Tom Seaver Deserves a Statue at Shea Stadium (Citi Field)

Tom Seaver Deserves a Statue at the site of Shea Stadium in Flushing, NY, now called Citi Field. During a 20-year career, Seaver compiled 311 wins, 3,640 strikeouts, 61 shutouts and a 2.86 earned run average.

To tell you the truth, even as a NY Yankee fan,  I was disturbed when the Mets traded Tom Seaver in 1977.  The Mets sent Tom Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds for Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson and Dan Norman.

On December 16, 1982, Seaver was traded back to the Mets, for Charlie Puleo, Lloyd McClendon, and Jason Felice. On April 5, 1983, he tied Walter Johnson's major league record of 14 Opening Day starts, shutting out the Philadelphia Phillies for six innings in a 2-0 Mets win. This helped assuage the anger I felt as a young man. But not for long....

Seaver and the Mets were stunned on January 20, 1984 when he was claimed in a free-agent compensation draft by the Chicago White Sox. The team (especially GM Frank Cashen) had incorrectly assumed that no one would pursue a high-salaried, 39-year-old starting pitcher, and left him off the protected list. Faced with either reporting to the White Sox or retiring, Seaver chose the former.





I lost all respect for the Mets for a long time when they did the same foolish thing again.

I am over it now. Let's let some rich folks foot the bill and put up a statue of SEaver in one of the ugliest ball parks in the country. If you have ever been their a couple of hours before game time you will understand that this is a Gulag not a ball park. Nobody is allowed beyond the perimeter without a ticket.

The 1% folks who own the Mets, which they purchased with Bernie Madoff dollars, don't understand that people go to the ballpark for the entire experience, not just the $60 hamburgers corporations pay for and write off as a business expense.

Here is Tom Terrific in his proper uniform.

Linear Television is Dead

This post has as its title a particularly technical term which previously describes the difference between today and the 1960 and 1970s when I grew up.

Let me describe Linear Television by mentioning its opposite: NetFlix. Now that you have started using NetFlix will you ever go back to appointment TV? Not likely. Appointment TV is where you schedule time to be in front of your television to watch Downtown Abbey at 9:00PM EST on PBS. NetFlix and the ability to record shows, called RS-DVR. This is known as remote storage digital video recorder (RS-DVR). It is a network-based digital video recorder (DVR) stored at the provider's (your Cable or Satellite or Verizon) central location rather than at your private home.

Remember that appointment television was Ed Sullivan on Sunday Night. Who needs this when you have the ability to record and watch later. We now even have the ability to record to stop our recordings at any time and watch them later.

This is a sharp contrast to having to be in front of the TV set, without a remote control, and having permission from siblings or parents to turn to the channel you prefer to view.

All I cans say is I am glad to live in the 21st Century without all the minor annoyances regarding TV in my current life.

Toro Lawn Mowers

The red Toro lawn mower I followed around for hundreds of hours in my youth was an amazing machine. It was easy to maintain, started almost every time the first time, and cut grass like nobody's business.

Our model had a cloth grass bag and the faint smell of oil mixed with old grass clippings. It was an effort to cut our small lawn, and those of our neighbors who paid me out of pocket. Our Toro was reliable to a fault and made me money beyond my wildest dreams in an era when teenagers were expected to cut grass, rake leaves, and shovel snow as part of the covenant with their parents.

We may not have liked being asked to do these tasks, like shoveling in the early morning hours so our fathers could work to the train with one less inconvenient walkway, cutting the grass on hot summer days, and raking leaves until our hands blistered during the autumn. 

Fortunately, in our house these efforts did not go without remuneration. We were never told how much we would make by accomplishing any of these chores. It was simply the old WASP nod that encouraged us to complete our work. I miss this sophistication in our current environment when children on their own are allowed to call Child Protective Services to complain about the requests of their parents.

If they only knew how these chores allowed their parents to save for their college educations by not having to pay other people for this hard work. We were all lucky to learn the lesson of hard work and what it takes to prosper and survive in the modern age by being asked to help the family.

Besides being lucky enough to choose our parents there is not another lesson from my childhood which I value as much.

Ali RIP

One observation: It's odd about all the sweet reveries regarding a boxer named Ali being offered by everyone with even a tangential relationship during a time of increasing hatred towards all people of Muslim faith. 

Ali was a Muslim and I applaud everything he did in his life outside the boxing ring. His refusal to be drafted into the US Army, even though it cost him years in the prime of his chosen professional career is a reminder to us all as to what it means to be a patriot. Not to mention his work with medical professionals on the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. 

Here is a picture for the ages, better than all the fight scenes.

Muhammad Ali is known for his work with alleviating the symptoms of Parkinson' Disease. Here he is with Michael J. Fox.