxville loves the Vols. I was similarly wowed by an area’s devotion to a team when I first moved to the Washington suburbs and saw the love for the Redskins.
During my most recent trip to St. Louis, the Cardinals were struggling. They were 10½ games out in the National League Wild Card Race, yet I still saw fans decked in red making their way to the ballpark on a Sunday afternoon. It was great to see them win the World Series last night.
I admit that I didn’t pay much attention to baseball this year. The Mets had another bad season and two of their rivals, the Phillies and the Braves, were doing well. When the regular season ended with the Braves’ collapse and the Cardinals making the playoffs, my interest was piqued. Things got better when the Cardinals eliminated the Phillies.
When my wife and I got home from a movie screening on Thursday night, the Cardinals were on the verge of losing the Series. Friends on Facebook were writing things like “I hear the fat lady warming up.” I turned off the TV and carried my computer upstairs. I would read a few more posts before going to sleep. All of a sudden, the news about the Cardinals tying the game hit Twitter. Since there’s no TV in our bedroom, I turned on my WiFi clock radio, intending to find the ESPN Radio broadcast. To my surprise, KMOX.com was streaming their coverage of the extra innings. Earlier in the evening, I noticed that they were rerunning a talk show on their Internet feed. It’s common for sports broadcasts to be pre-empted online.
The experience of hearing rather than watching the end of Game Six reminded me of 1986. I was working late and listening to the radio when Mookie Wilson propelled Bill Buckner to a life of infamy, as recently parodied on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” This year’s Game Six will go down in history as one of the greatest games ever. Thanks to the Internet, we can watch the unbelievable finish online.
Arts & Splash
One of the first things to catch my attention at the Bele Chere Festival in Asheville was a human statue who came to life to play his guitar and sing. The WhiteMan, Ralph Longshore, saw the camera and microphone from Smoky Mountain Morning and stepped off his pedestal to chat with me. I thought he wisely chose to wear white on such a hot day, as opposed to the people I saw two blocks away who were painted gold.
Artist H.C. Warner said he saw an antique radio along the side of the road where someone had put it out with the trash. He made a U-turn and went back to retrieve it. It became the centerpiece of one of his works of art that were on display in the Arts Park at Bele Chere. He had a similar piece that used an old wooden wall phone. He said critics described his work as “low-brow.” I guess I have low-brow taste in art because his stuff appealed to me. His prices were fairly high-brow however.
Former major league pitcher Milt Wilcox has a new passion: dock jumping. Milt stays put. His dogs do the jumping. He runs a business called Ultimate Air Dogs and travels the country putting on shows at festivals and other big events. Dog owners urge their pets to run down the dock ramp. They throw a toy at just the right moment to get their dog to leap into the air. The longest leap wins. In some higher levels of competition, the dog also has to catch the toy in the air. A Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Trout was a crowd pleaser with his impressive distance and big splashes.
The street preachers who used microphones and placards to condemn “drunkards and fornicators” seemed to only encourage dissent. I saw two women holding hands as they passed the preachers. Another man loudly played the vuvuzela toward the man who was speaking.
States of Mind – Part 9
For the past ten years I have been making an effort to visit all 50 states. As my personal quest nears its completion, I decided to write down recollections of the 46 I’ve seen so far, listed roughly in chronological order of my first visit. This multi-part series began on July 1.
Wisconsin is another state where I had changed planes, but that doesn’t count as far as I’m concerned. I need to see something other than the inside of an airport to feel that I have visited a state. A colleague at a sister station is a huge fan of the New York Mets. When he planned a trip to Milwaukee to see the Mets play the Brewers, I tagged along. He had arranged for tickets through our parent company, which also owns the flagship station of the Brewers. We saw two games and we had great seats.
Arkansas is a short hop from Branson, Missouri. After spending a night in Branson, my wife and I continued on to Hot Springs, Arkansas. We enjoyed an old-time bath and massage at one of the historic bath houses located in Hot Springs National Park. From there, we found a locally-famous barbeque joint and then met up with my friend Tim, who was on location with “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”
By 2009, the map of states I had visited showed two glaring holes: New England and the Great Plains. That summer, we decided to fill in the missing northeastern states. Vermont was pretty good. We liked visiting a maple farm and having dinner at the Trapp Family Lodge. Unfortunately the tour of Ben & Jerry’s was just as bad as most online reviewers said it would be. The Mayfield Dairy tour in Athens, Tennessee, was a hundred times better than Ben & Jerry’s. After a night in a motel, we had a nice time walking around Montpelier, the state capital.
New Hampshire was a pleasant surprise. We had put most of our energy into planning things to do in the other states on our itinerary. When we got to Lake Winnipesaukee, we wished we had more time to spend there. We changed into our bathing suits and swam in the lake. It’s on our list of places to definitely see again.
We’ll need to go to Maine again too. As opposed to a disappointing ice cream tour, the weather was the culprit there. Next time we will have more than a day to spend in Vacationland and we will look for a place with lobster rolls that are less expensive than those at the much-hyped Red’s Eats. On the plus side, L.L. Bean and Wicked Whoopies were both great.
More states tomorrow!
What? Why?
The Boston Beaneaters sound like the punchline for a flatulence joke. Thanks to my vanity Google Alert, I learned yesterday that the Boston Beaneaters were a Major League Baseball team from 1883 to 1906. They had a player named Frank Murphy during part of the 1901 season. After a month and a half, his contract was sold to the New York Giants.
1883: To avoid confusion with Cincinnati Red Stockings of the American Association, Boston’s National League franchise changes its name to Beaneaters. The Beaneaters would go on to finish with an impressive 63-35 record, while collecting their third National League Championship.
The Beaneaters changed their name several more times to become the Boston Doves, the Boston Pilgrims, the Boston Braves, the Boston Bees, the Boston Braves again, the Milwaukee Braves and finally the Atlanta Braves.
Some of Murphy’s teammates have names that immediately identify the era as early 20th century. Imagine hearing a stadium announcer introduce Duff Cooley, Daff Gammons, Kid Nichols, Togie Pittinger, Heinie Smith, Dummy Taylor, Dummy Leitner, Dummy Deegan and Chauncey Fisher.
Sadly, Murphy died at age 36. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is also the final resting place of some notable figures of industry and literature including Washington Irving himself.
Before the Name Goes On
In the movie “Mother Ghost,” Garry Marshall and Charles Durning play two old guys who seem to enjoy griping at each other. They sell baseball memorabilia to raise money for their grandchildren’s Little League teams. In a key plot point, they are listening to a radio show hosted by Kevin Pollak’s character when Mark Thompson’s character calls in. I watched the whole movie yesterday after seeing a little bit of it on Sunday.
Their retro transistor radio looks similar to one I received as a gift this summer. My lovely daughter was antique shopping in upstate New York when she sent me a photo of an expensive table-top model. I told her it cost too much for me. When I saw her a week later, she surprised me with an authentic Zenith Royal 500 transistor radio.
I imagine that in its heyday, the radio’s original owner may have carried it to the pool or the beach to hear surf classics by The Fantastic Baggys or other such groups. It may have been to few baseball games too, perhaps delivering the words of Lindsey Nelson, Ralph Kiner or Bob Murphy to a loyal Mets fan like myself.
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