samhexum

We got our visas in the mail the day the tanks rolled into Red Square in the attempted military coup.

voice of Sophia: PICTURE IT... RUSSIA, 1991: Sam is looking at postcards on a rack at the front of the shop... suddenly he hears a joyous voice from the back... SAM! THEY HAVE COKE! THEY HAVE TWIX BARS!!!

The only thing edible in Leningrad was when our guide & our driver (a company was trying to establish itself in Russia & we got a ridiculous rate. I put the whole trip together and don't remember how I found them... over the course of a couple of days my roommate would come home and I would tell her what the latest iteration of the trip was until I finalized a 19 day, 10 country [including day-trips and connection points] extravaganza with one car rental and one round-trip ticket for each of us and one short, cheap KLM flight from Helsinki to Leningrad where they upgraded us to first class because we were the only ones on the flight and the stewardess asked 'you don't need me to explain the emergency procedures, do you?'... and now back to my fascinating anecdote...) took us to some beautiful old cathedral 1/2 hour outside town (getting stopped for speeding along the way... we were joking we were going to be shot or taken hostage... and now back to my fascinating anecdote...) where we were served delicious rolls and edible meat in a thick gravy that I ate through hysterical laughter because just as my starving roommate was about to dig in, a fly did a swan dive into the gravy atop her meat. No, I didn't share. She had her rolls. In Moscow we treated them to lunch at McDs & dinner at the foreign currency side of Pizza Hut... they were impressed!

Immensely, other than the food. The McDonalds and Pizza Hut in Moscow & the American hotel our guide took us to for postcards where we found Coke and Twix bars in the gift shop saved us from starvation. “Dorothy, I’ve been talking to that good-looking reporter over there. He just got back from Russia. He told me a couple of very interesting things. It snows there in the summertime and they don’t have many attractive women. Do you realize what that means? When we go to Russia, I will have my pick of any man in the country and you can make a snowman in June!” -Blanche The press conference is about to begin as soon as Rose gets back from picking up the Cadets. As Dorothy explains this, Alexei from the Embassy refers to Rose as Dorothy’s daughter, and they realize that they think Rose is about nine years old based on the letter. Blanche and Dorothy rush to the kitchen to figure out what to do. “We certainly can’t tell those Russians the truth.” “Why not?” “Because they will use it as a propaganda ploy to convince the whole world that all Americans are as dumb as Rose!” -Blanche and Dorothy

They were probably all mid-30s, which seemed like middle age to you.

I was part of a "squeeze every last benefit out of Pan Am's incredibly generous frequent flyer plan in the last months before they went kaput" program.

Thankfully, it has been long enough that I was able to watch him without throwing up from the memory of his portrayal of Yack's indescribably annoying husband on the horrifically awful final final season of Will and Grace

I think Mariska Hargitay's father was my favorite.

The actor who played Yack's indescribably annoying husband on the abysmal, abhorrent, abominable, atrocious, awful, acid reflux-inducing final season of WILL & GRACE created and stars in a new series on FX called ENGLISH TEACHER. The first 2 episodes were not abysmal, abhorrent, abominable, atrocious, awful, or acid reflux-inducing. There's some potential.

Milwaukee's newest player was born to be a Brewer. The Brewers recalled outfielder Brewer Hicklen from Triple-A Nashville before their game Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds. This marks the first time in franchise history that the Brewers' roster has included a player named Brewer. Hicklen was in the Brewers' starting lineup batting fifth and playing right field Sunday as he made his first major league appearance since 2022. Hicklen played in six games and made four plate appearances that season with the Kansas City Royals, who selected him out of UAB in the seventh round of the 2017 amateur draft.

The Cardinals won in the Bronx yesterday for the first time since the 1964 World Series. I believe that was right around the time @WilliamM turned 40. Milwaukee's newest player was born to be a Brewer. The Brewers recalled outfielder Brewer Hicklen from Triple-A Nashville before their game Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds. This marks the first time in franchise history that the Brewers' roster has included a player named Brewer. Hicklen was in the Brewers' starting lineup batting fifth and playing right field Sunday as he made his first major league appearance since 2022. Hicklen played in six games and made four plate appearances that season with the Kansas City Royals, who selected him out of UAB in the seventh round of the 2017 amateur draft.

Johnny Gaudreau’s brother was dad-to-be when killed by alleged drunk driver The couple were expecting their first child – Little Tripp — in December Sister cancels wedding after brothers killed by drunk driver just before ceremony Alleged drunk driver glassy-eyed in mugshot as cops reveal details: ‘5 or 6 beers’

The reminders arrive at least three times a week, 3 ½-by-2 ½-inch snippets of the life he should have had. People still want Gil Patterson to sign his baseball card from 1977. He wonders why they care, but he’s flattered, anyway, and returns each card with his signature across a photo of somebody else. Patterson is 68 years old and has reached 50 seasons of working in baseball. In 1977, at 21, he was the best prospect in the New York Yankees’ farm system at the height of their Bronx Zoo glory. That spring, Topps awarded Patterson a coveted spot on a four-player rookie card. Clockwise from left, card No. 472 depicts Don Aase, Bob McClure, Dave Wehrmeister…and Sheldon Gill, a catcher who barely made it out of A-ball. The Yankees, apparently, had sent Topps an image of the wrong Gill/Gil, and that’s the player shown above Patterson’s name. Gil Patterson’s erroneous 1977 Topps rookie card (Tyler Kepner/The Athletic) “Don’t worry, you’ll have 15 more,” Sy Berger, the Topps impresario, told Patterson that spring in the Yankees’ Fort Lauderdale clubhouse. “You’re only 21 years old.” But there would be no more Topps cards for Patterson. While the others on his card combined for more than 1,200 major-league appearances, Patterson made just 10. He beat a Hall of Famer, Bert Blyleven of the Texas Rangers, in his fourth career start. He never won again. “I still owe George 299 wins,” Patterson said last weekend. “I promised him 300. I’m 299 short.” Now the minor-league pitching coordinator for the Oakland Athletics, Patterson was back at Yankee Stadium for Old-Timers’ Day last Saturday. He wore his 1977 championship ring, as he always does, and slipped into a pinstriped jersey with his old No. 22. That was Patterson’s age when the Yankees won the World Series without him that fall; he was home in Florida with a dead arm. Patterson’s rise had been swift: three levels by age 20, with a 24-8 record and a 2.26 ERA across two seasons. Before the ’77 season, the Yankees refused to trade Patterson to the Cincinnati Reds, straight up, for Tony Perez. They would not include him in a deal for Bucky Dent, either, acquiring Dent from the Chicago White Sox only when they substituted LaMarr Hoyt, a future Cy Young Award winner. “Gil Patterson’s arm has sunk a million trades,” wrote Moss Klein, the Yankees’ beat writer then for the Star-Ledger. The Yankees, he added, were “expecting many big seasons” from their untouchable future ace. “Oh, he’d have been outstanding,” Dent said last week. “Had a great feel for the game, great stuff. That game in Boston, he struck out Lynn, Rice and Yastrzemski on, what, nine pitches or something?” Not quite, but Patterson did fan eight Red Sox in 5 ⅔ innings at Fenway one night. Carl Yastrzemski was so impressed that he called Patterson one of the five best young pitchers he’d ever seen. “Nolan Ryan, you can see the fastball coming,” Yastrzemski told Newsday. “This guy, he sort of short-arms it and it explodes on you.” Alas, by then, Patterson had already lost his best fastball. In the majors, he said every pitch “was like a knife going through my arm.” Long before pitch counts and innings limits, the Yankees – under general manager Gabe Paul – had sent Patterson to instructional league and then winter ball after his magical 1976 season. Altogether, he estimates, he threw a staggering 280 innings in that age-20 season. Nobody thought to protect him from himself. “I’m 21 getting told to go pitch, so you go pitch,” Patterson said. “That’s why nowadays, you’ve got to tell the pitchers they’re done. Not too many people ever want to come out of the game, so you can’t ask them how they feel. If you think they’re done, get them out.” Patterson had eight operations in all, to his rotator cuff, labrum, ulnar collateral ligament and so on. He missed two full seasons and played parts of the next three in the low minors. Out of work in 1983, he took a job parking cars at a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, throwing left-handed against the outside walls after closing. Patterson shows off one of the many surgical scars on his right pitching arm at Old Timer’s Day in the Bronx last weekend. (Tyler Kepner/The Athletic) Steinbrenner went to the restaurant one night, recognized Patterson and offered him a coaching job for life. It was a kind gesture, but the work didn’t last: coaching for a Yankees farm club in 1984, Patterson refused an order to have Al Leiter – a hard-throwing, sore-armed teenager – pitch through pain. The Yankees fired Patterson after that season, and when injuries indeed slowed Leiter’s progress, Patterson – in a gesture of friendship – helped him rebuild his delivery and save his career. He went on to instruct at Dent’s baseball school and has spent the last 33 seasons in various coaching roles for the Oakland A’s, Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays; Roy Halladay won a Cy Young Award under Patterson’s guidance with Toronto in 2003. “He has done in coaching what a Hall of Famer does on the field,” said Craig Lefferts, the longtime assistant to Patterson with the A’s. “He loves what he does. He loves his players, and he goes to bat for them like nobody else.” Lefferts made his mark in a dozen major-league seasons; he saved a World Series game, led the league in appearances, and even hit a walk-off home run. What feats would Patterson have achieved, with the arm he once had? That chapter will never be written. “He’s always talking about all the great things I did, and I tell him, ‘I was nothing like you,’” Lefferts said. “I mean, he was going to be one of the greats. We have that conversation all the time: what could have been?” The question has gnawed at Patterson for 47 years. Maybe he’d have struggled. Maybe he’d have thrived. Maybe he’d be rich – but that’s never been the point. “It’s funny, would I rather have won $500 million in a lottery when I was 21 or pitched for 10 years but only made, like, $20,000 a year and lived in a three-bedroom, two-bath house like I was brought up in, with five brothers and a sister,” he said. “I’d rather do that and play for 10 years than have the money. Because I loved pitching, oh my God.” Patterson laughed softly. He made the majors with a storied franchise, and he’ll always be proud of that. But there’s no video footage of himself on the mound – if it hasn’t surfaced by now, it probably never will – and he yearns for something else to mark his brief stay at the top: another Topps baseball card. He’s trying. “I called them and I told them the story: ‘I’m 68 years old and I’d like to have a card with my picture on it,’” Patterson said. “They said to send an email. So I sent the email and the heading was ‘Sad baseball card story,’ and I explained it.” Topps typically does not issue coaches’ cards, but a representative sent Patterson an encouraging response. He would seem an ideal fit for their Allen & Ginter set, a vintage-styled product that produces cards for all sorts of figures in and around the game – including, ahem, some of your favorite baseball writers at The Athletic. And if sportswriters can have their own baseball cards, it’s only fair that Gil Patterson, with 10 games on the mound but half a century in the game, should have one too. With his own picture on it this time.

New trash cans specifically for pizza boxes to appear in NYC parks

https://qns.com/2024/08/queens-authentic-flavors-nyc-restaurant-week/

The Angels' brand of baseball has been comedic for years, but they are taking it to a Shakespearean level this weekend by starting one gentleman of Verona... Samuel Aldegheri.

...years before they became best-known for being on BATMAN and being JR Ewing's mommy, respectively, right?

You'd have just the outfit to wear, right?

The other day, two men were killed in Manhattan when a driver going the wrong way on a highway slammed into their car. They were a man scheduled to be married later that day and his cousin, who was up from North Carolina for the wedding. Both had kids. Yesterday, an NHL player and his brother were killed in New Jersey (near Philadelphia) by a drunk driver when they were out riding their bikes; both were scheduled to be groomsmen in their sister's wedding today. I don't know about the brother, but the hockey player was a dad. The deaths would have been tragedies under any circumstances, obviously, but the timing is just horrific. The bride in the first case had to switch to planning a funeral, and the sister in the second one will now always associate her wedding (whenever it winds up taking place) with her brothers' deaths. RIP to all.

You misinterpreted me in your rush to be judgmental and dismissive. Jarren Duran, one of the best players in the league this year, got suspended for 2 games because his response to a heckler was a casually-tossed gay slur, and from the reporting I've read on this incident, casual bigotry about gays is still quite common in US male professional team sports.

https://photosex.biz/imager/w_500/h_500/d5c650c56c972f796562c8fdd2dea1fe.jpg

anyone involved in US male professional team sports