Book Review

Bottom of the Ninth
Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the daring scheme to save baseball from itself

Michael Shapiro

I've been reading this book off and on for the past few months. Not that it's not a good book, just that I haven't focused terribly hard on finishing the thing.

The book covers the period in baseball from 1958-1960, at a time when a third league tried to form and join the major leagues. This was after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left New York. The book is largely about Branch Rickey (the same guy who helped get Jackie Robinson in the majors.) and his efforts to build to new league. This league was called the Continental League, which I had never heard of before.

The New York Yankees had had the most success in the 1950's, one of the reasons was that the owners had all the control over a team. They essentially 'owned' the players, and held all the cards. There was a huge disparity in money between the large market teams and small market teams in the league. (Sound familiar?)

Rickey's idea (with the help of others) was to build a league where all the teams shared equally in profits, allowing for everyone to compete. In the end, the existing owners were able to squash the new league, and in most cases, eventually expanded into the markets that tried to first be a part of the Continental League. All except for (of course) Buffalo, who was firmly in place as one of the cities in that third league, but never got an expansion team.

It was an interesting idea, sharing the wealth to encourage competition. Because the owners were able to kill the league and it's ideas, it never happened. That's why today, you still have teams, like the Yankees, that have tons more money than other teams.

And Casey Stengel? He was the manager of the Yankees during this period of time. He was ousted just about the time the new league was scuttled. (At the end of the 1960's World Series, when the Pirates beat the Yankees. Interestingly enough, a tape of game seven of that series was recently found in Bing Crosby's wine cellar. Coming soon to a TV near you!)

Anyway, Casey Stengel had nothing to do with the Continental League. He just happened to get fired not long after the league was gone. It felt to me like the author didn't quite have enough material for a book, until he started talking about Stengel, and then give his own play-by-play description of the 1960 World Series. Not that it was a bad thing, just that I thought the flow was a bit off...

Anyway, it was an interesting book, talking about something I didn't even know happened in baseball. At it gave another reason as to why Buffalo is a cursed sports city.

I've got another option for the truck

A couple of days ago, Tara asked me to take the van in to get looked at. We've had a check engine light, a few days ago, the check oil light came on. (It was time for an oil change, anyway.) Tara found that the back left turn light was out. (Fast blinking on the dashboard. Genius.) For a little while, the car has had a bit of a problem at speeds over 50 MPH with a little bit of a shake. To top it all off, there was some sort of engine noise that bothered her, I didn't really hear it, but I don't really drive that vehicle all that much.

I took the van in yesterday. There is a shop right on the same block as my office, the guys there are really nice, seem very honest, I've never had a problem with them. (Ray's Campus American Car Care - Just off the West exit of campus.) They worked on it for a while, and called me to break the news to me. The shaking was because the tires are wearing on the inside of the tires. To be honest, the outside of the sidewalls of these tires don't look all that great, either. We've (meaning Tara, really) also had problems driving on these tires in the Winter. Anyhow, Ray also indicated that they had changed the oil, replaced the turn light, and were still tracing the engine light. The radiator had a crack in it, and needed to be replaced.

He actually talked to me about the options. Tara doesn't drive a lot on the freeway, he thought the tires might be ok a little bit longer (like until next month or something) if I wanted to replace the radiator first. He talked about getting the radiator done so that the engine didn't overheat and cause other damage. The code for the check engine light indicated a problem with the O2 sensors, but they kept testing them, and couldn't get them to fail. I guess check engine codes are just general suggestions of areas to check more than direct diagnostic data. I imagine that the idea is to get you to look all over the place on the car for five or six hours, then you get a message from thing like:

"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."

Anyway, I had them replace the radiator, they kept looking for the problem on the check engine light. At the end of the day, they decided to clear the light, and see if it came back. Tara and I went off yesterday evening in the van, running some errands. The check engine light came on after three miles of driving. We went to the grocery store, one of the things we picked picked up was a couple of quarts of oil for the truck. (It has a leak.)

On the way home from the store, about mile eleven of driving, the engine overheated. I parked the van, Tara walked the block or so home. After letting the thing cool a bit, I got the van home, but barely. All kinds of coolant was leaking out of the thing. Nice.

This morning, I put two quarts of oil in the truck so I could drive the kids to school in it. (The platoon system, two at a time, two trips.) Then I drove down to AutoZone, got some coolant, and tried putting some in the radiator. I poured a little in, it flowed through the radiator, and out the bottom. Nice.

I drove the truck to the mechanic, told Ray what happened, he went and got one of his guys, and sent him off with me to look at the van. It sounds like either a hose had a clamp that didn't fully get seated, or they missed a piece of styrofoam in the packaging, or something or the other, we got a gallon of coolant in the van, and it didn't leak out, so we tried driving the mile and a half to the shop. After a mile, the engine overheated, but it was mostly downhill at that point, we coasted in.

They worked on the van all day today, Tara used the truck to shuttle kids around. Kaylynn brought Lily and Ruth home after Lily's preschool. (Thanks Kay.) I had Lily at work for an hour, and Adam for a couple of hours, because there weren't enough seats in the truck to take care of business.

They reattached all the hoses on the radiator, filled it all the way back up, did a pressure test, and drove the things all over the foothills trying to get it to overheat. It didn't which is a good sign. They eventually found that the check engine light was from the catalytic converter, but they didn't have the equipment to replace those. The van doesn't have a lot of symptoms that would indicate a catalytic converter problem. (The truck does, but that's besides the point.) We need tires before it starts to snow, and a new catalytic converter before the next emissions test, I suppose. That's life owning a vehicle. We got a deal when we bought this thing, it's still a great deal compared to our options when we bought it.

What does all this have to do with my truck? The registration expires on the truck at the end of November. I don't think the thing will pass the safety inspection without repairs. It definitely needs a new wind shield. Tara thinks I should get it inspected anyway, if it's just a wind shield, I think she's willing to spring for it as my Christmas present for the year. (The only real expense past that is gas for the truck. Insurance is basically free on the thing.)

If it doesn't pass, I still like my demolition derby idea. I thought of another one today. I could dig a big hole in the front yard, bury the truck up past it's axles, making the bed flat with the yard. I'd then call it "yard art". No one would be able to miss our house after that. ("Turn on the street, then look for the house with the truck buried in the yard")

In the summer, I could move the BBQ grill out there onto the truck bed, add some tacky plastic furniture, sit back, drink a Diet Dr. Pepper, and relax...

Tomato Pie

It was too good to share with the kids. (They would just sneer at it and not eat it anyhow.) This and a bowl of chili made for a pretty good dinner. And a pretty good lunch tomorrow as well, I am sure...

October "Hobby"

In the past 6 weeks, I've ended up with more time on my hands than I have had in the previous five years. I've been trying to figure out what my hobbies are lately. I'm sure it's not just sitting on the couch eating potato chips.

One of the things I haven't done a good job with in the past two years is our yard and garden. Last year I completely let it go while I worked on the house. I did ok here and there this year, but must have gotten lazy after the middle of July or so. Things are looking a bit ragged out there.

Since it's October, Winter will be here before we know it. I would like to get our yard, lawn, and garden ready before the Winter, so it all gets off on a good foot for the Spring. Here is what things look like right now, and some of the things that need to be done:

The lawn

I let the lawn grow too long in places, then didn't water. The lawn in many places it's brown, but isn't growing. I need to do some aggressive raking, following by mowing and watering.



Other places need water. The grass is dying. If I start now, they may green up before Winter fully arrives. I hope.


The back has gotten the most water, mostly because of it's proximity to the garden. But it's a forest, and needs to be tamed.

The yard

There is plenty of pruning and weeding to do right now. If I don't get it done now, I won't want to do it in the Winter or early Spring, and it will be June again before I get around to it.

The garden

In the next couple of weeks, we will get a frost, I think. It's hard to say really. It is 86 degrees outside right now, but the high is supposed to be 62 on Tuesday. Most if the stuff I have out there is not frost hardy, and will be done in a few weeks. I would like to get a truck load of compost on the garden this month, since the truck may be deemed non-road worthy next month, and I might not get a chance to get a truck load of compost next Spring. (I will have to start making my own compost, I suppose)

That should keep me this month, I also have two books I need to sit down and read, and the MLB playoffs start next week. It's better than running out of Ruffles...

Monkey-gram in 4 easy steps...

Step one: Gather a slingshot screaming monkey, a piece of paper, a marker, and some velcro strap.

Step two: Write your message.

Step Three: Crumple up the paper, attach to the monkey with the velcro.

Step four: Let the monkey rip. (Warning the person receiving the message with the phrase "Monkey Gram" is purely optional...)



If you want to take it up a notch, you can make a "paragliding screaming monkey-gram..."

Time passes...

Cereal is on sale

Sadly, I am not sure I bought enough.

Children's Health Fair

A few years ago, there was a children's health fair here in town. It was actually pretty good. They had maybe twenty booths inside, a dozen outside, and were giving out helmets to the children. ("Properly fitting helmets") They had booths about washing hands, brushing teeth, electricity, fire, and water safety, and lots of other booths. The girls really liked it and seemed to learn a lot.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from the kids pediatrician's clinic saying they were hosting the 'children's health fair' today. Most of the helmets have either been outgrown or abused (or both), and the kids could use some new ones, and I thought it would be a good idea for them to go through all those booths again. Plus it was something I could take them to do that would keep them busy for a while today.

We went over there, and there weren't all that many cars. I thought that was odd. We went up to the second floor, and right out of the elevators, there were two tables set up. The people there welcomed us to the fair. One table had all kinds of printouts with safety tips. I picked up:

• Tips for getting children to wear bicycle helmets
• Safety tips for home playground equipment
• An 'Emergency Contact' sheet
• Tips for choosing the right size bicycle for your child

They didn't really have anything for the kids to look at, just had Tootsie Rolls for them. The second table was resources for children with behavioral and emotional problems. They were signing people up for evaluations. I didn't sign our kids up.

That was it. Not really what we thought we were getting into. After we left, Ruth must have asked ten times when we were going to the health fair. She just didn't believe that we had already been there.

Anyone out there remember who sponsored this thing last time? Are they going to have another?

The girls may be looking forward to their Mother coming back.

Tara's off visiting her brother for a week. Yesterday no one got naps, and by dinner time they were all tired. Adam fell asleep in his seat. I sent the girls right to bed after dinner.

This afternoon, after lunch, I had each of the three older girls take one of the younger kids in their room to read. I told them to keep reading to them until the younger child falls asleep. I'm actually hoping I end up getting more than three of them asleep.

Tomorrow might be kind of interesting. I've got meetings all morning, I'm going to have to put Kate in charge of getting everyone ready for church. Hopefully they behave themselves in church, they have no one to sit with them tomorrow.

Berries!

Four or five years ago, I planted some raspberry and blackberry starts that I got from a neighbor down the street. Until now, I hadn't gotten any berries at all. I finally got some this year. I ate the first ones yesterday.

I have about another dozen or so berries out there waiting to ripen. They weren't as sweet as berries you get other places in the country, (like back East) but I think that's ok, I kind of liked these.

I look forward to four or five years from now, when I can get another two dozen or so berries again...

Booby traps

This picture is of a desk in my office that has been empty for months. A little while back, we decided to start storing our pop cans in the shelves above the desk. We filled one side while it was taped closed, and started filling the other with guide wires keeping the cans from filling. It was a team project.

Last week, we found out we would be housing a guest for a month from the third floor, while that floor is remodeled. (The building is only a year old. Don't ask...) Anyway, we were excited that our little project would finally come to fruition. The new guy moved in Wednesday, I wasn't there, but he eventually opened the drawer, and out came the cans. The guys missed getting the video. It's still pretty funny.

I've been out for a few days, but I found myself in the office at 5:45am this morning to upgrade a server. I went to my desk to grab an anti-static bag that I had in my cupboard, opened the thing up, and out came all the cans. It was pretty loud. I was pretty tired, and the only thing I could think was "where did they put my stuff?" I opened the other door, and out came another pile of cans. I must be stupid or something. It's funnier now that I am much more awake, I wish I had a video of one of the two events.

Front room is back!

Several weeks ago, we stuffed all the girls into the big front bedroom. This was the bedroom Tara and I have had for 10+ years, but it seemed like it was time to get them all into the same room, get Adam away from them, and reclaim our front room. Tara and I took the little bedroom in the back. We've now got almost all the bookshelves in the front room, and it's a nice quiet place to sit.