As a frosh in 1987, as part of a project to come in line with NCAA record categories, I used microfiche or film [cannot decipher difference] to research Northwestern football records from 1920s onwards in the university library. I was a Sports Information work study student, and had a blast. Dick Thornton had the school record for most punts [100] without ever having one blocked in Northwestern history. And yes I came across more than a few stories related to Otto Graham.
Also, I've researched Wilt's free throw data in the past and he never came close to shooting that well from the line in any other game. To bring this full circle: one of my classmates in college was the guy who threw the pass to The Big Dipper when he scored his 99th and 100th point--Joe Ruklick, a backup center for Philadelphia who returned for his master's degree in the late 1980s and was in a class with me. Joe was one of the kindest, most self-deprecating guys of all time.
What?! No mention of Mark Whitten's Four Homer game? He tied the MLB single game RBI record! Tying, No less, Sunny Jim Bottomley! Almost, to the Day, 40 years apart! Both played for the St. Louis Cardinals. (Sept. 16th 1924, Sept 7th 1993).
As an aside, Mark Whitten had a cannon for an arm for a Right Fielder. I actually saw him play for Cleveland before they traded him to the Cardinals!
Depends on what you're trying to do. If you have a specific article or file you're trying to access, microfiche is great (back when you had to look up corporate records on microfiche, it was far easier than microfilm). But if you're scrolling to try to find something you don't have a reference for and only know a date range, microfilm can be easier because you can run through a whole reel without having to do anything more. When I looked for my grandmother's immigration records into Canada in 1922 (something I can find in two seconds on Ancestry now, but this was 2002), I really didn't know much. I could scroll through every ship manifest in turn, looking for the telltale sign I'd gotten to the next ship and then look for the surname. It only took me an hour (and then a lot of money to get the Canadian national archives to print it).
When I was in college at Purdue University in the late 70s, Purdue usually had decent football teams (they even went to the Astro-Bluebonnet bowl one year.) One year we were playing Notre Dame and leading 24-14 in the 4th quarter. Injuries caused Notre Dame to bring in their 3rd string quarterback, who led the Irish to a 31-24 comeback win. This seemed pretty unexpected until one considers that the 3rd string QB was Joe Montana. If you heard that now, you probably woudn't be surprised that he did that, in those days, he wasn't JOE MONTANA! yet.
Mea culpa - in my haste, I looked no-hitters rather than perfect games. I guess I can fall back in three 80-point games vs. 24 perfect games (while acknowledging the World Series vs. game in early March).
Joe, can we have some thoughts on Ondrej Satoria, the pitcher for the Czech national team throwing 8 1/3 shutout innings in this WBC, and hanging up his spikes so he can go back to his regular job as an electrician?
Former Toronto Raptor, Malachi Flynn dropped 50 off the bench for the Detroit Pistons. He never really got a chance to play in Toronto, nor anywhere else for that matter, as he was a career bench player for only 5 years, but for one magical game he exceeded his career scoring average nearly 10 fold.
Freshman year at Cook College (Rutgers University--go Scarlet Knights!!!) I was a meteorology major. Part of my financial aid package was work study. Meteorology had its own little building on campus. One professor had me pushing up ceiling tiles snaking wiring thru the building. He also taught me how to solder. A second professor was working on some research and had me spend hours pouring through old weather reports on microfiche looking for 1s and 2s that represented precipitation intensity in and around New Brunswick, NJ.
Funny you should bring up the Shawn Green's 4 HR game. Not being a basketball guy, I asked buddies to put the player (Bam) doing what he did in a baseball context. I asked, "Was this more like Shawn Green or Mike Cameron hitting 4 HRs in a game or more like Scooter Gennett doing it?" They agreed it was more like the former than the latter.
I had to type my thesis on archival paper, no white out, and put the footnotes on the bottom of the page. I take a backseat to no one on that struggle.
didn't happen and it's much, much harder in baseball, especially offensively. I suppose you could play your lesser players and try to do it that way, but on the field of play, there really isn't an equivalent in baseball to passing the ball around without trying to advance down the field. Unless, of course, you tell your batters to not try, but that would fly in the face of all the player's individual goals and would not be likely to happen.
Even without pride, and individual goals, and the difficulty factor - which you're right, might be greater in baseball - it's not obvious that Vinnie Pasquantino would want to sandbag the United States in favor of Mexico.
It sure sounds like DeRosa screwed up. But come on, the guys he played were still way better than the lineup the Italians put out. I think the bigger problem is that Team USA has promised to get the pitchers the work they need, results be damned. Which is the only way they get those players to start with. But if a pitcher has a bad game, you're stuck with him for 3 or 4 innings regardless.
Well the 1960 Yankees were a way better team than the Pirates.
In baseball you are doing quite well winning 60% of your games. And you lose to some clearly inferior teams. How many games have the superstar Dodgers lost to highly inferior teams over the last several years. More than you’d think.
At least DeRosa is Italian. It's a brotherhood. And, since I am full-blooded Italian I can say this, "Italians always play the goofball or the assassin on TV." He was just following script!
My first year in grad school I taught freshman chemistry. I gave a quiz each Friday, and I wrote them out by hand on "masters" for a ditto machine aka spirit duplicator. I would then load the master onto a rotating drum to print them out. That was 1992 and I still clearly remember the smell.
I had to look up the difference between microfilm and microfiche. In my memory I had used microfilm but not microfiche. Apparently I was using microfiche (and never microfilm) all along...
The headliner pitchers are great (Skubal, Skenes, Webb, Mason Miller). The rest of the pitchers are at least as good as anybody on most of the other rosters, but there are certainly better options available.
Except for Kershaw. He's retired, for god's sakes. And it looks like he's not in the best of shape either.
As a frosh in 1987, as part of a project to come in line with NCAA record categories, I used microfiche or film [cannot decipher difference] to research Northwestern football records from 1920s onwards in the university library. I was a Sports Information work study student, and had a blast. Dick Thornton had the school record for most punts [100] without ever having one blocked in Northwestern history. And yes I came across more than a few stories related to Otto Graham.
Also, I've researched Wilt's free throw data in the past and he never came close to shooting that well from the line in any other game. To bring this full circle: one of my classmates in college was the guy who threw the pass to The Big Dipper when he scored his 99th and 100th point--Joe Ruklick, a backup center for Philadelphia who returned for his master's degree in the late 1980s and was in a class with me. Joe was one of the kindest, most self-deprecating guys of all time.
I’m all in on Joe’s column on the “enchanting but absurd myth of Mike Tyson”.
I assume I should look for it just after the iPad review.
What?! No mention of Mark Whitten's Four Homer game? He tied the MLB single game RBI record! Tying, No less, Sunny Jim Bottomley! Almost, to the Day, 40 years apart! Both played for the St. Louis Cardinals. (Sept. 16th 1924, Sept 7th 1993).
As an aside, Mark Whitten had a cannon for an arm for a Right Fielder. I actually saw him play for Cleveland before they traded him to the Cardinals!
Microfiche was way easier to use than the film.
Depends on what you're trying to do. If you have a specific article or file you're trying to access, microfiche is great (back when you had to look up corporate records on microfiche, it was far easier than microfilm). But if you're scrolling to try to find something you don't have a reference for and only know a date range, microfilm can be easier because you can run through a whole reel without having to do anything more. When I looked for my grandmother's immigration records into Canada in 1922 (something I can find in two seconds on Ancestry now, but this was 2002), I really didn't know much. I could scroll through every ship manifest in turn, looking for the telltale sign I'd gotten to the next ship and then look for the surname. It only took me an hour (and then a lot of money to get the Canadian national archives to print it).
When I was in college at Purdue University in the late 70s, Purdue usually had decent football teams (they even went to the Astro-Bluebonnet bowl one year.) One year we were playing Notre Dame and leading 24-14 in the 4th quarter. Injuries caused Notre Dame to bring in their 3rd string quarterback, who led the Irish to a 31-24 comeback win. This seemed pretty unexpected until one considers that the 3rd string QB was Joe Montana. If you heard that now, you probably woudn't be surprised that he did that, in those days, he wasn't JOE MONTANA! yet.
He also had the flu and a 103 temperature that day!
Oh sorry that was the 1979 Cotton Bowl game
Don Larsen's feat was impressive because it was in the World Series, but no-hitters are way more common than 80+ (or even 70+) games in the NBA.
To each their own, but 22 perfect games since 1901 vs. IIRC 11 70 point games since 1946 isn't, in my mind "way more."
Mea culpa - in my haste, I looked no-hitters rather than perfect games. I guess I can fall back in three 80-point games vs. 24 perfect games (while acknowledging the World Series vs. game in early March).
Joe, can we have some thoughts on Ondrej Satoria, the pitcher for the Czech national team throwing 8 1/3 shutout innings in this WBC, and hanging up his spikes so he can go back to his regular job as an electrician?
https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/mlb/news/why-ondrej-satoria-standing-ovation-tokyo-dome-world-baseball-classic/869db53db7fbe25fd2ad7fa9
Former Toronto Raptor, Malachi Flynn dropped 50 off the bench for the Detroit Pistons. He never really got a chance to play in Toronto, nor anywhere else for that matter, as he was a career bench player for only 5 years, but for one magical game he exceeded his career scoring average nearly 10 fold.
Freshman year at Cook College (Rutgers University--go Scarlet Knights!!!) I was a meteorology major. Part of my financial aid package was work study. Meteorology had its own little building on campus. One professor had me pushing up ceiling tiles snaking wiring thru the building. He also taught me how to solder. A second professor was working on some research and had me spend hours pouring through old weather reports on microfiche looking for 1s and 2s that represented precipitation intensity in and around New Brunswick, NJ.
Funny you should bring up the Shawn Green's 4 HR game. Not being a basketball guy, I asked buddies to put the player (Bam) doing what he did in a baseball context. I asked, "Was this more like Shawn Green or Mike Cameron hitting 4 HRs in a game or more like Scooter Gennett doing it?" They agreed it was more like the former than the latter.
I did all my Uni research on microfiche. And typed out my assignments. My kids would never understand our struggle.
Polio and smallpox? Shoot, grandma, I had to change a ribbon!
I had to type my thesis on archival paper, no white out, and put the footnotes on the bottom of the page. I take a backseat to no one on that struggle.
As someone pointed out on Bluesky, Italy and Mexico have an opportunity to do the baseball version of the Disgrace of Gijón.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n
didn't happen and it's much, much harder in baseball, especially offensively. I suppose you could play your lesser players and try to do it that way, but on the field of play, there really isn't an equivalent in baseball to passing the ball around without trying to advance down the field. Unless, of course, you tell your batters to not try, but that would fly in the face of all the player's individual goals and would not be likely to happen.
Even without pride, and individual goals, and the difficulty factor - which you're right, might be greater in baseball - it's not obvious that Vinnie Pasquantino would want to sandbag the United States in favor of Mexico.
Da Rosa’s brain dead moment makes me feel a lot better about driving a half hour through a monsoon to a doc appointment one day early.😵💫🤪
It sure sounds like DeRosa screwed up. But come on, the guys he played were still way better than the lineup the Italians put out. I think the bigger problem is that Team USA has promised to get the pitchers the work they need, results be damned. Which is the only way they get those players to start with. But if a pitcher has a bad game, you're stuck with him for 3 or 4 innings regardless.
The thing is as manager of a team like this he does not have a not to do. Perhaps he has one thing and only one thing to do and he forgot to do it.
Well the 1960 Yankees were a way better team than the Pirates.
In baseball you are doing quite well winning 60% of your games. And you lose to some clearly inferior teams. How many games have the superstar Dodgers lost to highly inferior teams over the last several years. More than you’d think.
At least DeRosa is Italian. It's a brotherhood. And, since I am full-blooded Italian I can say this, "Italians always play the goofball or the assassin on TV." He was just following script!
Arthur Fonzarelli says "Hey, whoooooa!"
Joey Tribiani. The Gen Z Fonzarelli!
I remember microfiche because using an actual fish through the machine would have been easier.
My first year in grad school I taught freshman chemistry. I gave a quiz each Friday, and I wrote them out by hand on "masters" for a ditto machine aka spirit duplicator. I would then load the master onto a rotating drum to print them out. That was 1992 and I still clearly remember the smell.
I had to look up the difference between microfilm and microfiche. In my memory I had used microfilm but not microfiche. Apparently I was using microfiche (and never microfilm) all along...
Three things about the USA being in peril of being knocked out in the WBC:
1. Baseball is weird
2. The USA lineup is stacked but the pitching staff is not
3. We can stop worrying as soon as Mexico scores at least five or Italy scores at least four, unless, God forbid, they go into extra innings...
Did I mention, baseball is weird?
The headliner pitchers are great (Skubal, Skenes, Webb, Mason Miller). The rest of the pitchers are at least as good as anybody on most of the other rosters, but there are certainly better options available.
Except for Kershaw. He's retired, for god's sakes. And it looks like he's not in the best of shape either.
James Paxton, on the other hand, is pitching quite well for Canada. The Big Maple is living up to his nickname.
Haven't thought about Paxton in a long time. What a career he could have had if he could have stayed healthy.