IdahoBert

Ah, you’re right. I’m pretty sure I did the insult correctly 40 years ago, but my memory failed me just now. Thanks for clarifying this sacred memory.

That is actually a very instructive find, so thanks Lee.

I’ve already mentioned this, but I will admit once again to being a blue bleeding Dodger fan for ONE season. But my defense is that I was living in Tucson, Arizona, and it was the only way I could follow baseball on local radio and I was recuperating from a serious motorcycle accident and zoned out on pain medication and unable to leave my bedroom so it was like being in jail and listening to Vin Scully was better than looking at cracks in the wall. It was a pretty exciting season too. It was Fernando‘s first full season after his rookie year in the strike shortened ‘81 season and I was pretty upset that the Dodgers finished one game behind the Braves for second place in the West Division. But I don’t despise the Dodgers even now and since one of my daughters lives in LA and goes to Dodger games on occasion, it’s not like I’m going to rain on her parade, but I sure don’t go out of my way to root for them myself, although I was fine with them beating the Yankees last year. If it’s Dodgers Yanks again I guess I’ll be rooting for the pinstripes whether I like it or not.

I was aware of Bill Lee and how he had fun with Don Zimmer calling him chipmunk, so when Zimmer was a coach for the Cubs and they came to Tucson to play the Indians in spring training at Hi Corbett Field in ‘84-‘85 and far from the field I shouted at Zimmer “Hey chipmunk how’s it hanging today?“ He was royally upset and he almost had to be restrained. I didn’t realize how stinging Bill Lee‘s taunt of him had been and how Zimmer took it personally. I chuckled about it at the time and then pretty quickly felt it was kind of gutless of me to take a cheap shot at a guy from the cheap seats no less. And I can’t really chalk it up to youth because I was in my early 30s by then, but it was a lesson learned and I’ve never again been a gutless twerp who shouts stuff from the stands. The fact that I drank six Miller Lights and I’m not much of a drinker is still not a good enough excuse.

You are awesome Mark, thanks.

I remember wearing a Tigers cap to Tucson Toro games in 1975 and people would come up to me and sincerely tell me that they felt bad about how the Tigers were getting beaten up during that 0-19 stretch. And given how it was hard to stay connected to the team other than through box scores and that I lived 2000 miles away and how I spent a month in England that summer missing even the Fourth of July bicentennial celebrations I pretty much missed that season since my plate was full with other stuff. All of that changed when several guys from Detroit and Ann Arbor moved down to Arizona and joined my friend circle, and it was easy then to get drawn back into the family for a while.

Shocking. Unfortunately, he’ll be moving to the area when housing prices will be skyrocketing due to immense demand with a depleted supply.

Given that Bob Uecker just died, a family member here in Boise Idaho alerted me to this photo from the 1958 Pioneer League Boise Braves that shows young Bob Uecker circled in the top row on the far right side. I just thought it was sort of cool.

The oligarchy gets what it wants.

In a recent Fox News Detroit article Dan Campbell was talking about Detroit’s tradition of success that he wants the Lions to emulate and he only mentioned the Pistons and the Red Wings more recent successes as a goal, inferring by omission that the Tigers not winning the World Series in 40 years and only two in the last 80 years is perhaps not a tradition to emulate or at least is one that it’s safe to ignore. He’s probably right and it puts in perspective the meager accomplishments of the Tigers at this highest level. But I have to admit that this lack of attention for the Tigers which bothered me is probably rationally well deserved.

It makes me more optimistic to hear that Hinch holds Bregman in high regard. I wasn’t sure if that was the case after all the bad stuff that happened in Houston. I thought there might be something lingering in the air from back then I like Hinch and I trust him, even though I’m only sold on Hinch the same way I’m sold on breathing, thinking both are pretty good things. I don’t have solid reasons to back up my support for what he does. He “looks” like he knows what he’s doing. I’m sort of like one of the kids on D*ck Clark’s old TV show American Bandstand in the ‘60s that would say stuff like "It's got a good beat and it’s easy to dance to.” If Hinch thinks Bregman is a good dance partner, then good.

Eh, what do I know to have an opinion on Bregman… not much. But I think he would only come here as a last resort. I can’t see the Tigers offering him something better than the Astros did which he refused. The ballpark isn’t good for him. His HR numbers in a ballpark that I think should play to his abilities better than Comerica have not been outstanding in his last three full seasons. And he walked half as much this last season than he has before. When the Reds traded Frank Robinson to the Orioles they said they did it because he was “an old 30” and they were wrong. I think there’s decent reason to believe this might be true of Bregman. The club’s existing dynamics also seem at variance with his presence in it. The Tigers Way and all that. And I’m also not sure that he and Hinch have a kissy face every day is Christmas kind of relationship that makes up for everything else. I think he would only come here if he were desperate or if he truly believed this was a club with a future that it would be fun to play for, but I don’t put a lot of stake in those sorts of emotional intangibles. The truth be told he probably should’ve accepted that offer from the Astros.

Just saw that. Bumped into him when I lived in Tucson and attended Cleveland Indians spring training there. Bumped into Joe Garagiola too, and another time at the same ballpark sat behind James Garner, who was just enjoying a minor-league baseball game and he was exactly like you’d expect. The guy was the master of the “all you have to do is act naturally“ form of acting.

Getting back to delivering newspapers, in the late 1960s I had one for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in my small town of Auburn, Indiana and I would get up at 1:30 in the morning and deliver my 140 papers on my bike and get back to sleep by 3-3:30 AM and never had a hard time going back to sleep, even though I drank a Pepsi I would listen to a transistor radio and I remember hearing live just as I was leaving the house one morning that Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated and I ran back into the house and woke up my parents to tell them. When it was -20° it was tough to be doing this job, or when it was raining hard. On Sundays when I had 220 papers to deliver my dad would drive me around and we wouldn’t get up until 5:30 AM or six, and when we finished, we would go to the grocery store and get cheese danishes.

I made $1.60 an hour minimum wage for a summer job in 1969 when I worked at the newspaper plant in my small town of Auburn Indiana. It was hot and dangerous work. And no, I didn’t love it or feel grateful for it. I melted down the Linotype cold type used on printing presses into 50 lb. bars that could then be fed back into the Linotypes. (by the next year they switched to offset printing in these machines were eliminated). It was one of the few times in my life when I was really ripped after lifting those bars all day long all summer long.

On MLB yesterday when I clicked on it and scanned the words “return” and “Flaherty” adjacent to each other I gasped thinking “Oh my God they pulled the trigger on something big and surprising and re-signed Flaherty! They’ve become BIG SPENDAHS!” No, they didn’t. It’s not like I ever wanted or expected them to. But I guess I learned that I harbor some of that “Evelyn Wood Speed Reading“ technique inside me where you grasp an entire paragraph at a glance instead of reading word for word.

I found one thing that said Rodriguez was born in 2016 and would be eligible for the MLB draft in 2038. I think that might be wrong.

Can anybody tell me anything about Cris Rodriguez that isn’t behind a paywall or about somebody with a similar name?

I know, right? I’m no real football fan by any means, but I would really like to see the Lions run the bases more aggressively in this match.

Deep thoughts with Jack Handy.

This. It’s not only good advice, it’s grounded in reality. I think this is how the organization is approaching things and they haven’t really done anything this off-season at variance with this statement. When Chris looked like a dancing leprechaun being sprayed with beer in the locker room, he had to be thinking “what we did worked.” I think the Tigers will stick with what’s worked and they will stray from this path only occasionally.

This is true. Fetch is not easily lassoed.

Two things. First, I have nothing against Austin Jackson, but I haven’t thought about him once in 10 years and I don’t know how much I actually have to infer from what he said. I mean, it’s not like he’s Joe Falls or something. <rimshot> Second, the reality of the situation is that the club probably doesn’t want JV blocking one of the new guys who might otherwise be having a breakout season. Someone else already mentioned the “blocking“ issue and I think that’s a salient insight. An adjacent issue is the whole camaraderie band of brothers thing which is a really fetch thing, but there’s not a lot of room for that or for nostalgia to be in play in this situation. He’s a grown man. The Tigers made their decision and he made his and that’s that.

A quote I grabbed off the Internet from the podcast — "Verlander... he puts his headphones on from the time he opened his car door to the time he got in... It's not intimidating, just more of like not as approachable as a guy like Miggy... The more I got to know Ver, we developed a coll little bond but Miggy was more approachable, but he was a jokester.” I’m wondering if JV is like this all the time or only on the days when he pitches and he’s hyper focused on staying in “the zone.”

I don’t have anything against Notre Dame. I grew up in Indiana and my parents lived in South Bend for much of their lives before they moved to the small town I grew up in so rooting for Notre Dame was never hard for me. A lot of ordinary people in South Bend, though, saw Notre Dame students as bratty, entitled rich kids, and while my parents agreed with that assessment they were tolerant of my childish enthusiasm for the team that made they themselves roll their eyes. But in the late 1950s and early 60s, when I became aware of sports, the befouling temper tantrums of Woody Hayes rubbed me the wrong way so I always rooted for Michigan against Ohio State — even though I didn’t technically have any skin in the game — and I will easily root for Notre Dame against Ohio State.