samhexum

THE MAGIC OF 61! 61 years after Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961, Judge has hit #61 tonight.

The faded, bulging pocket over one of his butt cheeks that gives a hint of his overstuffed wallet.

Things between the Mets and Marlins took a weird turn on Tuesday night. In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Marlins leading 6-3 at Citi Field, reliever Richard Bleier took the mound. The veteran quickly got Brandon Nimmo to ground out and Francisco Lindor to line out. Jeff McNeil singled, and then things got strange — very strange. With Pete Alonso at bat, Bleier was charged with a balk — the first in his 303 career appearances — sending McNeil to second. A second balk sent the Mets infielder to third. Two balks in the same at-bat was odd enough, but on the fifth pitch against Alonso, Bleier was once again called for a balk, scoring McNeil. According to Jerry Blevins on the SNY broadcast, Bleier may not have been bringing his hands to enough of a stop before throwing a pitch. The final balk sent Miami manager Don Mattingly into a rage — possibly his last with the Marlins — causing him to state his case to the umpires before getting tossed.

Blue Jays right-hander Alek Manoah has been honored with a sportsmanship award for defending teammate Alejandro Kirk after the catcher was criticized online for his weight. Manoah received a $100,000 Canadian sponsorship prize and immediately donated it to KidSport, a Canadian nonprofit that gives children the opportunity to participate in organized sports. Earlier this month, Manoah reacted angrily when Montreal radio host Matthew Ross tweeted that Kirk was “embarrassing the sport” because of his weight and figure. Kirk, a first-time All-Star this season, is 5-foot-8 and 245 pounds. Manoah is 6’6, 285, btw… Ross was responding to a video highlight of Kirk scoring from first base in a game Sept. 13 against Tampa Bay. Toronto won 7-2, splitting a doubleheader against the Rays. Manoah, who has thrown to Kirk in all but one of his starts this season, fired back at Ross, urging him to “step aside from the keyboard.” “Go ahead and tell that 8 year old kid who is 10lbs over weight that he should quit now,” he wrote. “Let KIRK inspire those kids to continue to chase their dreams and chase greatness.” Ross subsequently deleted the tweet and shut down his account before issuing a public apology for his remarks. To recognize Manoah’s actions, Dove Men+Care announced a sponsorship honoring athletes for their sportsmanship and named Manoah as the first recipient. In a press release Monday, Dove Men+Care praised Manoah for “promoting body positive reassurance” and demonstrating “notable sportsmanship on a global stage.” The company also announced Manoah’s intention to donate the prize to KidSport. Manoah, who debuted last season, is 15-7 for the Blue Jays, who lead the AL wild-card race. His 2.31 ERA is fourth-lowest in the major leagues. Manoah has a salary of $706,200 this season. Now in his third big league season, Kirk is batting .293 with 14 home runs and 62 RBIs in 132 games. Manoah and Kirk were both selected to the AL All-Star team for the first time this season.

Josh Donaldson has the night off tonight and Marwin Gonzalez is playing 3B. If the Yankee roster evolves and a younger, stronger, faster player replaces him, would that be an example of Marwinism?

Just saw thus ad... does this look like Tarek El-Mousa to you?

Seattle's new long-term ace took an 11-2 lead into the bottom of the 6th today and was knocked out during an 11 run inning for the Royals. They wound up losing and are 3-7 in their last 10 games. They finished with Houston right after the All-Star break, so they've had the easiest schedule of all the wild card contenders, with so many games against losing teams. They still do the rest of the way. Only the 1st wildcard gets home games in the first round. They should've been in that position by now, but are currently the 3rd wildcard. Which would mean they'd play Cleveland, which is currently red-hot, and has a roster with very similar skills and roles to Seattle's. They have the longest active post-season drought in sports (21 years). Can you imagine if they get in as the 2nd or 3rd wildcard and lose in the first round and never get a home game? another question to ponder... Josh Donaldson has the night off tonight and Marwin Gonzalez is playing 3B. If the Yankee roster evolves and a younger, stronger, faster player replaces him, would that be an example of Marwinism?

Pfizer CEO tests positive for COVID for a second time

Oddly, none of the articles I read mentioned her sister Jessica, a mystery writer who solved murders in Cabot Cove.

A fisherman in Hawaii reportedly caught a large octopus and broke a state record that was once held by his brother. Michael Matsunaga was bottom-fishing at 400 feet when he felt a tug on his line. Though he struggled to reel in his line, Matsunaga was finally able to bring the octopus onto his boat. “I finally got him in the cooler,” Matsunaga told HawaiiNewsNow. “And then I had to sit on the cooler because he was kinda of lifting me up.” When he returned to shore, Matsunaga brought the octopus to Hana Pa’a Fishing Co., where it weighed in at 25.95 pounds, the record for the largest octopus caught in Hawaii. The previous record was held by Matsunaga’s brother, Stewart Matsunaga, who caught a 19-pound octopus in 2000. Matsunaga plans to eat the octopus, after boiling it in beer, “one leg at a time.” Why would you boil it one leg at a time?

A man with an apparent 48-year grudge has been going each morning to urinate on the grave of his ex, much to the horror of her furious kids, who realized something was wrong when they discovered bags of poop left at their mom’s final resting place. She died of cancer in 2017 and is buried just over the state line in the cemetery at Tappan Reformed Church in Orangetown, NY. They first noticed a plastic bag of poop at their mother’s grave in April and thought it was something left by mistake by a dog walker. But then it happened again. The siblings called the cops, who took a report. Determined to figure out what was going on, the pair got permission from a cemetery manager to place trail cameras in the trees to see if they could catch the vandal. When they checked the camera footage, they spotted the gross grave visitor: a man who was briefly married to their mom in the 1970s. The footage was too blurry and grainy to take to authorities, so a week ago, Murphy and his sister got up at 5 a.m. to drive to the cemetery and laid in wait. The son set up his smartphone on a nearby headstone to take better photos and hid behind a small shed. He said the video and pictures he and his sister got indicated that the man drove to the cemetery almost every morning between 6:14 a.m. and 6:18 a.m. with his current wife, got out of the car, walked to her grave and peed on it. “I can’t get my wife to go out to dinner but this guy gets his wife to go along with him to desecrate my mom’s remains every morning!” he fumed. That last line is my favorite part of the story.

Jayson Stark's been writing a monthly column about weird & wacky baseball occurrences for eons. This month's was great and very Yankee-centric, but also included this little nugget: It was the eighth inning in Kansas City on Tuesday, when the Twins did this: • Pinch running for Gio Urshela: Billy Hamilton. • Then one batter later, pinch running for Gary Sánchez: Caleb Hamilton. So what did you miss? That’s two Hamiltons — and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cousin, Jose Miranda — all in the same lineup at the same time? Tremendous. How lucky we are to be alive right now. AND JUST ONE OF THE YANKEE NUGGETS: Feats for @Yankees the last 2 days: - player with 60th HR of season - ultimate grand slam (walkoff down by 3) - grand slam in consecutive innings - player with 2 HR in inning - 25-or-younger duo with 5+ RBI in same game No other team has done all of those in its entire history. 11:32 PM · Sep 21, 2022

THE STREAK DIES AT 25. F. Valdez 5.1 11 7 4 1 6 2 103-63 2.69

Season 4 will be split into two 10-episode parts, with Part 1 premiering Friday, Nov. 4. Set two years after Grace’s brutal murder turned the Stone family’s lives upside down, the new season finds them “in shambles as a devastated Ben continues to mourn his wife and search for his kidnapped daughter Eden,” per the official synopsis. “Consumed by his grief, Ben has stepped down from his role as co-captain of the ‘lifeboat,’ leaving Michaela to captain it alone — a near-impossible feat with the passengers’ every move now being monitored by a government registry. “As the Death Date draws closer and the passengers grow desperate for a path to survival, a mysterious passenger arrives with a package for Cal that changes everything they know about Flight 828 and will prove to be the key to unlocking the secret of the Callings in this compelling, mind-bending, and deeply emotional journey.” Season 3 ended with several major twists, including fellow 828 passenger Angelina fatally stabbing Grace and then kidnapping Eden, believing that the infant is her guardian angel; Michaela and Zeke seemingly about to have a break-up conversation; Cal vanishing into thin air after touching the tail fin at the Eureka lab and reappearing a whole five years older; and Captain Daly suddenly appearing inside the 828 cockpit at Eureka and then disappearing with the entire plane in a flash of light.

Killing Eve vet Fiona Shaw is getting entangled in True Detective‘s case: The actress has joined Season 4 of the HBO drama, which will star Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. Officially titled True Detective: Night Country, the latest installment of the series will take place in the frigid Arctic regions of Alaska. “When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the six men that operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace,” per the official description. “To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.” Shaw will play Rose Aguineau, “a survivalist with a past full of secrets.”

I just realized... DJ's overseas reuniting with his wife, and the whole family went away in the episode... did we see DJ's kid? Where was she? She's supposedly still living with them.

She was 88.

Maybe it's because I never wanted kids, but I don't get this: Grandkids are supposed to steal your heart — not your house. A Brooklyn woman allegedly hijacked her grandmother’s longtime home by forging the elder’s signature on a fake deed and filing it with the city — then took out a $399,000 mortgage on the property, according to a $5 million lawsuit. Leonita Arbuckle, 77, bought her two-story, multi-family Flatbush house with her husband Selwyn in 1972 for $31,650, dutifully paying off the mortgage in 1995. But the retired nurse got a letter in May claiming the property had been transferred to her granddaughter, Jaishree Arbuckle-Pierre, for $1, the grandmother charges in her Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit. “You don’t expect that from your kids,” she told The Post. Arbuckle says she never gave her home to the younger woman, who was raised and lived in the home until she graduated from high school in 2004, according to court papers. The apparently ungrateful granddaughter has a history of fraud, legal records show. In 2012, Arbuckle-Pierre was working as a nurse at Kings County Hospital when she was arrested for being part of an identity-theft scheme, stealing Social Security numbers from coworkers and using the information to open up credit cards, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said. She pleaded guilty in 2013 and was sentenced to two years behind bars, followed by supervised release. It’s not the first time Arbuckle-Pierre targeted her grandmother: prosecutors noted in 2014 that she’d stolen from the older woman. The grandmother, whose husband died in 2017, never pressed charges. In 2019, the granddaughter pleaded guilty to violating the terms of her release after she was caught in a Long Island parking lot with a gun, records show. She was sentenced to another 12 months in jail. Arbuckle “does not know if the forger or anyone is making payments on the fraudulent mortgage or if she is defaulting, leading to a possible foreclosure,” Arbuckle said in court papers. Despite it all, Arbuckle said she’s not willing to let the alleged transgressions destroy their relationship. “How mad could I be? It’s done,” she said, noting that Arbuckle-Pierre’s teen son still lives with her in the home. “He doesn’t know we’re threatened to go live out on the street,” she said. She’s fighting to regain ownership of her home, but won’t give up on her granddaughter either. “I’m not going to destroy my relationship … she’s going to be my granddaughter til the day she die,” Arbuckle said. https://nypost.com/2022/09/24/nyc-woman-fakes-grandmas-signature-to-steal-home-lawsuit/

PETA calls for women to go on sex strike against men who eat meat Well, DUH! What woman doesn't prefer a man who likes fish?

You should try Hebrew National. They have to answer to an even Higher Authority, you know... I never saw this ad before. I think it's cute.

No, it was just a heat wave & they didn't want them cramping up. Castillo has agreed to a very team-friendly 5 year extension.

They have replaced with I approve. Although when he was a 23 year old fitness model appearing on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES he said some not-so-complimentary things about people who weren't fitness models. I suppose I'll get past it.

THE MAN WHO DIDN'T FALL TO EARTH: Gut-wrenching video obtained by East 2 West News captured the moment a man attempted to leap — but was saved — from an 11th-floor balcony. The incident happened after a man and his girlfriend in Stavropol, Russia, were involved in an argument, according to reports from local law enforcement. He allegedly first attempted to throw her over the edge — a 120-foot fall — but failed. Instead, he reportedly inflicted “bodily harm” on her. The couple shared the balcony with neighbors who came outside when they heard screaming. As they came out, the man attempted to jump over the edge. But the heroic neighbor grabbed his hand at the last second, and pulled him back over the balcony, where he was held until police arrived. The man was also accused of greeting officials with foul language and resisting arrest. His bad day got worse as he was detained, and is now being investigated for suspected attempted murder. As for the woman, she was rushed to hospital at the scene. Her current condition is unknown. https://nypost.com/2022/09/23/man-jumping-from-balcony-caught-at-last-second-in-terrifying-video/

A top Costco Wholesale executive confirmed the big-box retailer has no plans to change the price of its $1.50 hot dog-and-soda combo at its stores despite months of decades-high inflation. Costco CFO Richard Galanti reiterated the cheap price point on the fan-favorite deal would stay in place during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday. An analyst asked whether Costco was adjusting prices in other parts of its business to maintain sales margins for its hot dog-and-soda deal and other value offerings. “Lightning just struck me,” Galanti joked when the combo was mentioned. He added that higher-margin businesses such as gas and travel sales help Costco maintain its value deals. “Those things help us be more aggressive in other areas, or as you mentioned, hold the price on the hot dog and the soda a little longer – forever,” Galanti added.

Apparently, @BuffaloKyle doesn't know didley squat. Albert beat Judge to the milestone mark. He got #700. In related news, @WilliamM was just seen twerking down Broad Street, blowing an airhorn, and yelling his head off. Congrats to you, fella!