14 Forevermore, Nevermore

On a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon this past weekend the number 14 of Peter Edward Rose was retired to Valhallian perpetuity by the Cincinnati Reds, forever to be officially honored and never again to be worn by another Redleg.  As if.

As one would expect, there was much speechifying:

The Hit King proceeded to give, without prepared remarks, largely the same speech he made 24 hours earlier when inducted into the Reds' team Hall of Fame.  The general consensus is that Pete did well in thanking all those responsible for his latest honors (the Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred, Reds team ownership headed by Robert [he let's me call him "Bob"] Castellini), acknowledging his former teammates both for their role in shaping Pete's own career but also for their own innate greatness, recognizing the players he once managed, and finally paying tribute to the importance of Reds fans in sustaining Pete both on and off the field.

All too soon the ceremony concluded and the mighty Redlegs took the field!

It was good to see former NL MVP Joey Votto wearing his baseball pants - and showing his red stirrups (really just red socks) - in a fashion similar to that of how the Big Red Machine properly wore their uniforms forty years ago.

Most players however, like Jay Bruce for example, did not:

After a few innings hunger drove Lou and I out of the blazing heat and in search of Kahn's Big Red Smokeys.  Smokeys in hand, my quest for tasty ketchup sustenance had me traversing 10 sections along the concourse to find any of that precious red condiment.  Three consecutive days of sell-out crowds rendered the Great American Ball Park a veritable ketchup desert.  Lunch consumed, we paid a visit to the Reds Authentics shop to see what assortment of rare and game-used memorabilia might be for sale.

I spied this Joey Votto game-used jersey sporting a Fort Knox-grade price tag.  A Reds fan standing next to me, himself holding a $300 Tucker Barnhart jersey, asked aloud why the Barnhart jersey was more expensive than the Votto jersey - it was apparent he mistook the price tag for $200.  I directed this fan to look again at the Votto price tag, adding "It has an additional zero."  The fan peered more closely and nearly fainted.  Heat, humidity and highway robbery will do that to those of weak constitution.

Touring the air-conditioned Reds Hall of Fame, further avoiding the near 100-degree Heat Index, Lou and I checked out this year's feature exhibit on bobbleheads:

While a preponderance of the bobbleheads were of Reds players, included in the exhibit were bobbleheads of athletes from other sports, cultural icons, cartoon characters, Hollywood stars, politicians, historical figures, local celebrities and so much more.  One bobblehead in particular caught our attention.  Perhaps I should re-write that previous sentence as One power trio of bobbleheads in particular caught our attention:

Still in the box, too!  Without question a rare collectible bearing a value "beyond price, almost free....."

This was, we think, a significant and appropriate discovery in light of that weekend's celebration of the 1976 BRM considering - too - that 1976 was a pivotal, momentous year in the career of everyone's favorite Canadian rock band!

Up on the third level, Lou and I spied two high-ranking HOF officials boxing up the 1976 World Series trophy and carting it into a storage area (immediately evoking for me the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark) for transport later to the big Pete Rose Hall of Fame gala dinner held downtown at the convention center that evening.  Returning from the Lost Ark warehouse, those same two HOF officials then stopped briefly to discuss where exactly Pete's HOF plaque is to be displayed.  With Lou some distance away reading the Ken Griffey Junior plaque, I was the first non-Reds staffer to learn of this fact!  I summoned Lou and we created our own photographic version using the Pete Rose print handed out to fans in attendance that afternoon:

Sufficiently cooled off, we braved heat stroke and headed back into the ballpark where we encountered this exotic species of Rose fanaticism:

I observed, quietly, to Lou: 

His shirt is his blog.

To which Lou, ever more witty than I, retorted:

It's a "slog."

Reading the shirt was certainly a slog.  See?  Not so witty.  [Insert sad face emoticon here.]

Following the ballgame and a home cooked salmon dinner prepared by Chef Lou that evening, he and I had a few hours-worth of administrative work to conduct which had each of us in one or more vehicles for the better part of three hours.  Naturally our discussion, during the times we shared occupancy in the same automobile, centered around some of the great players in the long and storied history of Cincinnati Reds baseball.  With me at the helm, Lou and his Android burned up the information super highway researching various statistics on players.  It was reminiscent of those halcyon summer Saturdays of late-1970s and early-1980s yesteryear when, after watching This Week In Baseball and during the NBC Game of the Week, we'd bust out the nearly 1,000-page Baseball Encyclopedia and look up the all-time greats.  We'd continually amaze ourselves at all the so-called "black type" (or more accurately "bold type") in the career stats of a Lou Gehrig or Ty Cobb or a Ted Williams.  Looking up all those players and talking about them, sometimes for hours at a time, was a great education in the history of the game.  That was where and how I honed whatever degree of expertise I like to think I possess as it relates to Major League baseball.  At a minimum, that's a root cause for my passionate interest.  

Somewhere along the way, no doubt spurred by the presence of Dave Parker at the ballpark, we got onto the subject of "The Cobra."  Specifically, how awesome a player was the man we call Parkway.  Lou stumbled across this startling Dave Parker fact that would have made less-skilled drivers than me veer off the road and into a tree-lined ditch;  Parker - who made his Major League debut in 1973 with the Pittsburgh Pirates - was drafted in the fourteenth round of the 1970 amateur draft!  

I said the 14th round!!!

Parker was a 7-time All-Star.  He won two batting titles (1977 & 1978).  Was awarded 3 Silver Sluggers and 3 Gold Gloves.  He was the 1978 National League MVP (and four other seasons was Top 5 in MVP voting).  He twice led the NL in slugging.  Twice Parker led the NL in doubles.  Twice the Cobra led the NL in defensive double plays turned by right fielders (he turned nine double plays in 1977!).

And in the 1970 amateur draft the Reds had a dozen opportunities to select Parker, a Cincinnati high school product.

To be fair, in every draft every team can be criticized - with benefit of hindsight - for all the great players they may have missed out on.  In the 2009 amateur draft Mike Trout wasn't selected until the 25th pick (the Reds took Mike "Six Run" Leake that year with the 8th overall pick).   Every team picking before #25 in the '09 draft would like to have a do-over.  

But to think... how much greater would have been the Big Red Machine if they'd have had Dave Parker in the lineup beginning in 1973?  How many more championships might have they won?  It makes for a fun thought experiment.  Which position would Parker play?  Right field is the most logical answer.  But then would have Ken Griffey Senior, right fielder for the BRM, been relegated to the bench?  Or perhaps never have been a Red (with later ramifications regarding Griffey Junior playing for Cincinnati)?  If Parker was assigned to play left field in 1973, that was the position Pete Rose was playing and where the Hit King won the 1973 NL MVP award.  Tony Perez was playing first base by 1973 so Parker wouldn't have played that position.  The ripple effects are endless, but imagine a lineup featuring:

Rose
Morgan
Parker
Bench
Perez
Foster

Mere contemplation of such a construction has my eyes spinning like a dial telephone [credit:  Marty Brennaman.]

In 1970, with Dave Parker still available, the Cincinnati Reds drafted:

#15  Gary Polczynski (SS)
#39  Rex Jackson (P) --- the Yankees took Fred Lynn at #60
#63  Barry Ulsh (P)
#87  Leslie Pinkham (C)
#111 Huey Rice (P)
#159 Richard Kemp (P)
#183 Will McEnaney (P) - the White Sox took Goose Gossage at #198
#207 Greg Sinatro (SS)
#231 Ray Knight (3B)
#255 Ira Damren (1B)
#279 William Smith (C)
#303 Christopher Jones (OF)

And at pick #325 the Pirates selected - nay, stole! - Dave "the Cobra" Parker.

Parker wasn't even the highest-drafted Cincinnati kid.  Some character named William Rothan from Western Hills High School was selected by the California Angels at #298, the Cubbies took a Mike Sylvester out of Moeller with the 283rd overall pick.  Perhaps most stunning of all, Parker wasn't even the first pick selected from his own high school!  With the 26th overall pick, the Indians selected an outfielder named Burnell Flowers, a teammate of Dave Parker.  Ol' Burnell never even had a cup of coffee in the Bigs.  Parker, as you know, was an MVP.

Interestingly for subscribers of HA, the Dodgers selected with the 201st pick a kid by the name of John Snider who hailed from Fairfield-Union High in Lancaster, Ohio - the alma mater of the living legend Mad Mahler.

You can view the entire 1970 amateur draft by clicking here.

And don't get me started on the 1971 draft:

How about this lineup?:

Rose
Morgan
Brett
Bench
Perez
Parker
Foster

Are your eyes spinning like a dial telephone?

Roll the credits!

Breaking News From The Reds HOF

You read it here first;  This is the hallowed spot where the Pete Rose plaque will be on display at the Reds HOF:

Just bragging here, your humble (?) reporter was the first member of the general public to learn of this fact.  Truth!

1976 BRM 40th

This weekend's Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Induction (of Pete Rose on Saturday) and Pete Rose jersey number retirement ceremony (Sunday) was preceded by Friday night's 1976 Big Red Machine World Championship 40th Anniversary celebration.  Lou and I popped for Champions Club seats obtained from a well-known interwebz secondary market.  Here was the view from my second row seat:

On the drive down to the Great American Tilt Yard, Lou and I reviewed that evening's festivities and our plan of attack.  Upon informing Lou the soundtrack for the post-game fireworks was to be a selection of hit songs from 1976, we immediately began speculating as to what we may be subjected to.  

Eagles?  Maybe; not bad.  

Queen, Elton John?  Both awful; this could get ugly.  

With me helming the Jeep Main Battle Tank through a mine field of construction zones and rush hour traffic, scanning the onboard SatNav for real time traffic alerts, Lou utilized his Android to search the Top 40 songs for this same week in 1976 as well as looking up the top 100 songs for the 1976 year.  Often when I find myself on patrol late at night or on weekends when there isn't a Reds game being broadcast I will settle my radio dial on a station playing the Top 40 from some long-ago year, mostly out of a recently discovered fascination I have for all the terrible music from artists I've somehow never heard of but - yet - were wildly popular among the American public for indiscernible reasons.  It's the radio-listening equivalent of rubbernecking car wrecks; You know it's going to be bad but you just can't resist the urge to look - or in this case, listen - and subject yourself to the carnage. 

With alacrity Lou began reading aloud the Top 10 songs from this week in 1976:

#10 - "I'll be Good To You" by The Brothers Johnson
#9  - "Afternoon Delight" by The Starland Vocal Band
#8  - "More, More, More (Part 1)" by the Andrea True Connection
#7  - "Shop Around" by The Captain and Tennille
#6  - "Shannon" by Henry Gross
#5  - "Sara Smile" by Daryl Hall and John Oates
#4  - "Love Hangover" by Diana Ross
#3  - "Misty Blue" by Dorothy Moore
#2  - "Get Up and Boogie (That's Right)" by Silver Connection
#1  - "Silly Love Songs" by Wings

At risk of exposing my limited knowledge of mid-1970s pop music to widespread ridicule from my easy listening subscribers, most of the above list was foreign to me.  Sure, Diana Ross we knew, Wings (and Paul McCartney in general) we loathe.  What children of the 1970s doesn't know of Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennile from their short-lived but seemingly ubiquitous television variety show?  Hall and Oates in the 1970s, I observed, were like the Syd Barrett years for Pink Floyd; largely unknown, mostly unlistenable and practically irrelevant.  We agreed that "Afternoon Delight" with it's lyric about "...Skyrockets in flight..." seemed an obvious choice for the fireworks (evidently it proved too obvious as it was omitted from the fireworks soundtrack; Yes, I'm sad to admit Lou and I both knew the lyrics).  I think "More, More More" is being used currently in a national advertising campaign for some commercial entity.  Otherwise, the rest of this Top 10 has - to my own awareness, at least - been swallowed by the mawing gullet of oblivion.

I think most of my sophisticated music sufficionado Heavy Artillery subscribers are in consensus that so-called pop music is mostly bad, no matter the calendar year.  Yet 1970s pop music surely proved to be the nadir of the species.

As an aside directed to the fillies reading this, isn't it about time you bring back the Dorothy Hamill hair style?

The remainder of this week's 1976 Top 40 was equally atrocious.  Probably more so.  Observe for yourself, here.

Lou's intrepid research suggests the fireworks soundtrack was significantly influenced by Billboard's year-end "Hot 100" singles.  We heard "Silly Love Songs" during the fireworks show.  Also "A Fifth of Beethoven."  Including pre-game and between inning fare we thrice heard "Don't Go Breaking My Heart."  What else Kiki Dee may have done in her presumptive career cannot be proven by me.  Elton John, we all know, achieved great success thanks entirely to The Who.

Now, back to the action!

Severe weather brought in by a cold front in the early morning hours of Thursday  served to lower the heat and humidity for Friday night's game.  

The leading edge brought with it a 2:50am tornado warning, my deep slumber being interrupted by the faint sound of a tornado siren.  I'm surprised I heard it.  An hour and a half later, a strong wind roused me from my sleep again, when I captured the two screenshots above.  Then went back to sleep.  And so on Friday we experienced just about as favorable weather conditions as one should justifiably expect for SW Ohio in late June.

One by one, 40 minutes prior to game time, attending members of the 1976 Big Red Machine were announced and they took their places along the first base line.  Pete Rose was the last to be introduced, it is ultimately his weekend after all, and in the photo below I captured the moment he and Hall of Famer Johnny Bench high-fived one another:

JB made a few brief comments once the team was assembled.

Notably absent from the proceedings was Pete's best friend from his BRM playing days, Joe Morgan.  Little Joe was not in good health during last summer's celebrations surrounding the unveiling of Tony Perez' statue (or is it a sculpture?) and he has since, seemingly, disappeared from public view.  An announcement was made to the public that Morgan was unable to attend the BRM festivities but that he "was there in spirit."  This is all too foreboding.  We all hope Little Joe is OK or that he soon will be OK.  [Going-to-press edit:  During this afternoon's national broadcast, Pete said Joe Morgan was awaiting a bone marrow transplant.]

In the fifth inning, Lou and I repaired to the Champion Club's interior for a feast of yummy grub:

On the evening I had a cheeseburger.  And a hot dog.  And nachos.  And Montgomery Inn BBQ pulled chicken on tortillas.  And a slice of LaRosa's pizza.  And a cinnamon pretzel.  And popcorn.  And two Coca-Colas.  And I should stop now.

MVP!

Bruuuuuce!

The game itself was agonizing.  The Reds didn't pitch, hit or field well.  One bright spot came from the ball yard's dueling JumboTrons which presented the standard in-game data (score, balls/strikes, stats, etc) in a style reminiscent of the black-and-white 8-bit graphics as graced the Riverfront Stadium scoreboard in the 1970s.  Who could ever forget this Riverfront-era classic:

You can purchase a similarly adorned t-shirt here.  I strongly recommend it.

Fortunately for you, my Android disintegrated most of the other 50+ photos I took so this represents just about all I have remaining from the evening. 

After dropping Lou off at his palatial estate among the foothills of Fairfield late that Friday night, the quality of musical selections I ran across on satellite radio steadily improved before then regressing and, oddly, running full-circle:

If you check the clock display, you'll observe that to the Stones I didn't long listen.  Seriously, does anyone?

Roll the credits!

Prophecy Thy Name Is Nigel

In those halcyon days of my college yesteryear, more than 20 years ago, I submitted a paper for a 200-level political science class proctored by Professor Forgette - a close and personal friend of long-time subscriber Dr Phat Daddy - putting forth an iron-clad thesis on the certain failure of what we then referred to as the EEC and what since has transmogrified into the EU.

Big Jeff will be surprised and disappointed to know that I was unable to locate for purpose of sharing here this sacred document amongst my extensive archive.  What my paper proved in brief; While cultural and societal differences among the constituent parties would be an obvious and irritating pressure, the disparate historical precepts of government and governance would be just the second-most serious point of ultimate disunion whereas the primary force for dissolution would be the crushing economic burden which failing European states would place on those fellow European states tasked with keeping the entire misguided apparatus afloat.

As the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher herself was known to assert at various times and with subtle variance, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend."  [For further reference on the subject, see Venezuela.]

In the decades since, the EEC-cum-EU has morphed into a crypto-communist totalitarian bureaucratic regime the kind of which would appeal to the crypto-communist Islamists in our own country's administration, up to and including our Islamist-in-Chief BHO.  How else to explain our President's position against independence for Great Britain?  This is the country in which independence forms a bedrock core of its citizens' DNA.... or at least it did until multiple generations of oppressive Great Society so-called reforms have collectively turned us into Mitt Romney's 47% of dependent brain-dead spiritless slugs (that wasn't his terminology, was it?).

Oft over the past few years where and when appropriate I have linked here on the digital pages of Heavy Artillery assorted video clips of UKIP party leader Nigel Farage assailing the EU right from the lion's den in Brussels.  This was done also, in part, to assuage my own discontent with a Republican Party recently bereft of anything resembling principle or a fighting spirit.  One loyal subscriber to HA once referred to Farage in a private back-channel email as "a loon."  Nigel Farage is a visionary with his finger directly on the pulse of England's man on the street, he is the true and righteous prophet for English sovereignty and the chief bulwark against the Euro-Leftist drive for Liberal fascistic dictatorial control.

Behold the prophecy! 

Roll the credits!

Baseball, June 2016

June 2016 portends to be a big month in the vaunted history of professional baseball's oldest franchise.  For fans of the mighty Redlegs, our long (National League) nightmare is over; In one week's time Peter Edward Rose will have his jersey number retired by the Reds and he'll be inducted into the team Hall of Fame.  A lion's share of the credit must be split between Reds owner Robert (he lets me call him "Bob") Castellini for keeping up the unrelenting pressure applied to the Office of the Commissioner but also to Commissioner Rob Manfred for acceding to the cause of righteous justice and common sense.

In the spirit of using Heavy Artillery to remorselessly pound one's enemy into capitulative submission - and maybe mortal oblivion, take that A. Bartlett Giamatti, Fay Vincent and Bud "Bug" [sic] Selig.

On June 5th I took in the Reds game on a day that was sunny then cloudy and rainy and then sunny again.  You know what they say about the weather in Cincinnati..... yes, correct, the same thing they say about the weather just about everywhere else.  With all the talk this season about trading our savior (circa 2008) Jay Bruce and with the Reds in a desperate bid to unload Dat Showboat BP, I took what could be my last opportunity to get some photos of the Reds three veterans - Votto, Phillips and Bruce - together in one frame:

Here, Votto mans first base, a defensive shift has Dat Dude LOB playing deep in the hole (essentially in short right field) with Bruuuuuce out standing in his field in right.  

Later in the game, the Reds loaded the bases with the same three All-Stars:

MVP on third, Dat Dude E4E4 on second and the Beaumont (TX) Bomber on first.

I tried - mostly in vain - to capture with my trusty Android Galaxy S8000 the June 10th post-game fireworks display down at the old ball yard.  A few photos turned out moderately well:

Most of my efforts were rank amateurism:

One was so bad it might qualify as modern art:

The preceding serves as prelude, of course, to this weekend's upcoming dual celebration of The Hit King's HOF induction/number retirement as well as this weekend's concurrent 40th anniversary commemoration of the Big Red Machine's 1976 World Championship team.  '76 was a magical year and the power of that number permeated Reds Country this summer in unexpected ways:

Old habits die hard and on the eve of Peter Edward's big weekend certain elements in and around baseball have continued in their campaign to marginalize Rose and erase his name from the record books.  Watching MLB Tonight on the MLB Network one evening a few weeks ago, the commentators were discussing a player whose consecutive game hit streak reached 20 games.  The on-air talent, in discussing just how difficult is a consecutive game hit streak of that length, then tried to recall the longest streaks.  Of course they cited the all-time record of 56 games held by The Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio.  Then the discussion went something like this:

"I know that guys have gotten close to DiMaggio.  Paul Molitor had 38 or 39 games, Jimmy Rollins had 38 or 39."

Uh-huh.  

That deafening roar emanating from Reds Country arose from multitudinous Reds fans shouting at their 800-inch 4D high-def televisions that Pete Rose holds the all-time National League record of 44 consecutive games with a hit.   MLB Network, don't act like you don't know that.  Speaking of Jimmy Rollins, you'll recall the controversy surrounding his streak was that it carried over into a following season, something that Major League Baseball had never before counted as official.  In the early 1990s, Reds first baseman Hal Morris ended a season on a lengthy hit streak of his own and it was vociferously asserted by MLB that Hal's streak ended with the final game of that season.  But that was before the 25-year saga of Pete Rose created so many enemies of Peter Edward in MLB and among sports writers/commentators.  

Last week, the effort to erase Pete Rose from the record books came in the guise of Ichiro Suzuki attaining 4,257 combined Japanese League and Major League hits.  Assorted voices proclaimed Ichiro as the new all-time [small caps, here] hit king.  Since his 2001 debut in the American League I have been a massive fan of Ichiro.  Still am.  I think he's great.  He's my favorite non-Red in baseball today.  We know that MLB likes to have their cake and eat it too, particularly in the case of Pete Rose;  He's banned from baseball, but he can take part in on-field activities for the All-Century Team, the All-Star Game, etc., and one doesn't have to look any further than the Dutch Leonard Affair to see examples of allowing some players guilty of wagering games to continue playing while banning Rose.  

Yet this whole Ichiro situation might be the flimsiest of efforts.

MLB recognizes Barry Bonds with his 762 home runs as the all-time home run king and not Sadaharu Oh (with his 868 Japanese League home runs) as the all-time home run king.  Pete's all-time hit record is the Major League record.  The Major Leagues consist of the American League and the National League.  That's it.  No Japanese League team plays in the A.L. or N.L.  Ichiro was awarded the A.L. Rookie of the Year Award following his 2001 season with the Seattle Mariners.  If Ichiro truly was a rookie in 2001, then how - one should ask - on Opening Day 2001 did Ichiro have 1,278 (Japanese League) hits?  Either he stood for the first time in the batters box on Opening Day with the Seattle Mariners as a rookie, and thus with zero hits, or he wasn't a rookie having obtained over twelve hundred hits and should be stripped of his 2001 ROY award.  Ichiro can't have been a rookie and simultaneously have over 1,200 hits.  

Of course, we in Reds Country know the answer that MLB wishes wasn't true.

In the end this latest episode of trying to marginalize Rose only hurts Ichiro, an innocent party to the whole disgraceful effort who gets dragged into an unnecessary and wholly fabricated controversy and whose own unique achievement becomes overlooked and underappreciated.

Roll the credits!