ghost of miles

Starting my second time around for this one.

Disc 4, full of prime live late 1930s Basie band broadcasts.

Revisiting this while reading the new 33 1/3 book about it:

I second that emotion! Thanks for posting.

Bob Crosby *has* been a strong possibility, but I haven’t asked Scott about it lately. There was a late 1940s/early 50s Ellington in the works that Sony greenlit and then pulled the plug on. Something similar happened to a proposed Benny Goodman 1940s Columbia small-groups set.

Joshua Diemert at Pinstripe Alley agrees: Robo challenge … sounds good to me, and seems similar to what iirc Dan has advocated for. Will give teams and batters a chance to reverse the obviously blown calls while preserving fluidity for borderline calls and framing. Bring it on, the sooner the better. No love lost here for bad umpiring.

Great indeed!

So yesterday former Yankee pitcher Orlando Hernandez, aka El Duque, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Yankee Stadium and took some photos with Yankee rookie and game starter Luis Gil. Gil went on to rack up 14 strikeouts in 6 IP, breaking El Duque’s team record for most K’s by a rookie in a single game. I love it when things like that happen—reminiscent of David Cone’s perfect game as a Yankee back in 1999. The ceremonial first pitch that day was thrown out by Don Larsen. (As a bonus, Larsen had been chosen because it was Yogi Berra Day, and Yogi was returning to the stadium for the first time in 14 years after being fired by George Steinbrenner 16 games into the 1985 season.) El Duque and Luis Gil

Hey, me too! Such a great set.

Speaking of annihilation… Judge hit one 467 feet into the third deck at Target Field last night:

A recent trip to New York City’s Tenement Museum inspired me to finally get around to reading Mike Gold’s classic novel of Lower East Side life in the early 20th century (Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, published four years after Gold’s work, is an outstanding book covering roughly the same area and period):

CD 1 of the Springsteen Columbus, Ohio show that my youngest brother and I saw a couple of weeks ago. The Boss was in prime form that night:

Not aware of another one, though there's an excellent book about the AAF which you likely already know about (and is admittedly not a bio, but certainly an in-depth account of Miller and the transition from the civilian band to the military band: Next To A Letter From Home: Major Glenn Miller's Wartime Band Recommended to others as well who might have an interest in Miller and/or this particular orchestra, which was an extraordinary one.

Sounding great out of the gate.

Judge has been in MLB for 7+ years without getting ejected prior to this incident, and—as I’ve documented before—is the far-and-away leader when it comes to balls being called strikes. I’ll grant that the call he was protesting was on a borderline pitch that could have gone either way, but it’s amazing to me that Judge went this long without being tossed, given all the blown calls he’s endured since coming up in 2016. Robo-ump is coming, sooner or later, and the game will be the better for it.

Pre-ordered. An appropriate valedictory set for Michael.

This week’s New Yorker cover by artist Faith Ringgold is titled “Sonny’s Bridge, 1986”: