While having a mini reunion with some guys Saturday night down at the brewery, and with our Dodgers in the NLCS, the topic of baseball was obviously in the air.
I was talking with Ken Kordich about one particular season when we were young; it was around 1980. Kordich and John Matich were on the Giants, the most dominating team in the league on Opening Day. I was on the Padres, a team that had lots of work to do. In a scrimmage game before the season started, I think the Giants beat us like 27-2.
As Ken and I were reminiscing, a dude I didn’t recognize walked up and says, “You were on the Padres???” “Yeah,” I said. “I’m Jace. Coach Clint was my Dad. They guy almost fell down. “Dude!” he said, “I’m Joe Mahoney!!!”
Oh man. It’s true. Joe Mahoney was the tallest guy on our team. I need to go out to my folks’ place and dig up the team photos. The 1980 Padres in black and gold: JD Torres, Rich Iacono, Mike Duran, Bobby Lucido, Louie Mardesich, Mikie Kozachenko, Mike Stavros, Dino Lambropoulos, Jerry Tello…
And so, after catching up on some of the basic life details, Joe and I stood there, remembering how our baseball season ended that year:
With the Giants killing everybody in the league all season, we scrapped along, and ended up prevailing in our own way, winning enough games to face off against the Giants in the playoff series at the end of the summer. Big stuff. PA system, flags, new chalk lines, the whole deal. JD Torres and I opened up the game with back-to-back homeruns off Matich, and we never looked back. It was like something out of the Karate Kid. Joe also reminded me of a play at the plate. He was our base runner, and a big Giant pitcher by the name of Milo was covering home plate as Joe came storming down the line, setting up a dramatic collision between two of the biggest kids in the league. Joe flattened Milo and was safe, scoring. We were so proud of Big Joe that day!
Anyway, what a time. Those are the memories you take with you for the rest of your life. I wish everybody could have an experience like that. And, man, what we wouldn’t pay for video footage.
Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Below are a few clouds I generated using pieces from this site.
↓ From The Dolphin’s Secret:
↓ From The Open Book:
↓ From The Giant and the Midget:
↓ From Been Called:
Most newspapers adhere to “AP style” – that is, style components and conventions determined by smart people at the Associated Press. The New York Times has its own style book, and so does the Wall Street Journal. Here are some forms that might be new to you. Be sure to adhere to these forms in your next press release, in order to increase the likelihood of exposure.
- Grand Slam. Capitalize when referring to the four major tournaments in golf (the Masters, the United States Open, the British Open and the P.G.A. Championship) and the four in tennis (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the United States Open). (nyt)
- Occident or Occidental. Capitalize when referring to Europe, the Western Hemisphere or an inhabitant of those regions. (ap)
- Bible, biblical. Capitalize Bible (but not biblical) when referring to the Old and New Testaments. But: the style manual is their bible. (nyt)
- dollars and cents. Sums of dollars and cents are usually given in figures: 5 cents; 25 cents; $10; $12.25; $10,629. But: $1 million; $3.6 million; $895 million; $1.53 billion. In the simple adjective form, do not use a hyphen: $2.5 million investment. But hyphens must be used in longer modifiers, like these: a $10-to-11-billion increase; a $2-million-a-year job. (nyt)
- disc and disk. Use disc in references to phonograph records (disc jockey, discography), optical and laser-based devices (compact disc, laser disc, videodisc), farm implements (disc harrow) and brakes (disc brake). Use disk in references to the magnetic storage devices used with computers (floppy disk, hard disk) and to the fiber and cartilage between the vertebrae (slipped disk). (nyt)
- follow up (verb) and follow-up (noun and adjective). When will you follow up with Matilda? Sassafras reluctantly scheduled the follow-up meeting for the second Tuesday of next week. (ap)
- Election Day. When referring to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, capitalize both words. (ap)
- congressional. Lowercase unless part of a proper name: exorbitant congressional salaries, the Congressional Quarterly, the Congressional Record.
- Nascar. Not NASCAR, for the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. (nyt)
Source: ProofreadNOW.com
*Note: FYI only, although I take no issue with the above guidelines. While there will always be errors that find their way into AP style, it’s still good practice to be aware of what’s considered correct.
→ A fantastic essay by Steven Millhauser via NYTimes.com.
The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself.
Yep. That is so spot-on it gives me butt chills.
At Fort MacArthur, here in our neighborhood in San Pedro, near the Los Angeles Harbor. Vive’s in his zone more than you probably know.
At the far right of this photo is a dog cemetery dating back to the early part of the 20th century, which, I’m happy to say, is being restored with a cool new stone wall, an iron gate, and headstones. Buried on those grounds behind the fort’s chapel are dozens of four-legged soldiers from the United States Army’s K-9 Command Program that gave their services, and subsequently their lives, to the free world. When international conflict started heating up in World War II, the K-9 Command Program upped the ante on what was asked of dogs, and, among other things, trained them to kill men in combat. When the war was over, the dogs were not deemed safe to return to civilian life, and were put down.
Lots of ghosts running free around here. I’ll write about it in detail some day. Much detail. 😉
A guy and his wife are golfing. They’re on the tenth hole, and the guy’s ball is sitting directly behind a big red barn.
As the guy is staring down at his ball and contemplating his roundabout shot, his wife says, “Why don’t you just open up the doors on both sides of the barn and hit the ball through in one stroke?”
The guy examines the barn doors, thinks about it, and agrees. “That’s brilliant,” he says. “Good idea, dear.”
So the guy opens the doors on both sides of the barn and gets ready for his shot. He rears back, swings, and hits the ball on the heel of the club. The ball veers offline, hits a drainpipe on the side of the barn, ricochets off a tractor, and bounces off his wife’s forehead. She falls to the ground, unconscious.
Three weeks later, the same guy is golfing with three of his buddies at the same course. On the tenth hole, as luck would have it, his ball ends up at the exact spot as before. Directly behind the big red barn.
As the guy is staring down at his ball and contemplating his roundabout shot, one of his buddies says, “Why don’t you just open up the doors on both sides of the barn and hit the ball through in one stroke?”
The guy turns to his buddy. “No way,” he says. “Last time I tried that, I got a twelve on this hole.”
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(via sleepingdog)
