Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #634 - Welcome Back Baseball
Hi Mom,
April Fool's!! Tomorrow is actually the start of Baseball season.
I went out to visit Dad today, and we walked to the church. We visited your Memorial, Mom, and where we buried your ashes.
Then we had breakfast and did some things back at the condo.
We talked about how we missed you, Mom, and how we wish we had diagnosed you better in 2000 to avoid all of this that happened to you.
I miss Baseball, too, but it's hardly the same. Not even in the same league. heh.
Still, Baseball is an easy thing to miss because it always comes back in the spring. My, my, how metaphorical. It dies in the Fall and is reborn in the Spring. Gee wiz.
Whizbang.
I am still on a Cubs kick because, well, you know, THEY WON THE WORLD SERIES!!
Tigers and Cubs.
These are my two favorite teams in both Baseball and in all of sports.
As a long suffering fan of both, I had seen only TWO World Series championships before last year. So, now it's three:
2017 Chicago Cubs
1984 Detroit Tigers
1968 Detroit Tigers
And I was pretty young in 1968. I really enjoyed that 1968 championship more when I got into Baseball around 1970-71.
Anyway, now I am a fan (a long suffering fan) of the WORLD CHAMPIONS.
It feels really good.
But I am not counting on a repeat.
Repeats are hard.
But Baseball is back. The Cubs have their first game of the 2017 season tomorrow, Sunday, night, against the Cardinals in St. Louis. The Tigers open the season Monday afternoon (4:10 p.m.) in Chicago against the White Sox.
I wish my teams well.
In celebration of the return of Baseball season, here's TWO T-shirts reprints. I could edit them and take out text about the T-shirt blog process, but I didn't; I won't.
These were originally presented in:
Saturday, March 8, 2014
T-shirt #352 - Cub Fan - Bart Man
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
As I count down to March 22nd, when it all began last year for this blog, there's going to be quite a few Baseball shirts (which if you recall I deify with a capital letter). Since I already shared all but one of my Detroit Tigers shirts, and I am saving that last Tigers shirt for the final week, you will probably see several CUBS T-shirts, as I have quite a few remaining.
Also, given that I am still behind, I am trying to avoid falling farther behind by not posting any more incomplete entries. To accomplish this goal, I have to keep it short and simple.Baseball's spring training has begun. Players have reported and games begin soon.
I am starting to get excited again for Baseball season.
I am a bit of a stats nut, as I have mentioned before, so getting ready for Baseball season again means pouring over stats and planning my FANTASY BASEBALL TEAMS.
USA Today did a smart thing by hiring Ron Shandler and launching its own exclusive chats service with
BASEBALL HQ.
I am a subscriber both to this service, which means I receive the stats-tastic excellence of the BASEBALL FORECASTER book, AND a subscriber to SPORTS WEEKLY, which used to be Baseball Weekly, which I can now read on my tablet as well as in paper form.I have spent many long hours considering complex measures of hitting and pitching to optimize playing Fantasy Baseball games which I do for free and for which I earn no money. Seems a bit crazy. I love it.
A friend of my wife's and mine is trying to engage in political debate on Facebook, and I care for very little for that debate or politics compared to Baseball.
Time for Baseball.
Let's PLAY BALL!!
THE BLOG'S FUTURE
Lastly, I have made an executive decision about the blog about which I plan to expound in future entries. This decision has to do with focusing almost exclusively on shirts I already owned when I started the blog to finish out my remaining, as of today, 24 entries. I over-indulged in asking for gifts of T-shirts for Christmas and my Birthday, and I now have far more T-shirts than I need to complete my remaining 24 daily entries.
So what's next? For the next three weeks and three days, I will continue to post with T-shirts from my collection for the most part from the time I started the blog. I cannot promise that I will not be inspired to share a new shirt, but I want to take my time with many of these longer essays that I have been planning and do not seem to be able to complete, especially since I am having trouble even keeping up with short to moderate daily entries.
Once I reach March 22nd, daily entries will cease. I will begin to work on these longer entries on the newer shirts and the remaining shirts that do not get posted and share them with you on a weekly basis. At least that's the plan. I may get inspired and post more often. I may also take a break before the next T-shirt post. I suspect I will be a bit worn out after posting one T-shirt a day for 365 days straight!!
I am also going to devote myself more regularly to fiction writing, which will become part of my new blog and Internet presence post the year of T-shirts. This will also mean more regular blog entries (short bits) from the source blog, SENSE OF DOUBT.
Stay Tuned!
HIATUS TEXT: REVISED 1402.18: I have been trying to maintain a hiatus from large or over involved blog posts beginning with the start date of my hiatus on January 20th (almost a month ago) during which time I logged 21 posts, which I consider "Hiatus Shirts." By this term, Hiatus Shirt, I mean the shirt is not one that would cause me to write a great deal on the subject it features. These are shirts about which I can write anything, either a lot or a very little. The hiatus will continue, though as it has for the last few weeks, not consecutively as I will continue to mix Hiatus and Non-Hiatus shirts. The blog's year (365 shirts) draws close to a close. (I like the double word use in that previous sentence.) I hope to finish strong with some good entries with high quality content and imagery on some beloved subjects. To earn this time, I will need to intersperse shirts of little consequence, what I have come to call Hiatus Shirts.
My original goal of working ahead remains. I need time to write the enormously lengthy text to complete the extensive love letter to certain beloved popular culture icons featured on my many special shirts. Even with "Hiatus Shirts," I will try to share some worthy content as I have either an idea, a new suggestion of something to read/look at/listen to, or another installment of my various features, such as the WHY T-SHIRTS item, the WEEKLY COMIC BOOK LISTS, and the SHIRT I AM ACTUALLY WEARING TODAY among others. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.
Thanks for reading. I am always honored that people have taken some of their valuable time to look at my ongoing web writing project. Keep checking this address. I promise to make it worthwhile.
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- chris tower - 1402.25 - 19:49
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TODAY'S COUNT: 13 blog posts remaining in the T-shirt year!!
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T-shirt #352 - Cub Fan - Bart Man
Baseball season is upon us, and I am making my nefarious plans for my Fantasy Baseball Empire with my first draft tonight.
Actually, I am going to wing it. I don't have time to prepare my own stats log and analysis, so I am going with the work of Baseball Forecaster and my own reasonable intuition for this league, in which I placed eighth of twelve last year. I think I can beat that record.
I did not win any of my leagues last year. The best I finished was second out of eight. I finished fourth in the league I run (TIGER TOWNE), third of eight in a league run by my friend Craig, and sixth of twelve in a New England league. I was kicked out of a rotisserie league run by a crazy madman, so I decided to reboot his league with the other players who may well be disgruntled.
Today, I am renewing the "hiatus shirt" mandate in order to possibly catch up by Monday on the seven incomplete blog entries found elsewhere via my main address. They are now sufficiently buried so as not be so persistent to my psyche's wellness, and yet, I know they are there.
Several gravitational anomalies aligned in the galaxy to produce this blog, which originally had been schedule as not one other but two other shirts.
And then I saw this: 365 Days of KirbyTech, Day 66: The Finkatronic Ray, which reminded me of my Cub Fan Bart Man T-shirt as a herald (get it? If you're a comic geek given my picture of Homer-Galactus below, you will get it.) of SPRING and BASEBALL SEASON.
I have given shouts to both the BULLY SAYS COMICS OUGHTA BE FUN and the wonderful Pencil Ink blog, and this morning I decided to let those bloggers know of my appreciation for their efforts with comments on their sites.
Bully is doing a 365 Days of Kirby Tech series, which, yesterday, manifested as tech from the Simpsons comic. Wonderful stuff. Here's one of the pics he shared from Panels from "Captain Cupcake and Pieboy!" in Simpsons Super Spectacular #5 (July 2007), script by Mike W. Barr, pencils by James Lloyd, inks by Andrew Pepoy, colors by Rick Reese, letters by Karen Bates.
Meanwhile, I decided to post -- pretty much -- just pictures today. So here, we go (with a little text in between, D'oh!!) Okay, Don't have a cow, man.
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There are 21 entries (including today's) in my Baseball category, which is a sport name that -- as you may or may not know -- I like to deify with a capital letter.
I featured the shirt that goes with this hat in T-shirt #182.
Here's some text from that blog:
T-shirt #80: Detroit Tigers est. 1901 may be my best Baseball post so far, though T-shirt #115: Chicago Cubs est. 1876 also shares a great deal of good Baseball stuff. I love the sense of history. I love the stats. I love my teams.
But it's all best summed up by this quote from the great Ernie Harwell:
"Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words. A carnival without kewpie dolls. Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Season to season."
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When I saw this T-shirt, I had to have one. I like the Simpsons, but I would not characterize myself as a massive Simpsons fan like some folks.
"Don't Have a Cow, Harry!" refers to Harry Caray, former announcer for the Chicago Cubs, who always used to say "Holy Cow!" and since Bart Simpson often says "Don't Have a Cow, Man" then this is a great joke connection.
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Harry Caray died in 1998. Here's a little weird irony: in the 2003 playoffs, one of the Cubs few post-season appearances in the last 20 years. In October of 2003, the Cubs were playing in the National League Championship series against the Florida Marlins (who won the World Series that year), there's one incident that is defined as the losing moment for that Cubs team, preventing them from advancing to the World Series. It has come to be known as the STEVE BARTMAN INCIDENT.
Lifelong Cubs fan Steve Bartman interfered with a catch by Cubs outfielder Moisés Alou. Had Alou caught that ball for the out, the Cubs would have been four outs from the National League title and the World Series. As it turned out, the Cubs lost the game and eventually the series.
Get it? The shirt is "Bart Man" and is from Cubs merchandise no later than 1998 and possibly earlier, and yet it foreshadows the infamous "villain" of the Cubs' 2003 loss. Really, it's a sad thing. Steve Bartman is a well meaning Cubs fan who got caught up in the excitement of a ball coming his way and made a mistake, like we all do (make mistakes that is). It just so happened to be a mistake that is believed to have cost the Cubs a National League title and a shot at winning the World Series.
Remember how in yesterday's blog I mentioned saving time for date night with my lovely wife? Well, here's our sashimi/sushi dinner from Friday the 7th of March using a gift certificate given to use for Christmas.
We love delicious sashimi/sushi at KUMO.
YUM.
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| This is the shirt I am actually wearing today |
HIATUS TEXT: REVISED 1402.18: I have been trying to maintain a hiatus from large or over involved blog posts beginning with the start date of my hiatus on January 20th (almost a month ago) during which time I logged 21 posts, which I consider "Hiatus Shirts." By this term, Hiatus Shirt, I mean the shirt is not one that would cause me to write a great deal on the subject it features. These are shirts about which I can write anything, either a lot or a very little. The hiatus will continue, though as it has for the last few weeks, not consecutively as I will continue to mix Hiatus and Non-Hiatus shirts. The blog's year (365 shirts) draws close to a close. (I like the double word use in that previous sentence.) I hope to finish strong with some good entries with high quality content and imagery on some beloved subjects. To earn this time, I will need to intersperse shirts of little consequence, what I have come to call Hiatus Shirts.
My original goal of working ahead remains. I need time to write the enormously lengthy text to complete the extensive love letter to certain beloved popular culture icons featured on my many special shirts. Even with "Hiatus Shirts," I will try to share some worthy content as I have either an idea, a new suggestion of something to read/look at/listen to, or another installment of my various features, such as the WHY T-SHIRTS item, the WEEKLY COMIC BOOK LISTS, and the SHIRT I AM ACTUALLY WEARING TODAY among others. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.Thanks for reading. I am always honored that people have taken some of their valuable time to look at my ongoing web writing project. Keep checking this address. I promise to make it worthwhile.
- chris tower - 1403.08 - 13:11
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 636 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1704.01 - 10:10
NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.
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