IdahoBert

I am really really really looking forward to the fourth episode of Apple TVs Vince Gilligan series, Pluribus. It technically becomes available I think around 1 AM GMT Friday which means it becomes available sometime this evening for the rest of us in North America this Thursday night tonight. I believe this was the case with other Apple TV series, such as Foundation and Studio.

You are right. Especially about the way he’s retooled player development. Although I’ve never had data to support my assumption, I always assumed that a lot of the staff in the minor leagues who were allegedly “developing“ talent were predominantly “old school“ to the extreme and that somehow the Tigers should’ve gotten more juice out of the grapes that their elderly winery maidens were squeezing between their toes. The Tigers now have new wine in new wine skins, and we are now on the verge of reaping that harvest.

I’m tired of all this optimism about the team! WAH! Everybody should be fired! Fire Bob Scheffing, Chuck Dressen, Bob Swift, Mayo Smith, Ralph Houk, Sparky Anderson, Buddy Bell, Tram, Jim Leyland, Brad Ausmus, Ron Gardenhire, and A.J. Hinch! Fire Fetzer! Fire both Briggs Sr. and Jr! Fire Jim Campbell! Fire Bo Schembechler! Fire John McHale Jr. Fire DD, AA and especially Scott Harris! Grrr!

I ruptured my right bicep years ago so I have what’s called a “Popeye bicep” which is a little unsightly, but the doctor I went to was a sports doctor and he said even Brett Favre didn’t have his repaired so I didn’t need to. He did say he had surgically repaired one for a woman who was very thin and she had stopped wearing tops that showed her biceps because with her it was pretty ugly.

Sort of baseball related, but not really, yet right now on FS1 Jason Benetti is the announcer for the #4 Arizona Wildcats vs. #3 UConn in NCAA men’s basketball. I’ve never really heard him announce a non-baseball related game.

This is not particularly encouraging. Does this include the Kansas City Athletics and the Kansas City Royals?

It feels good to be so well understood. I’d walk a mile for everybody on this site. Well most everybody.

I’m glad Gleyber accepted the QO. Ever since I saw him as a 17-year-old playing among 21-year-olds in the Northwest League in Boise, and obviously being the best player on the field, he has held a special place in my heart and mind. And I don’t care if his 3.9LSTMFT+ stats were deficient when he was playing through an injury towards the end of the season.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, because a lot of this is over my head, but since I’m an attention whore, I’m glad to be mentioned in any post.

That seems rational, and I’m not sure if either the players or the team owners would agree to it. I think both are likely to say something to the effect of…

I sure am glad I’m primarily a Tigers baseball fan. In my lifetime I’ve enjoyed two world championships. Both of them deeply meaningful and fulfilling in unique ways. So I’m very glad I’ve never put a part of my soul in hock to any other sport and especially to the Detroit Lions Gun, Pawn & Used Prosthetics Shop. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the Lions, their fans, or even football for that matter. Some of you are fans of both. So in both reality and in principle, I respect that. But damn, you’d have to be almost 80 years old to remember a Lions championship and then it would’ve happened when you were only 9 or 10 years old and it would be a hazy and incomplete memory at best. So nobody can fall back on their memory of that dopamine and endorphin rush a championship provides. And the emotions stirred up by football are really gladiatorial. It’s all or nothing and for 68 years it’s been nothing. Winning is the only thing and that’s a reasonable expectation especially since you play almost 150 fewer games so you have fewer times to experience the joy of winning at least some of the time. This Lions Eagles game has just become too painful to follow. Damn! I can’t really claim it as my own suffering but it sure bothers people I actually care about.

Excellent! Unsportsmanlike conduct cost a point. Jeez.

TD LIONS

I’m getting terrible buffering on the Peacock feed of the game itself, but not the ads. I’ve got a 700 MB download speed right now that’s not the problem.

“We're marching, marching to Shibboleth, With the Eagle and the Sword! We're praising Zion till her death, Until we meet our last reward! Our Lord's reward! Zion! Oh happy Zion! O'er wrapp'd, but not detained! Lion, f'rocious Lion! His beard our mighty mane! At First and Main!” — from Don’t Crush that Dwarf Hand Me the Pliers Firesign Theater (1970)

Pet sitting for a friend and previously their ancient TV required three remotes for some reason. The first remote required me to scroll through six options one of which was “laser disk.“ talk about Y2K. Sheesh. The new TV requires only two remotes, one to turn on the TV and then the fire stick remote and I’m in. Success! And Goff is intercepted. Right after they said, he’d only been intercepted three times. Sigh…

A little less than one hour before game time and in Philadelphia in a stadium without a roof it’s 46° and it feels like 33°. Now that is football.

No, I haven’t. I hope he’s OK.

If I were drinking man, which I’m not, I would be reaching for a drink right now to drown out the sound of the crickets because of the inactivity in baseball news affecting roster changes.

I admit, I am somewhat desperate for entertainment. I even paid a visit to the Lions board.

Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, don’t know much about science books, don’t know much about the French I took, but with all of the injuries, and on the road against a team, that’s the reigning Super Bowl cham-peen, our prospects for this game are not ideeel…

This is a picture of me and my friends in 1973. I’m seated in the lower right hand corner. I was 21 and had narrowly escaped the jaws of death from the London Flu epidemic six months earlier. I was lucky to be alive and grateful. Two of these guys have already died and a third is on the verge undergoing his third bout of chemo. The guy doing the chemo treatment was the only chainsmoker among us. Go figure. We lived in a former African-American brothel on 5th Street in Lafayette, Indiana, a street in a shabby lumpen proletarian neighborhood. which had a train track running right down the middle of it numerous times a day. After the first day, you never noticed the noise anymore, and it became white noise that blended in with the hi-fi that was constantly playing the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Captain Beefheart, and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. Unsurprisingly, the house had a dozen barely larger than closet sized rooms and rent was $10 a month when previously across the river at Purdue University in an off-campus neighborhood I had spent $80 a month. it was a layabout’s paradise. We were legends in our own minds.

Watching all these old local Detroit ads on YouTube, I realized that when I watched the TV series “Detroiters“ about the ad agency that it wasn’t far off the mark at all. They weren’t making this all up.

When I was in New Mexico sometime in the 1970s I purposely hiked up a mountain side because it was covered in clouds, and I remember being somewhat disappointed when I entered the cloud bank because it was nothing more than fog. It’s not like I thought it would be the texture of cotton candy or anything, but it had never occurred to me before that clouds are nothing more than fog.

Blue Ice! Magnets! Pluribus!