Cleaning Out the Mental Inbox

I'm trying to come up with my own version of a "notes column." Not sure if a "Mental Inbox" compares well with "shirt pocket notes" or "nobody asked me, but...", but let's give it a whirl for now. In this version , I will try desperately to avoid comments about baseball uniforms and Joe West.

** So, the Pirates go for a high school pitcher in selecting Jameson Taillon with the number two overall pick. As you may know from reading draft stories in recent days, selecting a high school pitcher with a high selection is an enormously risky proposition. Let's hope that the Pirates get lucky with young Mr. Taillon. At 6'7", 225 pounds, the young man sure seems to have the physical goods. Let's hope he stays healthy and becomes Josh Beckett and not Bobby Bradley.

** In responding to my earlier post about Brad Lincoln's proposed debut this coming Wednesday, Brother Bill Sproule makes an astute observation about the Bucs failure to sign Dominican phee-nom Miguel Sano last year. Check it out. The comment would have been even more astute had the Bucs selected Manny Machado tonight, but still a good observation.

** On Mike & Mike this morning, Greenie was going on and on about whether or not Michael Jordan attending the Black Hawks Stanley Cup game this weekend was wrong in light of the fact that the NBA Finals are taking place at the same time. I present this as evidence that perhaps there is too much sports talk on the radio these days.

** The Gallaraga perfect game. I understand when people make the case for having Bud Selig reverse the call on the 27th out and award Armando Gallaraga a perfect game, but there is something that tells me that Bud did the right thing in not doing it. The fact that it was in fact the 27th out is the biggest point to be made in favor of making a special ruling. If the same bad call happened in the third inning, I wonder if the hue and cry would have been raised?

** All that said, kudos all around to both Gallaraga and Jim Joyce for how they handled the whole deal.

** Five years from now, we'll still remember Armando Gallaraga and this game. Chances are, only diehard Oakland A's fans will remember Dallas Braden.

** On the subject of imperfect perfect games, I read in the paper the other day about a letter Harvey Haddix received after his 12 inning perfecto in 1959 from a college fraternity in Texas. It was brief: "Dear Harvey: Tough shit!" Haddix always said that this was one of his favorite mementos of that May 26, 1959 game.

** Even though I said I would mention him: wonder what the reaction would have been if it was Joe West who made that bad call on the 27th out. How fun would THAT have been?

** Have you caught the morning Alexander, Burton, and Colony ("ABC") morning talk show on 93.7 The Fan? You can be assured of one guaranteed set piece at least once a day on this show: Jon Burton talking in an exaggerated Pittsburgh accent. This is then followed by Burton laughing uproariously at himself. Rege Cordic & Company was doing this, and doing it better, on morning radio 50 years ago.

** I will give Burton his due one thing: he did a pretty good imitation of former Buc skipper Jim Tracy the other morning.

** I think the best part of the 93.7 lineup is the afternoon drive team of Joe Starkey and John Siebel.

** If one thing can come out of the sordid Ben Roethlisberger melodrama, let it be the putting to rest the fiction that Steelers and the Rooney Family somehow operate on a different plane and moral high ground than the rest of the NFL. Art Sr. is a well deserved beloved figure in Pittsburgh lore, but he pulled some major strings that enabled Ernie Holmes to never miss a game after his run in on the Ohio Turnpike back in the 70's, and the Cedric Wilson/James Harrison double standard a few years told us a lot about Dan and Art II.

** The current issue of the Baseball Hall of Fame's magazine, Memories and Dreams, highlights baseball literature, and includes and article on the poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon" by Franklin Adams. This is the famous "Tinker to Evers to Chance" poem. (You can google it: I won't restate it here.) Interestingly enough, Tinker and Evers hated each other and never spoke. Chance once said that he wished he were an outfielder so he didn't have to listen to Evers in the field all the time. In any event, the three players went in the Hall of Fame in the same year, 1946, and are often cited as HOF ringers, enshrined because of a poem rather than great play. However, in the years that the three played together (1904-1913), the Cubs won more games than Yankees teams that featured Ruth and Gehrig, Dodgers teams that featured Robinson, Reese, Snider, and Campanella, and Reds teams that featured Bench, Morgan, Rose, and Concepcion. So, there must have been more than a snappy little poem to Tinker, Evers and chance.

** My source on the above is The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (2001). Check it out.

** Speaking of baseball books, you'll have a lot of fun reading "The Baseball Fan's Bucket List, 162 Things to See, Do, Get, and Experience Before You Die" by Robert and Jenna Santelli.

** I watched the 1968 movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" on TCM the other night. Bad movie that does NOT hold up after 40 plus years. Steve McQueen may have been the epitome of cool back in the day, but he was pretty ridiculous in this flick. Faye Dunaway co-starred and it is a good thing for her career that she did "Bonnie and Clyde" before she did Thomas Crown, otherwise, she might never have been heard from again.

** I know that we cannot ignore history, nor should every artifact be thrown in a trash bin, but I can't take sides with the preservationists who think that Mellon Arena should be preserved. These are the same folks who halted Tom Murphy's hopes of revitalizing the Fifth Avenue area downtown in order to "save" Candy-Rama.

Looks like the mental in-box is empty for the time being. Thanks for reading.