Thursday 5/11/23
I've been sick for the past two days and it's been annoying and undermining. Now it's after midnight and I'm pounding cranberry juice and doing push-ups in the hall. I've had enough of this.
There is a lot to get up on here and much has been happening and being made and worked on over the last week. I will do it in time--soon--so as to document it all the proper way.
I also need to work harder than I ever have--by a lot--and fight more than I ever have, also by a lot. I have gone to new levels in terms of what I'm creating, but I need to go to new levels, also, in terms of how much I'm doing and my battles on the various fronts.
I did 100 push-ups yesterday and have been doing that number every day. On Tuesday I walked three miles, but that was it for that day and yesterday. I am run down with whatever this sickness is. Flu, perhaps. I don't know. I've had a wad of tissue paper up at least one nostril for the past seven hours. The skin under my nose is raw from blowing my nose and I should put some Vaseline there. On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I had run 5000 stairs each day, but I'm not going to run stairs again until this is all gone or mostly all gone because I don't want to make it worse. That will do me no good. Sometimes I have to restrain myself, but I am trying to be sensible.
I had remarked that I believed that Ty Cobb finishing in the top ten for OBP twenty-one times was the most anyone had ever finished in the top ten in any category in baseball history. People might wonder where I get my numbers from. It's all what I knew, what I found out, and my own research. There isn't anyone or any source I get it from. Today it occurred to me that there was one player who might have equaled or even surpassed that Cobb number, and it was a special case. Not really a hitting case, but a base running one. And sure enough, Rickey Henderson finished in the top ten in steals twenty-two times. Cobb finished in the top ten for batting average twenty times. He hit .338 in 1924, but that landed him outside of the top ten. Cobb was such an amazing ballplayer. At worst, the second best of all-time. Also proof of what a lazy filmmaker Ken Burns is, with his "research," which consisted of repeating Al Stump's lies and looking no deeper than that.
I did see the end of the Red Sox game tonight as I was lying there in my drool and mucus. I thought it was an important game for them, having lost two in a row after the eight-game winning spurt. Kenley Jansen finished off the last guy with this nasty slider. He looks better than I thought he was going to.
I was discussing the best four-man rotation the other day in baseball history, then it occurred to me after that maybe I should have had Satchel Paige there. If it was a five-man rotation I'd definitely have Paige. He may be the best pitcher there has been. It's hard to know given that he was kept out of the big leagues for so long, but as I wrote once in an op-ed, that he was so good when he got there at the late age--baseball-wise--has to tell you something.
Vida Blue died the other day. I was sorry to see that. He was only in his early seventies. I think Blue is a Hall of Fame pitcher. He's hurt by not having been better in the postseason. I don't have an explanation for why he wasn't, but he was consistently not very strong in October. I don't believe that's what kept him out, but a signature October moment or more strong pitching in line with his regular season self could have helped.
Was looking at Hank Aaron's postseason stats today, which are never discussed. They should be--he was a postseason beast. Three series in total. He hit .362 with 6 home runs in only 69 at-bats and 16 RBI in 17 games. When I was a kid, you heard about how amazing Aaron was, but he was actually better than people said he was, and they were saying he was awesome. In many ways, the perfect ballplayer, as I also wrote in an op-ed once. When I think of a ballplayer, I think of Hank Aaron first. He's always the guy who comes to mind for me before anyone else.
And now back to push-ups and watching Anthony Mann Westerns with James Stewart.
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