G-Fafif

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I guess they'll have to Photoshop a mask on your face. Which will make it hard to tell me and Ed Hearn apart.

One week from today. Dang.

Puig tests positive. Won't be signing with the Braves.

Don't know what the editing will yield, but I recorded an interview for this project pre-quarantine. The film is in good hands with Nick Davis.

Another Phillie family loss: longtime infielder Tony Taylor, 84.

Howie and Pat Zachry (or Sam Elliott as Pat Zachry). https://youtu.be/Rc3mmuKNQl4https://youtu.be/Rc3mmuKNQl4 Laconic a Texan as he may be, he'll break your heart talking about his late wife.

The Padres have announced Juan Lagares has elected free agency.

Anything to promote social distancing.

Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens Dino Chance

August 20, 1978. An overcast Sunday afternoon in New York. Irritating 5-4 loss Skip Lockwood let get away after Craig Swan struck out 10 Dodgers in 8+ innings. Elliott Maddox's four hits also wound up going for a losing cause. The Happy Days softball team played the Met wives and various ringers pregame, while in the Dodger clubhouse two other big LA stars, Steve Garvey and Don Sutton, went at it. All this during a citywide newspaper strike. But read about in the Post from another city. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1978/08/21/dodgers-fight-then-beat-mets/f4a22ed5-bdcc-4943-96a0-2fa2ff38a93d/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1978/08/21/dodgers-fight-then-beat-mets/f4a22ed5-bdcc-4943-96a0-2fa2ff38a93d/ Into all this comes a flying Joel Youngblood robbing Davey Lopes. About the best you could hope from those sinking-fast second-half ‘78 Mets.

Jerry Blevins was released by the Giants in March when the world was otherwise preoccupied. Hasn't been picked up and doesn't seem to be actively seeking a post-LOOGY role.

I'd check in on McDowell and his cheeseburger jones, too.

Watched or listened to all of it. Closed down a bar (for the only time in my life) before the game ended. Wrote about the game and experience on the 20th anniversary http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2005/07/05/it-was-twenty-years-ago-all-night/here. I enjoyed the oral history, but regarding the debris in the clubhouse, it's not Bud Lite. It's Bud Light. Britton's editor presumably wouldn't let “David Rite“ get by.

After disappearing from FS1, TWIB has returned. A block of three 1978 eps aired earlier this week (Joel Youngblood made a catch vs LA Mel Allen compared to Ron Swoboda's) and this Friday 7/17 at 5 PM will be a pair of September 1981 installments with at least a little second-season Mets Magic hopefully included.

Mike Ryan, catcher for the Phils, later a coach of theirs for a long time, 78.

Collin McHugh was and remains an interesting character.

Once we have fans in the ballpark, my administration's first move will be to eliminate the “no backpacks” nonsense and generally overhaul guest relations protocol.

Buster Posey has opted out.

11 AM ET today (7/10): MLBN showing condensed Game One 2015 WS. Unless they condense it to 8 1/2 innings, not for the faint of heart. 11 AM Saturday (7/11): MLBN encore of the 19-inning game, three-hour edition. Thought it was well done, mixing in Mets & Braves feed and interspersing Bob Costas in his kitchen studio. Ronnie joins Bob and Tom Verducci at the end.

Howard Bryant published an incredibly enlightening article centered on Bruce Maxwell, the A's catcher who followed Colin Kaepernick's lead, only to have no other baseball player follow him. The article delves further into the challenges Black ballplayers face in speaking out. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29414410/the-exile-oakland-bruce-maxwell-birth-mlb-black-player-movementhttps://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29414410/the-exile-oakland-bruce-maxwell-birth-mlb-black-player-movement

The Mets waived Jacob Rhame. The Angels have claimed him. Rhame was the PTBNL bounty the Dodgers delivered for Curtis Granderson. He kept his talent for pitching well-hidden in multiple bullpen trials. Was never the main Jacob on the Mets.

As long as he uses his powers for good, yay Cohen, I guess, but I cooled on him since reading about him in this deep dive into the not so moderate leanings of the fancier precincts of Greenwich. The money physically redrew Greenwich, as financiers built estates on a scale once favored by Gilded Age railroad barons. The hedge-fund manager Steven A. Cohen paid $14.8 million in cash for a house, then added an ice rink, an indoor basketball court, putting greens, a fairway, and a massage room, ultimately swelling the building to thirty-six thousand square feet—larger than the Taj Mahal. In a final flourish, Cohen obtained special permission to surround his estate with a wall that exceeded the town's limits on height. It was nine feet tall. When the votes were counted, Trump's greatest support in Greenwich was not in the middle-class sections of downtown. It was in two of the wealthiest precincts—the Tenth and Eleventh Districts, which sprawl across the lush northern backcountry, encompassing the Round Hill Club, where Prescott Bush once reigned, and the estate of Steven Cohen, the investor with the nine-foot wall. Cohen, whose hedge fund closed in 2014, after pleading guilty to insider trading, donated a million dollars to support the Inauguration. Peterffy chipped in a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Glazer joined the transition. I don't begrudge him his garish indulgences, and I have no illusions about how billionaires become billionaires, but the dude really didn't have anything better to do with a million fucking dollars besides celebrate that travesty? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/how-greenwich-republicans-learned-to-love-trumphttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/how-greenwich-republicans-learned-to-love-trump