Thank you for bringing me back to a point I love to make.  That being the fact that we are an A.D.D nation now, with a collective attention span of 30 seconds or less.

FINE!!!!  BE THAT WAY!!!!

www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=1989+fleer+billy+ripken+baseball+card

yep.

thats why people complain about the length of baseball games, yet watch 40 minutes of commercials during the typical nfl game

Sooooo.....much.....this ^.

You're too smart for your own good Self.

Have a good one BigD.

those of us with teams still in it, like us with our Royals, should post in here more. Screw those soccer kweers!

It's typical for people to show up and me leaving?  I am always talking about wanting more people to deal with.

The only cavaet that I ever have is that I will only stay someplace if I am both wanted and needed there.  The fact that sometimes people show me that I am neither is not in my control.

So, this is what Jeter love overload looks like.........


hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/09/18/even-if-youre-tired-of-jeter-tributes-you-gotta-watch-this-one/

Just your basic balls to the face situation................

Every now and then life slaps us in the face with a cold, hard dose of reality that puts its meaning back into perspective. It reminds us that our problems are usually minimal compared to those of others. That most of our bad days are actually good days in the grand scheme of things. And that as much as those we love frustrate us, yes, even the sports team we cheer for, it's not the end of our world.

Carlos Beltran and his wife, Jessica, didn't need that reminder. They had already experienced enough reality, pain and anguish, having lost two children before, both by miscarriage. Sadly, we learned on Wednesday they are going through that pain and anguish again, as Beltran announced that they had lost their unborn son.

As everything else this guy has done has been good, I see no reason for this to be any different.

Race burbles through so many of Ken Burns’ films, a predominant subtext in the great American stories he chooses to tell. Twenty years ago this week, as Burns’ epic “Baseball” miniseries debuted and served as a nightly reminder of embarrassment over the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, he introduced the world to a man named Buck O’Neil.

Nobody distilled life in the Negro Leagues to its disturbing essence quite like Buck, a player, manager, scout and, best of all, master raconteur. And yet he still radiated dignity amid cultural indignity, romanticized portions of our history that otherwise would’ve been relegated to the deepest and darkest corners of shame. There could be beauty in the Negro Leagues, this entity that never should have existed in the first place, because people like Buck brought shades of gray to a world that couldn’t bring itself to see black.

Baseball’s greatest triumph unfolded in similar fashion, though history weaves a different tale. The Jackie Robinson given to America is one-dimensional, almost cartoonish in the fashion movies and books present him as a hero. It’s the sort of cop-out Burns no longer could stomach, not with Robinson’s widow, Rachel, urging him for a decade now to give Robinson the sort of treatment his life deserves, the honest look at him from birth to death and everything in between. Not with April 15, 1947, a seminal moment in history with a paucity of context.

Along with his daughter Sarah and her husband, David McMahon, Burns is deep into production on a two- or three-part documentary about Robinson. He planned on releasing it in 2015, though with such a wealth of information found during research, Burns said a 2016 air date is likelier.

“He is the most important person in the history of baseball,” Burns told Yahoo Sports in a recent conversation. “This is a hero who has sort of been draped in such superficiality, it’s been impossible to get at the real, and very interesting, and very complicated human being behind all the hagiography.

“It has to do with the laziness of our media culture, the ability for superficiality to trump depth. For us to even call someone a hero without acknowledging other sides is the opposite of what a hero is. The Greeks will tell you what defines heroism is a war between their very obvious strengths and their possibly equal weaknesses. We’re perpetually disappointed in our media culture because we assume perfection and incorrectly label heroes someone that does something out of the ordinary. But Jackie Robinson is the very definition of a hero, a vey complicated person who’s struggling in the larger stage forced upon him to deal with content of character.”

Burns’ story starts with a child born into Jim Crow laws in rural southern Georgia, his middle name Roosevelt, after the president who invited Booker T. Washington to the White House – and whom Burns is chronicling in a PBS documentary airing this week. His stories often intersect like that because they aspire to the greater themes that tie together the country’s history, like family and privilege. Robinson’s father abandoned him. He witnessed the systematic disenfranchisement of his brother, Mack, an Olympic silver medalist who finished fractions of a second behind Jesse Owens, relegated to sweeping the streets of Pasadena, Calif.

“And so Jackie, a man with a temper,” Burns said, “a fiery man who is proud of his dark skin, is then asked to turn the other cheek and take on the greatest experiment in sports.”

The film will dive into Robinson’s ascent to the Dodgers and try to answer whether Pee Wee Reese truly put his arm around Robinson to promote his inclusion, as the famous story goes. (The answer: Probably not.) It will look beyond 1947, to the rest of his Hall of Fame career, from the early days when leaders in the black community worried he was too radical to the mid-to-late 1960s, when a new generation considered Robinson an “Uncle Tom,” even though he hadn’t changed.


Those are the snippets that give Robinson’s life the full treatment it warrants, one in which race isn’t treated as a plot point around which to build a character into something more than he is.

“The baseball story, let’s be honest, is written by white guys,” Burns said. “We want to feel good about ourselves, so we tend to select the information we make, and we don’t do anybody, not ourselves nor Jackie, any service by not painting a fuller picture.”

Still, Burns is quick to point out “this was the first real progress in civil rights since the collapse of reconstruction after the Civil War. It didn’t happen in Montgomery, Ala., after the bus. It didn’t happen at a school in Little Rock or … in Topeka, Kan. It happened on a diamond April 15, 1947.”

And so for the first time, Burns reached out beyond his usual cast of contributing voices and into the dangerous waters of politics. He understood how polarizing Barack and Michelle Obama are. It didn’t matter. A black man is president of the United States because of Jackie Robinson. A black woman is First Lady because of Jackie Robinson. Their experience – growing up a full generation after Robinson forged the paths of millions – is his legacy. They paid him proper homage, bringing an intimate perspective of the black experience – the triumph and the struggle – in a post-Robinson world.

It is a place still fraught with issues, the horrors of Ferguson, Mo., laid bare in high definition, or at least as HD as a camera can get when blanketed in tear gas. It was the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in a post-racial society, which shows that for everything Robinson did, four generations later the gross mistreatment of blacks not only exists but pervades.

In every baseball stadium, Robinson’s No. 42 hangs, permanently retired, an homage to his fight. Even though it’s the most visible tribute to Robinson, it’s a tiny, homogenous slice, just a fraction of his greater story. Baseball’s greatest story – the entirety of Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s rich life – will arrive soon enough, long overdue and just in time.

If I may ask, what are you going through?

Stupid human tricks......

A SUV full of teenagers crashed in Idaho after one of the passengers lit the driver's armpit hair on fire with a lighter, authorities said Wednesday.

All five young people in the Ford Bronco were hurt in the crash Sunday and received medical treatment, the Ada County Sheriff's Office said.

Two of the passengers, ages 15 and 16, were thrown from the vehicle, but none of the five suffered life-threatening injuries.

The sheriff's department said the rollover occurred after a 16-year-old boy was goofing off in the front seat and lit 18-year-old Tristian Myers' armpit hair on fire while Myers was driving. The crash happened at about 5:30 a.m. in southeast Boise.

Deputies cited Myers with inattentive driving, while the 16-year-old was cited for interfering with the driver's safety. The passenger's name wasn't released. A 17-year old also was in the front seat but was not cited.

Deputies also said none of the teens was wearing a seatbelt, and there was evidence Myers was driving too fast.

A court date will be scheduled later for Myers, who has no listed phone number. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.

Holy crap!  That sounds horrible. 

I can only hope that you and your family can weather this health storm, and that you will all be well and back to full health a.s.a.p.