Dave James

Good thing Dan has sworn off the Red Sox. After Boston went up 9-0 in the bottom of the fifth inning, the Yankees have scored 12 runs and now lead by three in the top of the eighth. Yikes! UPDATE: Final score: Yanks 15, Sox 9. I'd have sworn I heard the fat lady singing after the fifth inning, but it must've been my imagination.

I hate to admit this, but I've never heard of Phillip Humber. Needless to say, I have now. The 21st perfect game in MLB history. Nice.

The Rolaids Relief Man award has been given out since 1976. One in each league. Last year's winners were Detroit's Jose Valverde and Milwaukee's John Axford.

My understanding is that there's a general move away from restorations; that collectors are, at least for the time being, more interested in cycles and cars that are in their original condition. On the most recent installment of Chasing Classic Cars on Velocity TV, Wayne Carini bought a pre-1920's cycle from the Tom Hartung collection that looked every second of its age and came with a sidecar that was more like an upholstered easy chair. He paid $48,000 for the privilege. I couldn't believe it.

I went last year, but just to see a local band that was playing in store. Kind of much ado about nothing. This year, one of the interesting limited editions (4,200 copies world wide) on offer is a 180 gram LP featuring the longest version of Dark Star ever performed by the Grateful Dead. It clocks in at over 40 minutes. I would definitely like to get ahold of that one.

The two guys on American Pickers would shit in their Post Toasties if they came across one of these.

Got to disagree with that. A reliever's W-L record means very little. The Cy Young award is really an MVP (Most Valuable Pitcher). To blow off someone who was instrumental in winning 55 (not 72) games and who in the process carded an ERA of a buck twenty (the only one lower since the AL and NL started splitting the award in 1967 was Bob Gibson's 1.12 in 1968) with a simple "C'mon" is just wrong. The Dodgers won 85 games in 2003, so Gagne has a direct hand in 65% of their victories. In addition to his 55 saves, he finished 67 games. That year, he struck out 137 batters in just 82.1 innings. That's an unheard of 15 strikeouts on a per nine inning basis. You just can't thumb your nose at numbers like these. It's nothing less than total domination. IMO, Gagne more than deserved the Cy Young in '03.

Wasn't Grogan the guy who was part of the San Francisco countercultural group called The Diggers?

Not surprising considering the obvious deterioration in his health over the last few years. Dick Clark, America's oldest teenager. Back in the day, if you were going to go anywhere in the music business, there were two TV shows you had to be on; Ed Sullivan and American Bandstand. Personally, I was more a fan of two other Clark shows, the Saturday night Dick Clark Show (remember the IFIC buttons? "Beechnut Gum, it's flavor-IFIC") and his weekday afternoon show, Where The Action Is. As had been pointed out by others, that was the springboard to fame for our own local Portland, Oregon band, Paul Revere & The Raiders. Not sure if there was anyone who was more influential in the sale of rock to the masses that was Dick Clark.

Probably not. Both the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are in extremely high demand at air shows across the country. For one thing an appearance by either team pretty much guarantees the show will draw thousands of additional spectators. The Angels have been at the Hillsboro Air Show three or four times and the Thunderbirds once. It makes a huge difference in the size of the crowd. And for good reason. On a nice, clear Summer day when they can do their high show, they're about as spectacular as it gets.

Not too hard to believe.

P-38 Lightning. The P-51 was a Mustang. For those of you on the board who are interested in antique aircraft you might find this website interesting. It's called TIGHAR. This group is currently involved in an attempt to locate Amelia Earhart's missing Lockheed Electra in the deep waters off Nikumaroro, a small island in the South Pacific, but they also do historic aircraft recovery and restoration. Here's a link: My link

This is from Paul Lukas who writes a column for ESPN and blogs on his own under the name UniWatch. I sent this picture to Paul and he replied thusly: The last players not to wear a facemask were Pat Studstill and Bobby Joe Green. Studstill wore a one bar facemask with Detroit as a receiver and wore a different helmet without a facemask while punting for the Rams until 1971. Green served as the Bear's punter through 1974. Tommy McDonald was the last player other than a kicker or punter to not wear a facemask What may be more impressive is that (redacted) played on the defensive line for the Boston Patriots wiithout a facemask until 1964. Note that I refrained from letting the cat out of the bag,

Allen, Those last lines in limericks are a bitch aren't they?

He was just a spring chicken when he did Thrust. Secrets didn't come for two more years. By then, he was a jaded and bitter old man. Friends have told me that around that time, they'd see Herbie on a street corner in NYC holding a sign that read "WILL FUNK FOR FOOD".

There once was a man from Chicago For whose music, most of us did go. He cut his teeth with Miles Davis, But for funk he did leave us To him I can listen no mo'.

Rather than being a 70 year old "starving artist"? Uh, yeah, let's send him to the fields for wanting that, the damn ingrate. What's wrong with The Jazz Plantaion, huh? Herbie was 34 years old when he did Thrust.

Reaching out in acknowledgement to a commercial audience I would have bought the 45. If only I'd known. Herbie Michiru? Monday Hancock?

With respect to selling out, how would you view the following jazz luminaries: Stanley Turrentine Gerald Wilson Count Basie Chuck Mangione Art Blakey Maynard Ferguson Alfred Lion I guess I'm arguing that anyone who has at some point decoupled from their muse almost always does so based on economics. I don't think Herbie is any different. He's certainly smart enough to realize that interest in the kind of music to which he had devoted his life was drying up. Time to switch gears in order to remain hip, relevant and, most importantly, marketable.

Marion Campbell?

Like 'em or not, there's no denying The Bee Gees influence on popular music. Health wise, between what befell Andy, Maurice's passing and now Robin, the family appears to be somewhat star crossed. http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/14/showbiz/robin-gibb-coma/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Translated, this simply means "He started making music for which I was not the intended audience". No argument there. However, other mainstream artists who were in the same position as Hancock chose to honor their roots. I don't begrudge him the choices he made, I just don't have the same respect I would have had for him if he'd stayed the course. "Roots"? Which roots are we talking about here? Seems to me that making music for a R & B audience and/or a "crossover" audience was in the mix from the git-go. Also seems to me that as opportunities presented themselves, Herbie capitalized. Initiative and ambition are roots too! I say it still comes down to, "I don't really like Disco or Techno or Whatever, so Herbie "sold out" when he decided to explore those avenues and had success doing so". Not that it was all good, it wasn't. But it was not good because it was not good Disco or Techno or Whatever, not because it was Disco or Techno or Whatever. This notion of "selling out"...it exists, but it's not nearly as black-and-white as a lot of people want it to be. We'll have to agree to disagree on the meaning of "roots". To me, it means where someone came from. In a musical context, the genesis of one's artistry. Frankly, I don't see what Herbie did as being that much different than what Rod Stewart did when he started singing standards. Sell out? To each his own. The only person who knows for sure is the one who made the decision. The rest of us can only speculate.

Translated, this simply means "He started making music for which I was not the intended audience". No argument there. However, other mainstream artists who were in the same position as Hancock chose to honor their roots. I don't begrudge him the choices he made, I just don't have the same respect I would have had for him if he'd stayed the course.

Hancock is as polarizing a figure as there's been in the history of jazz. His early recordings all the way back to the Donald Byrd days are, IMO, indispensable. After a certain point, though, when popularity, money and fame became more important than credibility, he sold-out. There's no denying his talent, but when you focus that talent on the kind of projects he seems to have been drawn to over the last 30 or so years, who cares?