Neal Pomea

Fun at the game last night! Got to see Pujols hit a rocket home run, but the Nationals later rallied with 6 in the seventh inning to win 8-6 with Clippard pitching the 8th and Storen the 9th. An energized crowd for a team in the cellar. 4 wins in a row is news for the Nationals.

Before I got a cell phone just a few years ago, a co-worker used to try to shame me into getting one. Said even the homeless had cell phones. Well, of course. Where would they put a landline, Sherlock? I hate it when people try to shame you about your rate of technology adoption. Bad taste.

Just adding that I switched allegiance to the Washington Nationals in 2005, and that turned out to be the very year, the only year the Astros went to the World Series! They were swept in 4 games by the White Sox, but it was a great series with each game possibly going either way.

Consider the odds of a Baltimore-Washington World Series ever happening!

I rooted for the Houston Colt 45s/Astros from their inception until 2005 when Washington got the Expos franchise. Now I am on the ground floor with this team.

Agreed! It took about 3 hours to upload my 20 GB to the Amazon Cloud. I let Amazon select the music just to see what it would do. Now I am going through and deleting what I don't want on the Cloud, or the stuff that it took from my hard drive and for which it had no indexing information. (I have digitized a lot of my lp and 45 collection over the years, then when I put some of that stuff on iTunes I took pains to index it all very carefully. But AC took not only iTune, indexed songs but also "unindexed" songs from folders other than iTunes. Now it's a pain to sort and I don't see any way to edit song titles, etc.) I would call this a product in Beta.

Anyone trying this? Comments on your experience? I am giving this a try. You start with a measly 20 GB free then have to pay some more for additional space. I will use it to put music on my Motorola (Droid) phone and hopefully play that back in my car. Right now I think Apple and Amazon are in competition. They'll have to guard their cloud warehouses like Fort Knox! Don't know if this computing centralized who knows where is really a good idea. Maybe for music files and that's all.

Thanks for the history, Jeff!

Midnight Blues, from Bunk Johnson "The King of the Blues," American Music Records AMCD-1. Can't get that song out of my head! Bunk Johnson, trumpet George Lewis, clarinet Jim Robinson, trombone Baby Dodds, drums Lawrence Marrero, banjo Alcide Pavageau, bass

Obits for Jim Northrup (Detroit Tigers) and Jose Pagan (Pittsburgh Pirates)

Hard fought series with the Giants, 2-1 in favor of the defending World Champs. Now it's off to San Diego.

Not sure anyone can hold a candle these days to Bryce Harper, the Washington wunderkind now laboring in the low minors. After stopping to admire his long ball handiwork the other night for an exaggerated length of time, and pissing off the pitcher in the process, he gave him a pucker as he trotted between third and home. I think if I was this kid, I'd either dial it down a notch or reinforce the padding in my batting helmet. It's exactly because he doesn't do that shit is one of the reasons why I admire Chase Utley. Doesn't matter if he hits a home run or strikes out he never changes the expression on his face. It's all business. Harper could use a lesson or two from the real professionals. I hope he won't come near the big league team until he stops pulling this kind of stunt and loses the warpaint on his face.

Hearing the Eureka Brass Band NO Funeral and Parade cd right now! Powerful stuff. I am thankful this music was recorded.

Bunk Johnson King of the Blues, Wooden Joe Nicholas, and Eureka Jazz Band New Orleans Funeral and Parade are now shipped! Can't wait to hear these and make my next order of stuff from this label! Will be returning to the thread of brass bands for more recommendations.

Columbian District won a nice split with Phoenix today in 11 innings. We haven't won too many extra inning games, or one run games, this season! Hope this takes us on our way to inching toward .500.

Nice link to the Google Books presentation of this excerpt.

That's pretty literary! Who knew Ty Cobb had a way with words.

The Gunsmoke TV show was broadcast in Cajun French on either KLFY Channel 10 or KATC Channel 3 in Lafayette, Louisiana in the early 1960s. Would love to hear that, or have heard it. One of the great western serials. Thank you, Mr. Erness

From our Columbian District, nice first win for John Lannan over Philadelphia (he was 0-10!), and save for Storen. (Hot for day games here!)

Respect. Espinosa had 8 HRs before today's game. You can't look just at average.

A rule change would make sense to me. For one thing, even in a situation where a runner goes from home to first inside the line and blocks a throw to first from the catcher, it's ruled interference by the runner. It is much more of an interference when a catcher is blocking home plate and gives the runner from third no option but to collide and try to dislodge the ball. By the way, this can injure either the runner OR the catcher. It is dangerous for both. The catcher is never jumping away at the last second to avoid the slide and collision in self-protection the way a second basemen or shortstop may do in a double play situation, etc. We can't eliminate all dangers from the game, nor should we, but it is worth remembering that we are also not in the 1910s anymore, when players were much smaller and lighter and the danger of these kinds of collisions was much less than it is today. The rule today is allowing for football-like contact, but without the padding for the runner, at the very least.

Posey is definitely blocking the plate. I think the rule should be that the runner is safe even if he is tagged out in this instance due to catcher interference. The runner should not be encouraged by present rules to run over the catcher with the prospect of dislodging the ball.

Amazing, isn't it?

Thanks! The link at the bottom of the page on Team Names was pretty good too.

Scary picture. He didn't look well in that photoshoot. Where was he? Behind the walls of Redwing?