Grandma's Hands

Bill Withers, live in 1974 on the BBC.  The final line of the song is in the pantheon of finest last lines in music.

Those Were The Days

 

In the 70s, you could have a beer and enjoy some quality bro time with your orangutan and it wasn’t even really all that weird somehow. pic.twitter.com/c5dNjoL2SF

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) August 20, 2026

I Gotta A Right To Sing The Blues

Composed in 1932 by Harold Arlen (music) and Ted Koehler (lyrics).  Arlen and Koehler also together wrote Get Happy, I've Got The World on a String, and Stormy Weather.  With other lyricists, Arlen wrote the music for Over The Rainbow (as well as the other songs featured in The Wizard of Oz), The Man That Got Away, That Old Black Magic, It's Only A Paper Moon, and One For My Baby (And One More For The Road).  Louis Armstrong puts his unique stamp on this version with his horn and voice.

Train Train

Like everyone else I liked and admired Dolly Parton and featured her in four posts over the years.

This is Train Train from her bluegrass period backed by the great pickers at Union Station with Allison Krauss singing backup.  You can also hear her transform Stairway to Heaven into a gospel hymn with her adding lyrics at the end, and perform a lovely version of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. 

Another Travesty

Today I learned that in 2020 the University of Texas School of Journalism and Media established the Dan Rather Medals for News and Guts.  What a travesty and what a disgrace for journalism.  Read Promoting Disinformation to find out why.

Let's Play Two!

As Ernie Banks would say.  So let's do two baseball posts today.

Just realized Albert Belle turns 60 today.  Was reminded coming across this video (below) titled "Albert Belle Was The Most Un-Hinged Baseball Player of All-Time" by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman.  While a reminder of the craziness of Albert at times (just watch his assault on second baseman Fernando Vina), the title and language are somewhat overhyped as everything seems to be in recent years.  It's worth a watch and has an unexpected and relatively happy ending.  Turns out Albert and his family are neighbors of ours in Scottsdale.

Belle was an incredible hitter.  He only played ten full seasons (1991-2000), retiring just after turning 34, but he could pound the ball.  Over those ten years he averaged per season 38 doubles, 37 home runs, 120 rbi, with a .297 batting average.  At the time he retired Albert had the 10th highest career slugging percentage in major league history.

He was capable of prolonged hot streaks, over the last 90 games of the strike-shortened 1994 season hitting .367, with a OBP of .447, while slugging .757 with 67 extra base hits and 90 rbi.  During the 1995 season, Belle had 103 XBH.  During the final 87 games of the 1998 season his splits were .389/.461/.799, including 63 XBH and 93 rbi. I remember how intimidating he could look at the plate.

As far as being the "most un-hinged" ballplayer, Albert has a lot of competition.  Take Ty Cobb for example.  In my review of Charles Leersehn's revisionist biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, I noted:

As Grantland Rice, a friend and admirer, wrote years later:

When I first met Cobb I found him to be an extremely peculiar soul, brooding and bubbling with violence, combative all the way, a streak, incidentally, he never lost.    

Throughout his career, though much less after he retired, he reacted quickly to any perceived insult.  In commenting on his penchant for fighting Leerhsen writes:

. . . he provided such a dizzying array of examples to choose from - fights with complete strangers, fights with teammates, fights with rival players, fights with hotel employees, shopkeepers, and rowdy cranks [fans] . . .

The author goes on to provide an account of his behavior over a short period during the 1916 season; fighting with Buck Herzog of the Giants both on and off the field; an incident in Comiskey Park when, angered by a called third strike, he threw his bat into the stands; flinging a handful of dirt into the face of a Senators pitcher; and being pulled out of stands in St Louis by teammates and police before he could pummel a heckler.

I also quoted Bill Veeck:

"Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils, like the Third Army bustling through Germany".