Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, the “Human Vacuum Cleaner,” has died at the age of 86. Robinson played his entire 23-year career with the Orioles. He was selected to 18 All-Star Games and earned the 1964 AL Most Valuable Player award after batting .318 with 28 home runs and a league-leading 118 RBIs. He won 16 consecutive Gold Gloves. He was the best-fielding third basemen I’ve ever seen. Robinson’s most memorable performance came as MVP of the 1970 World Series, a five-game triumph over the Reds, He hit .429, homered twice and drove in six runs. In Game 1, Robinson delivered the tiebreaking home run in the seventh inning. One inning earlier, he made a sensational backhanded grab of a hard grounder hit down the line by Lee May, spun around in foul territory and somehow threw out the runner. Robinson contributed an RBI single in the second… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Baseball
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Vida Blue
Vida Blue was a left-handed pitcher between 1969 and 1986, most notably as a member of the starting rotation with the Oakland A’s dynasty that won three consecutive World Series championships between 1972 and 1974. He won the American League Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player Award in 1971, the youngest American League player to win the MVP Award in the 20th century. He had a 24–8 record, an AL-leading 1.82 ERA, eight shutouts and 301 strikeouts. Those were the days when starting pitchers throwing a shutout weren’t taken out of the game because of a pitch count. Today, pitchers throwing no-hitters are pulled based on pitch counts. So eight shutouts is more than a current pitcher will likely throw in a lifetime. Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader and a good guy to go to for an opinion like this, said that Vida Blue threw as hard as… Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Ray Fosse
Ray Fosse was a major league catcher from 1967 to 1979, a two-time All-Star for the Cleveland Indians, a two-time World Series champion with the Oakland A’s, and a two-time Gold Glove winner. It probably has to be said that Fosse may be best remembered for the final play of the 1970 All-Star Game, in which he was injured in a collision with Pete Rose at home plate. Fosse sustained a fractured and separated shoulder, which healed incorrectly, causing chronic pain that was never entirely resolved. It was a controversial play. Rose said that he was simply trying to win the game, and it was well known that he played the game as aggressively as anyone. I assume Fosse thought that even Rose wouldn’t try to bolo him in an exhibition game, or maybe he was just trying to make a good baseball play. It does look from the photo… Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: J.R. Richard
Houston Astros icon J.R. Richard, whose career was cut short by stroke in 1980, dies at age 71 — espn.com We had a couple of catchers, one came with his arm in a sling and another came on crutches. There was something called J.R.-itis which was an incurable disease when you’re scared of J.R. Richard. It was like J.R. was only throwing from about 50 feet. With his reach and he was all legs, you didn’t have much time to make up your mind. … You didn’t really feel comfortable at the plate. He was the toughest guy I ever faced. — Dusty Baker Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Henry Aaron
Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron was an outfielder with the Milwaukee Braves, Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers. He was a 25-time All-Star, was elected to the MLB Hall of Fame in 1982, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He holds the MLB career records for RBI (2,297) and total bases (6,856), and was baseball’s home run king from 1974, when he hit number 715 off the Dodgers’ Al Downing, until 2007, when he was surpassed by the cheater Barry Bonds, who made a mockery of the most hallowed page of the MLB record book. Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001 at the age of 37, and as Reggie Jackson said at the time, he would have hit 100 if anybody had pitched to him (he also had 177 walks). Aaron never hit more than 45 home home runs in a single season. Muhammad Ali once called… Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons are Dying: Bob Gibson and Joe Morgan
Between games, [Willie] Mays came over to me and said, ‘Now, in the second game, you’re going up against Bob Gibson.’ I only half-listened to what he was saying, figuring it didn’t make much difference. So I walked up to the plate the first time and started digging a little hole with my back foot…No sooner did I start digging that hole than I hear Willie screaming from the dugout: ‘Noooooo!’ Well, the first pitch came inside. No harm done, though. So I dug in again. The next thing I knew, there was a loud crack and my left shoulder was broken. I should have listened to Willie. — Jim Ray Hart RIP Bob and Joe Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Tom Seaver, Lou Brock
RIP Tom and Lou Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Al Kaline
Al Kaline played all 22 years of his career as a right fielder for the Detroit Tigers, played in 18 All-Star games, won 10 Gold Gloves, a World Series in 1968, had 3,007 hits, 399 home runs, a .297 batting average and was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He died today at the age of 85. On his 80th birthday, he said: “To this day, I can’t believe the life I’ve had. I wanted to be a baseball player — and do the one thing I was good at. “Even now, I love it so much.” RIP Al Kaline Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Earl Holliman, actor Sonny Jurgensen, football player Bill Mazeroski, baseball player Vera Miles, actress Pete Wilson, politician Read more →
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Frank Robinson
Frank Robinson played and managed for a number of teams, but I remember him best as part of the Baltimore Oriole teams managed by Earl Weaver, with Mark Belanger, Davey Johnson, Boog Powell, Don Buford, Paul Blair, Andy Etchebarren, Elrod Hendricks, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, Tom Phoebus, and fellow Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer. RIP Frank Robinson Read more →
Willie McCovey, 1938-2018
Willie McCovey: Giants legend dead at 80 — SFChronicle.com My boyhood sports idols are dying . . . RIP Willie McCovey Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Herb Alpert – trumpeter Max Baer Jr. – actor, “The Beverly Hillbillies” Barbara Bain – actress, “Mission: Impossible” Brigitte Bardot – actress Rona Barrett – gossip columnist Frank Borman – astronaut Roy Clark – musician Roger Corman – film producer Robert Crumb – cartoonist Bill Daily – actor Vic Damone – singer Angie Dickinson – actress Annette and Cecile Dionne – quintuplets Sam Donaldson – TV newscaster Hugh Downs – TV announcer Daniel Ellsberg – released the Pentagon Papers Barbara Feldon – actress Fannie Flagg – actress and game show panelist Larry Flynt – publisher of Hustler Whitey Ford – baseball pitcher A.J. Foyt – auto racer Ron Gallela – celebrity photographer, aka “paparazzo” Whitey Herzog – baseball manager Ernest Hollings – U.S. senator Cloris Leachman – actress Tom Lehrer – musical satirist Jerry Lee Lewis – singer and pianist G. Gordon Liddy – Watergate mastermind Rich Little – impressionist Peter Max… Read more →
World Series Game 7: Houston 5, LA 1
Yu Darvish gives up 5 runs in an inning and two-thirds. Unless I’m forgetting someone, there really aren’t any clutch Asians in professional sports. Sorry Dodgers . . . see you again in 30 years. Embed from Getty Images Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] I’m old enough to remember when professional athletes took pride in their trash-talking abilities. Now they sound like a bunch of 5-year-olds: he made a face at me, he called me a name, boo hoo hoo! One day when you’re rotting with leprosy and stewing in a million kettles of snot, cockroaches and gangrene — I stir them myself! — only then will you look back on this kindergarten-level bullshit and realize how good you had it! See you in Hell . . . Read more →
World Series Ring
Our boy went to Chicago on a business trip . . . I was talking to him on the phone when he texted this picture from a Cubs game. “That’s a nice ring,” I said. “It’s a World Series ring.” “Where’d you get it?” “One of the ushers let me wear it for the picture.” “Ushers get World Series rings?” “Everybody in the organization got a ring.” I guess if you only win a World Series every hundred years or so, you can afford rings for the entire organization. Although I suspect the rings for the actual players have a little extra bling . . . Read more →
EppsNet Book Reviews: Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
Carol Dweck’s research is part of a tradition in psychology that shows the power of people’s beliefs. These may be beliefs that we’re aware of or unaware of but they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it. This tradition also shows how changing people’s beliefs can have profound effects. Dweck’s insight into fixed mindset (bad) vs. growth mindset (good) is powerful but there’s really not enough to it to sustain a book-length exposition without a lot of repetition and illustrational anecdotes, the problem with which is 1) they tend to be overly simple tales of triumph and failure with clearly identified causes; and 2) they ignore the inevitability of regression. For example, two of the people Dweck identifies as exemplars of the growth mindset are Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez. Mindset was published in 2006, after which Woods’s career imploded in the wake of extramarital… Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Collected Thoughts
If you recognize the person on this next slide, please raise your hand. Don’t yell out the name, just raise your hand. About two-thirds of you recognize Derek Jeter. I thought everyone would recognize him, but still a clear majority. I’m not a Yankees fan or a Derek Jeter fan particularly but the Captain and I are on the same page on this topic. I have to admit I was pretty competitive as a student. I didn’t want anyone to do better than me and I especially didn’t want anyone to do better than me because they worked harder than me. This Jeter quote reminded me of a quote from another notable sports figure . . . This is Bob Knight, college basketball coach, most notably at the University of Indiana. He won 902 games, three NCAA championships, and he coached the 1984 Olympic basketball team to a gold medal.… Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Al Kaline – baseball player, Detroit Tigers Wink Martindale – game show host Read more →
Mo’ne Davis: Female Athlete of the Year?
Little League World Series star Mo’ne Davis made a big impression on the sports landscape in 2014—enough to garner Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year honors. — Mo’ne Davis Named 2014 Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year | Bleacher Report I can’t decide if this is demeaning only to female athletes or to women in general. Reality check: Mo’ne Davis pitched two games for the Pennsylvania team in the 2014 Little League World Series — a 4-0 win and an 8-1 loss. Her team was knocked out in a semifinal game by the Nevada team, which went on to lose the final game to Illinois. Would the AP ever select a little league baseball player (or other 13-year-old boy) as Male Athlete of the Year? Would the AP ever select a Male Athlete of the Year who has not distinguished himself among his peers and has zero notable… Read more →
Are There Any Intelligent People Currently Living?
I was at LA Fitness this morning . . . one of the TVs was showing an interview with Jameis Winston on ESPN. Winston is borderline retarded but thinks he’s articulate — a deadly combination. He’s a very talented athlete. Just show clips of his athletic accomplishments. They’re impressive and fun to watch. Why would anyone want to talk to him or listen to him talk? The interviewer is paid to endure it, I get that, but why foist it on the viewing public? Maybe it’s the train wreck element. It was very painful to watch and yet I couldn’t look away! Rarely is one person gifted in multiple ways. Some people are great athletes, some people are intelligent and interesting . . . the overlap between the two groups is very small. Listening to Jameis Winston talk is like watching Milton Friedman take batting practice or Albert Einstein work… Read more →