Jordan
Finished The Last Dance yesterday (credit to Pa Salon for sending it to me). Very glad to have seen it. Very glad it was made. Hopefully the younger generation got a taste of how dominant Michael was. He was everywhere. And he did it all organically. He’ll go down as the last great superstar to take over the globe without the aid of social media.
To me, he is the greatest ever. He separated himself from his opponents by being able to hang in the air longer than they could. Seriously, that’s just about what it came down to. It would have been interesting to see Lebron play in that era. He is such a physically gifted monster I have no doubt he could have handled the strength and the toughness of the defense back then. But could he have handled the game mentally? That’s another area where MJ separated himself.
One thing Lebron has over Michael is his ability to rise above what people are saying about him. Michael was managing a stable of like 20 regular writers throughout his career. He sculpted the story of himself and how it was told to the world. MJ could not have handled social media back then his head would have exploded, lol. Even though Lebron has his idiotic Zero Dark 30 or whatever it’s called he does a pretty good job of not falling into the stench and muck of Twitter and the like.
Though it was Jordan’s own production company I thought the series was epic. 9 Flaps up (out of a possible 10).
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Have not seen it…will have to give it a watch.
Meanwhile, with baseball, we continue to sit and stare out of the window…
I thought it could have been done chronologically as opposed to all the back and forth. Even in final episodes they went back to earlier stuff. But yes to me no question as to GOAT for his all around game, although there is a caveat–team he had around him. If you notice what LeBron was doing with second stint with Cavs, like when they were battling Warriors, he brought the ball up the floor when Kyrie wasn’t there and controlled entire action. They just didn’t have good enough team in total to handle Golden State. when LB was in Miami and had more talent around him, he won. but still don’t think overall talent especially on defense matches up to Jordan…whom buddies and I used to call Air Dickhead.
Phil Jackson (and others) admit having Pippen around to bring ball up the floor and set up his triangle offense made a big difference. Not to mention Pippen’s superior defensive skills. So too did having shooters around him like Paxson and Kerr as outlets. And finally the brain trust of Phil Jackson and Tex Winter, guys Coug Collins banished and ignored. Man it could not have been easy to be around Jordan in those days–look what he did to Scott Burrell (one example), and think about having to listen to that every day of your life.
that’s a great call on the lack of support Lebron had on some of those teams. I was fine with the back and forth though I could see why it would turn off some people who are more linear.
Just my take, but all this GOAT crap will never “adequately” take into account different eras, supporting cast, etc. No way, no how, you can account for all the minutia to formulate a clear GOAT.
That being said, I get it – I do it too with boxers (Ali), baseball (Mays), football (Brown), golf (Woods) and regarding basketball (Chamberlain).
Something else struck me too–after Bird’s Indiana Pacers team lost he talked to Jordan, “you beatch” and shook his hand outside dressing room. Karl Malone did same thing, walked onto bulls bus to shake hands and congratulate Jordan after losing the Bryon Russell series.
these guys had played with Jordan on Dream Team (that whole 1992 footage really cool)…that scrimmage Chuck Daly set up btw split up groups Jordan vs. Magic still might be among best basketball ever played
I got to see Jordan and the Bulls play the Warriors at a game once. I’m not sure how to explain this but I was even more floored by his talent live. To me he was amazing when I watched him on TV, at that game he seemed otherworldly. With that hang time I always thought his second sport should have been as a wide receiver on a NFL team. Just think about him hanging in the air in the back of the end zone. What a target.
I imagine Jordan will always hear the whispers linking his gambling to his father’s death, so that has to suck for him.
I share my birthday with the Giants latest pick, OFer Carter Williams, so he’s my guy to follow now.
I agree with the MLBPA, they had an agreement that the owners keep trying to wriggle out of and MLB is trying to paint them as the bad guys. Fuck Manfred.
Reading story on MLBTR about how much Cubs owe certain players in future commitments, in the comments section is discussion on Anthony Rizzo. He was due to make $20 mil this year plus option for next season. He will turn 30 this August and be 31 by end of 2021.
From age 24-27 season he averaged hitting 32 HRs, then last 2 years averaged only 26. Still last year slash line:
.293/.405/,520 for OPS up over .900
So the argument was, do Cubs let him walk or does Epstein extend him. My question is, what is it that happens to players of today that cannot maintain what they do past age 30? Today’s players are best paid best conditioned athletes with superior club facilities (and travel accomodations) around them…so why do so many have such a drop off at this point in their careers? A star like this back in the day would be around forever.
Excellent post Willie! What I have read is that it starts with Sabermetrics. The “Old Way of Thinking” was essentially as long as baseball has existed, scouts have watched players and judged them based on their appearance and athleticism. Related to the aforementioned, certain statistics we use to swear by in the “old days,” are not important. For pitchers, wins and losses mean squat. For baseball players, batting average is misleading. Stolen bases can actually become a negative, albeit, they are fun to watch. Today, OPS, OBP, WAR, walks, etc., are more important.
Sabermetrics has changed this old way of thinking. The front offices of many Major League teams have adopted the statistician approach. Consequently, it’s been determined that players are expendable at a certain age and this is defined by reams and reams of Sabermetric analysis records that teams possess.
well, for many years they had steroids supporting the *second wave* of their career well into the 30s (and beyond). The other reason is that players today are set for life, even during the time they’re controlled by the team. They don’t have the urgency of having to play into their 30’s as players did many many years ago. There are probably other reasons but those are 2 of them.
It’s quite possible that overall changes in American culture and lifestyles have a lot to do with the changes. My nominee for the primary culprit is television (more recently the gamer scene) along with free time stolen away from children and kids by ORGANIZED sports, where socialization occurs not at the organic kid-to-kid level, but under constant adult supervision.
We then look to the fact that the country has become ever more suburbanized and the working population ever more under speed-up constrictions. The guts have been sucked outta rural America as small farms have disappeared into the maw of industrialized Agribiz into monster “farms” run by alleged farmers who are little more than heavy equipment operators and chemical warfare applicators. So the parade of raw-boned, naturally exercised country boys has dried up to a pitiful trickle.
Nobody does much manual, physical labor any more. Bodies have either gone soft, or are primped up in artificial exercise regimes that rarely address whole-body issues, are not even remotely organic and resulting, we encounter gym bodies which may look impressive on the beach, but which mask an occulted fragility resulting in an increase in injuries and systemic stresses
Rarely do we encounter 42 y.o. starters or 38 y.o. sluggers any more unless they emerge from the Caribbean lands and such. And as for modern players matching Satchel Paige, who was still mowing down batters while dancing around at age 50, or thereabouts.
So yes, American athletes currently mirror the general malaise of the American public made up of stessed-out wage-earners coming home to crash out on the couch and dissolve over the next while in a swirl of beer, chips and boobtoob noose.
thx guys but part of my ? is–why do the players stats fall off so much? these guys have it better than anyone in baseball history yet they can’t maintain quality of earlier seasons. I could go back and look at certain of best players from my 60s days who could still produce later in careers. For present era, why not?
1) no steroids 2) no drive to continue at a high level because they are already set for life
No more greenies?
Could be that the guys in the 20s through the 70s were farm kids fior the most part. They got their strength through hard work day and night. Not lifting and taking ‘supplements’. IOW suburban kids. Sure, there are still guys like Bummie coming out of the Virginia swamps, cool and slow with plenty of precision with a back beat narrow and hard to master, but they are fewer and farther between.
Cool, Unca. Here we’re absofuckinlutely on the same Paige. Hadn’t gotten to your posting before my fingers began dancing on the keyboard.
Stats? Yeah, maybe stats do fall off. However, baseball players ARE INFINITELY BETTER TODAY VERSUS THE 1960s, OR ANY ERA FOR THAT MATTER. First off, players are bigger and stronger (as you and Flav alluded to). Your average player back in the 1950s and 1960s reflected a man that was 5 feet 7 inches. Right there, that’s not true today, as players and normal folk are much taller. Also, remember that baseball players do this job all year around. I remember reading a story about Jim Palmer in his first season, where he threw a shutout at age 20 . . . fast forward to the off season, that didn’t mean shit, as he sold men’s clothes at a store.
If you want specifics, here’s one of many articles that unequivocally say that players are far superior today.
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2019/3/29/18286389/best-players-ever-woba-adam-ottavino-babe-ruth
That doesn’t address the fall-off after 30-32 though. Once you get past the steroid era. Bonds gaining 30 lb of muscle at 36, or Roger Clemens gaining 5 MPH at 35 are sure tells. And I’d even think the year-round lifting/weight training doesn’t really help players in the long run. Cardio? Sure. But down time in the old days may have lengthened careers. Hell, I don’t know.
What I said earlier Unca . . . Teams have determined via Saber stats, that players over 30 are not as good as a younger player to replace him. Consequently, you see that reflected in the contracts teams are giving to players and why the players union is so pissed off. Teams could give a rat’s ass. They are not going to pay most players past age 30 due to unequivocal statistics that show their performance drops significantly. Back in the old days, GMs didn’t have this information, so they were likely to go with “experience.” If everyone goes with experience and youth doesn’t get a chance – then of course, the stats stay the same or look better.
Could be my memory glands are sagging again, but I get this image of Iowa country boy Bob Feller pitching hay-bales in the off season. From my earlier manhood years I recall old farmers (around my current mid-seventies age) hitting it hard in the fields and such all day and then showing up at the townhall dance on Saturday nights after taking their weekly bath and tripping the light fantastic slow-dancing with every woman who caught their eye.
Then there was Arlie Fore, the premiere slugger for the Gully, Minnesota town baseball team. He worked as an independent woodsman all his life. I recall him pitching pulpwood logs into a railroad car when he was in his 60’s and 70’s. Somewhere into his 80’s, out there with his chainsaw, he got taken out by a “widowmaker” tree with a large, messed-up branch which crashed onto his skull. You know, I got a sneaking suspicion that that’s how he wanted to go rather than being hooked up to life-support in some nursing home or hospital. It’s gotta be said that he went out like a MAN.
Also, think about all the pitching specialists today . . . No loogies back in the day for 1-2 batters. Pitch counts, numerous players that can throw 100 MPH plus, etc.
I’m more commenting on Willie’s point about the fall-off after 30.
I think that is very good point Blade. Starters regularly went way past twice through batting order and there were fewer specialists relievers.
Still with all the expansion, that means lot more guys on rosters than ever before.
Actually it does address it. Adam Jones says it himself: “the game’s gotten harder…the next generation is here and they’re really good.” even Reggie admitted as he got older he couldn’t handle getting jammed.
Thx Blade that was a good read.
And sure I can well understand that clubs aren’t interested in paying older guys.
Felipe Alou had one of his best years at age 33, 10 years after he’d begun career with SF, but that was pretty much it for him and his power numbers were down from high of 31 to 15, and only got worse.
Players play to the level of their competition. Could Ruth have hit Ottavino’s slider? How will we know? He never faced it. To say he simply couldn’t hit it is impossible to gauge. If he saw it enough, maybe he adjusts to it.
This article even says that YOUNGER players are superior. Current players in their 30s are easily surpassed by their younger competition. This wasn’t the case as markedly back in the day.
Steroids were/are baseball’s little blue pill for players 30+ …
ABC has been showing the Jordan doc on Saturdays, so I’ve watched a few episodes. It’s been fun re-living that era of the NBA, though agree with Wille about jumping back and forth.
There was a curious omission from the first episode. Jordan as freshman hits late game-winning J and Carolina beats Georgetown in NCAA Final. What they didn’t show was what everyone remembers from the game: G-Town’s Fred Brown inexplicably passes the ball to Carolina’s James Worthy to ice the game for the Tar Heels. There’s no telling the story of the game without that play!
Latest episode I saw focused on Bulls’ season while Jordan was playing baseball in ’94. I had forgotten in Game 3 of East semis vs. Knicks that Pippen refused to enter game for final play of tie game because Jackson drew up play for Toni Kukoc to take final shot and not Pippen. Kukoc made the shot, Bulls won and Pippen ended up looking like a complete asshole.
Also saw the Burrell episode from ’98 season. I was at Game 3 of first-round Bulls sweep of Nets when Burrell went off for 23 points at Meadowlands, probably the game of his life. That one still rankles me. Burrell later joined the Nets and resumed his forgettable NBA career. Side note: Behind Chris Gatling, Nets nearly stole Game 1 of that series but lost in OT.
the Warriors had 3 picks in the first round of the Gatling draft. They took him 16. Who were the other 2 drafted by GS in the first round that year (1991)? (Flavor’s contribution to trivia for the day)
No idea, I’ll leave it to you Dubs fans for that one, haha.
doubt anyone gets it. They might get the 2nd guy but the third guy never played for them (or for anyone in the NBA).
And as you saw Mac Pippen said he wouldn’t have done it different so many years later. Unbelievable.
Adam Jones btw, represents poster child for decline.
Age 25-30 he hit 175 HRs for Orioles. His last 2 years for AZ at age 32-33, he hit 31 HRs total and OPS dropped precipitously, over 50 points.
Yeah, that was an astonishing admission by Pippen. Also was surprised they didn’t show crucial Game 5 loss to Knicks in ’94 in which Pippen fouled Hubert Davis on a very controversial call in final seconds, Davis made both FTs, Knicks won by 1 and won series in 7.
I think the way Jackson drew the play up he wanted Pippen to throw inbound pass to Kukoc. Pippen take was that meant he wasn’t going to be a shooter, so he was pissed off. Still, obviously getting the ball in bounds in the first place so someone could get the shot off is pretty dang important. Very moving scene with Cartwright getting up in front of everyone in locker room to express himself about selfish Pippen was.
Victor Alexander?
And I’ll take a stab at the guy that never played for them
Shaun VanDiver?
if you didn’t look that up, man, that was IMPRESSIVE
I was confident with Alexander cause I remembered back to back picks.
VanDiver just a shot in the dark.I thought he might of been in camp but decided playing over seas was his best bet to play right away..
I was thinking the Choker Latrell Sprewell was in that draft but I think it was the following year?
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2896109-giants-evan-longoria-responds-to-mlb-i-just-want-to-get-paid-for-every-game
Longoria just wants to get paid, eh? At what rate? The way he’s performed for the Giants, he should get minimum wage of $15 per hour.
instead of $15 per second?
lol . . . exactly.
Hank says Giants signed the HS kid out of DeLaSalle Kyle Harrison to $2 mil deal, above slot for 3rd round. Might mean others they selected will have to take little less but it does keep kid from going to UCLA.
$2.5 mil bonus.
Longo’s position isn’t any different from rest of players–they want full prorated salary and have for long time, without budging. Latest owner’s offer was 70-80%; higher number was dependent upon whether playoffs went full distance, and total number of games much lower than what players wanted.
G’s just gave De La Salle’s Kyle Harrison a $2.5 million signing bonus. Wow. For a 3rd round pick. I guess they had a reason getting rid of all those other minor leaguers.
Unca: Guess I wasn’t yet tuned on the Giants getting rid of a bunch of minor leaguers. Could you direct me to a site where I could look up the specifics? Thanks, -stix
Funny, I just signed up for Bleacher Report on my phone, and that popped up 30 seconds later.
Apart from PEDs, medical and training tech is so far advanced these days it’s pretty hard to compare eras.
“Mickey Mantle, the 19 year old phenom playing right field for the Yankees in this World Series, seriously injured his leg today as he ran to back up DiMaggio’s play of a fly ball off the bat of Willie Mays. Mantle caught his cleats in an outfield sprinkler-head and, as one teammate said, “he fell like he’d been shot.” Mantle left the park on a stretcher. The full extent of his injury won’t be known for weeks, or longer, although one doctor consulted afterward said that if he has torn his anterior cruciate ligament he may never play again, as no surgery can repair that injury.”
“Tyler Brandon Ryan, backup outfielder for the Yankees, was taken by stretcher directly to an ambulance today after he twisted his leg and sustained a shot to the head while diving for a bloop single. The capacity crowd sat silently as he lay unconscious on the ground behind second base. Fortunately, a preliminary MRI immediately revealed only a minor ankle sprain. Doctors also said that he suffered a bloody nose, but no concussion, from his impact with the ball he was trying to catch. Ryan only recently returned to play after recovering from ACL and Tommy John surgeries.”
I’m sure the Jordan documentary is very good, but I have zero interest in it. Nothing about his basketball career interests me. I didn’t like the NBA in the ‘90s. Defense dominated, and there were often final scores like 89-85. I’m glad some rules were changed for defenses.
There were some Knicks-Heat playoff games, while certainly intense, that were so plodding it set the NBA style of play back 30 years.
You and I might be the only people on the planet whom are on the same page about Jordan and 90’s NBA basketball. I abhor any sport where only 1-2 teams dominate and the rest of the league is cannon fodder. Actually, NBA basketball has more or less been like that for decades. Sheesh, I said earlier this season (before the virus) that this was the first time I could recall in decades where they had at least a half dozen teams that actually had a legitimate shot at the NBA crown.
Tell me the last time that happened?
AFC East in the NFL is also boring. Patriots and the play dead Dolphins, Bills, and Jets. For 20 years, a big yaaaaaaaawn.
I’ve said before I have had zero interest in the NBA for many years until the Dubs started their run. Essentially since the ’80s with the Celtics v Lakers rivalry. Curry shooting 30 footers was suddenly pretty cool, IMO. And, in our own backyard. Along with that passing style of play, backcuts, quick screens, and lots of running, plus tough D. The first Dubs title with Curry was the best, that was really a team effort all the way…
Big shout out and much thanks to D.J.,, you know Whoo. He enabled me to expand my artistic explorations into a fourth dimension. It should be applicable to both the New World Cosmographic Alphabet I’ve been channeling for the past 44 years and also the “Squiggles” decorative art-form I developed while held in pre-trial custody under the U$ Marshals in Minnesota’s only county-owned but for-profit jail. Long Minnesota winter is only months away, so the comfort-zone during those “down” months just got expanded.
Getting hot in this part of the country now. Sweated up pretty good doing some woods margin cleanup work this afternoon…granted, not the best time of day for a bit of exertion, but the old bod seems to find it a stretch getting into a higher gear till around two p.m. Now, as for sitting down in front of a screen and keyboard, that’s a whole nother matter.
Again, the guys on the Flap keep on giving me reasons to be thankful above and beyond the comparative luxury now an everyday reality. Thinking now about the guys back there in Ohio, crammed and jammed in segregated lockdown as this partly fake virus persists. The grim, gloomy despair of that place must be awfully hard on those who lack the inner resources to successfully cope…and even more so are not fortunate enough to be part of a brotherhood of men who care.
Carstie, do you still own your property? Or, did the government confiscate it? If you still own it, when can you return?
Blade: My caring sister has loyally paid the property taxes. Asset forfeiture, a horrible relic of the Reagan-Bu$h regine, essentially only applies to property which could be claimed to have been acquired due to the proceeds of whatever offense you are charged with. They can put a lien upon it, evidently, but that would only obtain upon my demise…and CV-19 didn’t even work in that respect while i was stuffed into the most virus -impacted hole in the BOP. while most of the guys around me came down with comparatively light cases.
My surmise is that approximately half of the men in Elkton and its satellite “camp” down the hill were infected with it, some 4-5%, being hospitalized and as of 4-8, the day I got protectively quarantined for 42 days as being slated for early release; the joint had four acknowledged deaths.
Currently, I’m in what they lovingly call “home detention”, where I’m obliged to wear an ankle bracelet (even over my neuropathically swollen left ankle) and need to be able to answer the land-line phone four times daily when their contract organization, the “Volunteers of America” dutifully call to check up, even though the radio-connected ankle device tells them all they need to know. Further, as of something like 10 days ago (following the Minneapolis “events”) I am not even able to step out into the yard between 6 and 6.
In some 147 days I should be off home confinement and generally free except for probation restrictions and could then return to my sylvan surrounds up in the Northcountry fair. Catch -22 is that the old shack is in rough shape and essentially uninhabitable without considerable cleanup and reconstruction. Returning there in November looks like a no-go because of climatological reality. So looking at March or April to a scene where the most common sounds Springtime are birdsongs.
Baseball owners and players are arguing their way out of the lives and interest of Americans…
There is good faith and there is bad faith, but there is no craven middle-ground safe-haven “faith.” (Snarkk knows this law-school adage as well as I do, I’m sure.) The owners are definitely on the bad faith side. I think we know enough to make that determination. I still can’t figure out wtf the union is up to. Certainly could be bad faith, too. Maybe not. Maybe the CV19 issues will turn out to be the main problem, all along, after all.
Yeah, the liability issue was going to raise its head once the owners were left with having to resort to ordering the players back to work.
I give the owners the majority of the shade, yes. But, the union doesn’t have clean hands. I’ve read there was some sort of agreement in March to get players paid pro rata based on games played. But, then the full info on the pandemic became known, including no fans in the ballpark. At least that is the chronology I’ve read. So, it’s understandable to me you can’t get paid pro rata on your salary without taking some sort of haircut based on tickets and fan revenue being removed from the picture. I’ve been handed a 20% pay cut since March from my employer, like millions of other people. No bueno, but I get it. Management apparently wasn’t ready to show the books to the players to support a haircut — I agree that’s bad faith. But, the players didn’t seem to be willing to even go in that direction. And, I get it that the media usually paints the players in the shade. That said, don’t both of these fools realize they’re about ready to not only crap in their own nest, but then going to blow it up? That’s a S-storm all over us fans. Well, at least the games will be shortened. Down to zero minutes. BTW, Mannequin may be a worse commissioner than freakin’ Gary Bettman…
I think both sides raised possibility of filing grievances. Not sure, but I think the player’s grievance would claim owners did not live up to clause in March 26 about scheduling as many games as possible. Union proposed 112 games season or something like that, and obviously there will quite a lot fewer games than that…if any.
I hope you guys wont be bored by this . . . sort of shocked that I had a satisfactory outcome. I wrote a complaint (see below – sorry about the length) to https://oag.ca.gov/consumers/general/utilities regarding my inability to make a &$^%^@)! phone call from my new home. Yay! The system actually works, i.e., the AT&T Office of the President wrote me and essentially agreed to install landline phone service at my home. Anywho, this is what precipitated my complaint to the State Attorney General’s Office:
“To Whom It May Concern . . . I recently bought a house, where I have one or zero bars on my existing cell phone (Sprint). Because of this, I attempted first to contact AT&T to install a telephone landline, as my neighbors and I all have landline copper wires installed into our homes. More important, all of my neighbors have AT&T landline service . . . However, when I contacted AT&T (numerous occasions), they either tried to: A. Discourage me about installing a landline and wanted me to buy a VOIP based cell phone service; or, B. Said that they NO LONGER will take new customers for their landline services. Regarding the first response from them – VOIP telephone has latency (lags) issues and will not work adequately on my HughesNet WiFi connection. Regarding the 2nd response from AT&T, as I alluded to earlier, my neighbors all have this landline service.
The other thing I have done on my own is buy a new Apple Iphone and switched cell phone companies, hoping that cell phone reception would improve. I now have Verizon coverage and it is worse than the Sprint coverage I had!
Additionally, I was told by an AT&T technician (while he was installing my DirectTV) that I have telephone copper lines for landline services and I should be able to get this service from AT&T. He also said that I should have been able to get WiFi from them too, but that’s another story.
Last, but not least, the previous owner of the house I am now occupying, HAD AT&T LANDLINE SERVICE!
I am considering two additional avenues of redress if you are unable to assist – contacting my Congressman regarding this issue and if that fails, a lawsuit. Please be advised, I live in a rural, mountain community where fire and other emergency situations require telephone service! I am also a senior citizen.
I hope you can assist me in this matter, as I have exhausted my attempts at contacting AT&T to do the right thing and provide me landline telephone service. Thank you for listening and I am looking forward to your response.
Respectfully, Steven J. Melikean”
🙂
Kudos to you, Blade, for staying on them about it.
Good! Congrats. And if you have any interest in possible 911 fire (including blazes and paramedic and ambulance) services, or cop services, a landline is essential. You don’t want to be put on cell-phone hold at the CHP general dispatch center, waiting to tell them who and where you are, while your phone struggles to maintain the connection. In most Calif. counties, landlines launch immediate info onto a dispatcher’s computer screen. El Dorado must have such a system.
Xoot, I am seriously isolated up here. Without a telephone, it’s pfffttt! city here.
We hadn’t been reimbursed on some health insurance bills due to us to the tune of about $1500 over the last year and half. My wife spent hours and hours on this BS, the paper works is endless, and it involved an administrator, not just the health insurer — rhymes with True Hoss. Too complicated to rehash here. She then contacted some oversight agency of the Federal Gov’t, and got them in on the picture. Voila, we’ve gotten checks the past few weeks, almost all the outstanding claims have been paid. The health care and insurance situation in this country is just ridiculous — I’m for anything but the current bankrupt system…
I guess I shouldn’t be amazed, but I’ve done this (or contacted my Congressman) on many occasions and usually they are able to help or even resolve the problem or issue I was dealing with at the time. However, as you illustrated above Tom, why does a person even have to go through this BS, when the system should work in the beginning? Follow the money trail . . . it ALWAYS LEADS THERE. Just in my example, landlines are a money loser for AT&T, so they try to get people to buy a useless VOIP system (at least it is in my neighborhood) or lie, by saying they don’t do landline services in that area. Unbelievable.
true landlines often continue to work even as electrical grids go down. Too much infrastructure for the new at&t to bear profitably. I spent some time, decades before cell, living as a caretaker on property in the hills above Santa Cruz with no electricity but with a phone and a well. Couldn’t’ve done it without either.
One of the other Gatling draft day fellow picks was from Xavier right? Tyrone Hill???
Ahhhh. I knew the other player…all 3 first round correct? Who was the one kid round mound of a man who got i to a couple of scraps. Okie State right??? Damn what was his name???
Byron Houston I think is who I am thinking about but may have been drafted year after. Sprewell’s year?
I know see the correct Alexander and Van Diever answer. I was getting Alexander and Byron Houston switched around.
Blade– how far are you away from a grocery/gas store? Lights on the streets?
Not far. Exactly 4.23 miles to Safeway. Large chain hardware store, banks, etc., same distance. A convenience store and gas station is less than 1 mile away.
That isn’t the problem. Living up in the mountains is – one way or another – a compromise(s). Specifically, it usually involves communication, e.g., in Colorado, my mountain home was located at 8500 feet. Consequently, my first few years up there, I had dial up service. It wasn’t until later, that I had DSL, with over 100Mbps download speeds.
Many people also just have difficulty breathing at that altitude (practically all my sea level friends and family who visited me, had stamina issues, along with headaches due to the altitude). Additionally, snow can cause you to stay in for days, if not weeks. I doubt that will happen in Pollock Pines, but it was a fairly often situation in Colorado. Shit, when we had the “snow storm of the century” in March 2006, I had at least 10 feet of snow in my driveway. I could easily jump off my roof and not hurt myself. By the by, that 10 feet occurred in a little over 2 days. It took most everyone 1-2 weeks to contract a front loader, whereby they could clear their driveways and go back to work. lol
I’m starting to worry this is going to turn into the movie The Shining. lqtm
Gas is also way cheaper here versus the bay area.
I loved that movie! Curiously, I can hardly wait for winter, as I am at 3500 feet. So with that in mind, I thought, “this is going to be a piece of cake.”
However Flav, a few of my neighbors have said the weather last year, although unusual, was one of the worst in the area’s history. Not certain if it was due to climate change or what? They indicated that there were 3-4 incidents of 1-2 feet of snow (serious snow storms in my opinion, especially for this altitude).
I do know that 99% of their storms originate from the SF bay area. In Colorado, we received storms from 3 areas – gulf, west coast (SF bay area) and Canada.
No lights on my street and fairly certain, no lights on Sly Park Road, the main road to Highway 50.
but stars
Yes, and it is beautiful during the evening Xoot.
An actual headline today:
“VA police apologize for arresting Black pastor who called 911 on white family attacking him.”
there you go — the black pastor, I believe, called from a cell phone (he was outside an apartment building he owned when he challenged the white people dumping a refrigerator on the property; he also pulled a gun). If he’d called from a landline, the cops would’ve treated his plea with more respect.
Landlines! I’m telling you.
lol
That’s the crime of “defending — while black — your property against caucasian trespassers illegally dumping a busted refrigerator onto your property who respond to your objection to their ongoing crime by threatening you with great bodily harm and racial epithets”. No word on whether the trespassers were trying to lighten their truck’s load while heading out to the latest Nuremberg rally and Covid-Die In happening in Tulsa late this week…
Fair enough. Though I doubt those crackers are coherent enough to plan a trip to any kind of rally. The African American pastor, on the other hand, sure as shit knows how to get things done, one way or another.
Apparently the African American apartment house owner was a former Master Sergeant in the Army, and was having none of the illegal dumping, despite the threats. Last time I was really in the south was when I lived in Houston 20+ years ago. As soon as you drive east/northeast of Houston and head into areas of East Texas like Port Aurthur, Beaumont and surroundings, any little town out there is like driving into a friggin’ time warp. Let’s just say life isn’t the best out there if you are an African American. It is not “like” another world; it IS another world. That is the area of the town of Jasper, near the Louisiana line, where in the late ’90s some crackers killed James Byrd, a black man, by dragging him alive on an asphalt road behind their truck…
MLB.com does not even have a link to any story about the owner/players negotiations situation.
It does show Giants picked two (2) free agents for the $20K apiece.
Shows Houston, Mets, Cubs, Cards, R.Sox and others taking 6 to 12. WTF?…
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-undrafted-free-agent-signing-tracker
blade, the Placerville area is usually around the cutoff line for snow/no snow for winter storms. I think Chi would generally agree. The colder ones will drop some snow there, the warmer ones will have the snow line start above there. Even when it snows, it normally shouldn’t be much and should melt fairly quickly. Although I see you’ve heard last year was abnormally heavy with snow But, now, I think most weather is getting to be “abnormal”. When I grew up in the Central Valley, in winter there was high fog for months on end, that at night would peel down to tule fog, and lift up a couple hundred feet during the day. Now, there’s hardly any fog there in winter, ever…
that’s amazing. No tule fog? I spent some terrifying time fighting that stuff, mainly at night, although early one morning a drive to Fresno got very scary at about 70 mph. I had no choice but to assume the suddenly invisible car ahead of me was continuing at that speed and the eighteen-wheeler behind me had no choice but to assume the same about me. Very tense time.
Yep, pea soup fog. Tule fog. I think zumie can probably confirm my story, though I don’t live in the Central Valley — long since gone. I have a brother there, and there is nowhere near the level of fog there used to be in winters 45+ years ago. When I was growing up, the only thing that stopped the winter fog for any length of time were the rainstorms. Which helped create more fog when they cleared out. I remember playing basketball on my elementary school team in winter out on parochial school asphalt courts with chain nets. When you got to one end of the court, for the fog you could barely see the backboard at the other end, it was just a silhouette; and every time the ball went through the net, there was a spew of fog-water coming off the net. Our hands would be black after the game from the wet asphalt stain conferred by the basketball, and our fingers would be stiff and half frozen from the cold fog…
great story Snarkk. Having to drive out of Fresno back to San Jose in delivery van in Dec. as it was nearing dark is about as uncomfortable as I ever was.
You’re right. Same deal in Denver area. It really got too hot there. Prior to 2000, they would have maybe 3-6 90 degree days during the summer. Now, at least 30-45 days above 90 degrees (with no appreciable ozone layer). Fuck that shit.
This is anecdotal, but it is readily apparent that the forests over here are far healthier than they are in Colorado front range area. Trees are actually green here. Conversely, many trees (groves of them) are unhealthy and yellow tinged due to insect infestation and/or pollution.
Wow. The forests out here are nowhere near as healthy as they used to be. Lots of weakening due to many many drought years, which lets the insects get at them…
Placerville, at 1900’, rarely gets snow, and when we do, it isn’t much. Pollock,Pines can get a fair amount for the elevation.
Have you seen any mountain lions or bears?
No Flav. I have seen the same fox twice at dusk, once my first night here and again, about 3 days ago. Mostly black bears (small) are around these parts per my neighbors. I have had 2 bear experiences during my time in Colorado, both instances where the bear was inside my garage. First one, was quite small and had practically its entire body inside the large 35 gallon garbage can I used for storing Shasta’s dog food. I could only see the bear’s butt . . . I yelled at it and it ran off. The 2nd one scared the shit out of me – much, much larger bear (brown?) and I had my hand on the hallway door to the garage the entire time it was at the garage door. Finally, got bored and it took off to my neighbor’s house. Mountain lions were a common occurrence, both in Old Shasta and Morrison Colorado homes.
Saw a mountain lion when Gail and I lived in Camino (midway between Placerville and Pollock Pines. Saw bear a number of times there, and have seen one bear near my house in Placerville. We also see coyote and fox on occasion.
Oh man, the Central Valley used to often get really thick and scary fog in the late fall and winter.
And so disorienting, too. You could be heading out of a town instead of into it, and it could take a while to figure that out.
Climate change has wiped out a lot of the fog. I don’t miss the fog, but it is a troubling sign of ongoing climate change. Another one of the canaries in a coal mine.
Yeah I use to hit that tile fog a lot heading up to my father in laws place up in Stockton leaving early around 5 to go fishing back in the 80’s.You couldn’t see your hood.All instrumentation was done by “The Force” it was scary shit to drive in…
As I kid, I remember fishing out in the Delta on my father’s cabin cruiser. We’d launch out of Russo’s east of what is now Brentwood, that place is still there. We’d tie up at night on Fisherman’s Cut, after fishing for stripers on Frank’s Tract and 3 Mile Slough. The fog would come down at night, and we’d fish for catfish while tied up, until we went to bed in the boat cabin. I can still smell the stink of cut sardine bait. You could see, barely, as we fished, the lights of ghostly freighters moving up towards Stockton through the fog a mile or so away on the Sacramento River. Then, about 2 or 3 minutes later, our boat would sway up and down from the swell of the ghost freighter as the swell finally reached down the Cut. In the morning, on Frank’s Tract, in the Tule fog you could hear other boats and disembodied voices of guys on them, but you couldn’t see them at all. You could get lost out there very easily if you didn’t know what you were doing. No GPS in those days…
The fog was good for the Valley grape crop, I think.
More and more farmers and ranchers are growing almonds, a good dry-weather crop, although it uses a lot of precious water.
And for body shops…
Back in the 80s, I was working in the tule fog between Dixon and Davis and, even with a light, I couldn’t see ten feet around me, but I could see stars above. Weirdest damned stuff. (And speaking of stars.)
Sometimes, in the Valley you’d go a week or more, and never see the winter sun. Only a weird hint of it occasionally, that looked like the moon, at about 3:30 or so in the afternoon, after which the fog always started thickening and heading back towards the ground for the coming winter night…
The safest way to drive in that stuff, if you’re on a highway or freeway, is keep your left eye on the road for red brake lights up ahead, and your right eye on the white shoulder stripe on the road — just keep the car inside that shoulder stripe and you’re fine. “Fog lights” are useless, they make the viz worse…
I drove by watching the painted line many times.
zum, looks like you and I are fog friendly…
Yes. It really was the only negative weather thing about the Valley, other than some 100+ degree days in the summer.
yeah that’s what I tried to do, stay inside the white shoulder stripe…nose to the windshield.
Pollock Pines is sometimes the start of chaining up going to Tahoe but mostly further up 50 as I recall.Your winters should be more like light dusting for a few days Blade due to the lower elevation.Though you could get some power outages if a bigger storm hits.Nice you have some stores like Safeway close bye instead of Mr.Druckers store and also not have to count on Mr.Haney with his Grapes of Wrath truck with all his tools and other supplies mounted all over it and bartering over his prices…
Well, if the 3 daughters of Kate are over there at the Shady Rest, it might be worth a visit on the way to Hooterville…
lol
AK, the snow is heavier near the Highway 50 access to Pollock Pines per my neighbors. That makes sense, as Sly Park Road is at around 4000 feet (for reference, Placerville is at 2800 feet) and my place is at 3500 feet. No chains for me – all 4X4 vehicles (truck and Jeep Wrangler).
Here’s a quiz for you – who is the only Flapper to ride in my Jeep Wrangler from a baseball game? Tick Tock Tick Tock . . .
I’m gonna go with me but I honestly don’t remember what car you were driving that day.
I had to eat concert tickets a few times. Tickets to shows in the Bay Area, but not doable in the fog. I got smarter in my concert-ticket purchasing.
Was one of them Foghat?
lulz!
“Slow ride, take it easy.”
Hey what’s kind of bitchin, the return of Drivin theatres due to Covaid19!
Alameda fair grounds last week had Raiders of the last Ark one night ad the Gonnies another!
San Mateo fair grounds is doing it too now,had one over the weekend and due to high demand it’s showing more June18-21.Not sure of the ticket prices $25 advance $30 at the gate is what I believe it was in Pleasanton..
I think you tune your car stereo to listen to the movie?
I would be all in partying like the old days again..
Flav wins! lulz
at first I was trying to think of any Flapper who had gone out to Colorado and seen a game with you. I almost guessed Chi. And then I thought, “wait a min he gave me a ride home from a game!” But I honestly can’t recall the car. Thanks for the ride, BTW
I’m not even certain why I drove to the game, as I usually take the train (much easier in my opinion). I am not absolutely certain, but I think it was the Sombrero game, although it could have been the game where Pawlie visited (stayed at an airport hotel that trip I think and not my aunt’s house). Anyway, we met for breakfast I think before taking the bus to the game or driving in my car. Wait, that’s not right – he met me at the bus stop near the “avenues,” so it was likely the Sombrero give away game.
I’m all confused. I do know I was at the sombrero game. That may have coincided with the Marty Lurie show. I stayed at an Airbnb in the Mission. How did I get to the game? Can’t recall. Afterward, zumieee and all his tallness and I walked a long ways to a bus stop. I took the bus to my place. Is there an Excelsior District, where Jerry Garcia is from? It was near there. The bus ride through the Mission was a local. Took an hour almost. I took the sombrero off. On the bus were real-life sombrero wearers, at home; can’t temember on the bus. This was my first mini-lesson in cultural appropriation. I gave the sombrero to the kid in the Airbnb family. I couldn’t picture myself going through airport security with it.
Yeah, the tule fog seems to be a thing of the past. Although about 5 years ago, right after we moved back to the bay area, we hit it in the stretch between 580, 205 and 5 and it was just like the bad old days. We slowly drove to some Denny’s and hung out for a couple hours till the fog cleared.
Did meet Chi at a game back in 2016 iirc. Blade messed up his back and didn’t make it. It was a Bochy special where he went through a pitcher per batter from the 7th inning on, and the G’s blew a 7-3 lead. Something like that. Belt had a bomb that I have on video somewhere, and Gorkyz had one as well.