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Congratulations to the Washington Nationals & their fans.

At one point in the 2019 season, the Nationals' records was 19 wins & 31 losses.
There was much talk about the manager being fired then.
Yet, tonight the Nationals won the World Series 7th & deciding final game with the score of 6 to 2,
winning the championship.

It's the first time the Expos/Nationals franchise has EVER won the World Series.
It was also the first time the visiting teams won all 7 games, something that never happened in
MLB, nor NBA.

The Nationals Juan Soto was the youngest player to hit 3 home runs in a World Series
and the only player to hit one at age 20 and one at age 21 in the same World Series
(He had a birthday during the series).

Except for the terrible umpiring regarding the inconsistent strike zone, it was a terrific series complete with some excellent defensive plays.

Tonight the Atlanta Braves won the 'World' Series, beating Houston 4 games to 2.
It was only the second time that the Atlanta Braves won the championship.

I was happy to watch the cheating Houston a**hole Astros go down in flames.
I hope the Astros never win another World Series, until every one of their teammates, who
were on their cheating team, are no longer on the Astros.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Churchill Downs has suspended trainer Bob Baffert from entering horses at the track and suggested that it would invalidate Medina Spirit's Kentucky Derby victory if the results of a failed postrace drug test are upheld.

The announcement from Churchill Downs came shortly after Baffert held a news conference to announce the failed drug test, which the Hall of Fame trainer vowed to fight "tooth and nail."

Medina Spirit is Baffert's fifth horse to fail a drug test in a year.

The colt won the Kentucky Derby on May 1 by a half-length over Mandaloun.

The only horse to be disqualified for medication after winning the Derby is Dancer's Image in 1968.

After a very nice weekend, I rolled out of bed this morning and got changed for my playoff game
in the fast pitch league.

Last week we lost the first of a best of 3 series, despite having all our good hitters and fielders there.
So, this game and the next one are crucial,
if we want to continue on to the championship series, which of course we do.

I was very aggravated during our loss. Indeed, the other good players were aggravated too.
Our manager is a very nice guy, but unfortunately an idiot.
Plus, he found a sponsor for the team, so we don't pay anything to play.

Nonetheless, the whole year I have been complaining about our line-up.
1/2 of our team is made up over very good hitters and about 2/5 of it are people who should have
retired from softball over a decade ago, and the rest are somewhere in between.

Our very nice coach wants everyone to play and his idea is to
also distribute the bad hitters evenly throughout the line-up.
What this does is kill just about every rally.

I have been preaching, "NO ! You want to bunch the hitters together, so that we score runs."
His retort is that, "then some innings we will have no chance to score runs."
I said, "the way you do the line-up, we have little chance to score runs every inning.
That's why we only scored 1 run the whole game."

So, he threw the book down and said, "you think you know better, you do it and lets see what happens."

What happened this morning is we scored 3 runs in the first inning and went on to win 9 to 4 against that same team and that was without having one of our best hitter/fielder.

More are rightly questioning Sports authenticity
increasingly shameless in their blatant duplicity
Greed the only thing to blame
integrity canceled for fortune and fame

Goodell proclaimed "without blacks no football
'Fake News' from crooked woke screwball
Accomplishments today doesn't equate to legit
past and present together doesn't fit

Most debated is who's Basketballs GOAT
many uneducated people insert their vote
Jordan escalated the arrogance of showboating
he's the GOAT some keep promoting

The true complete player defines GOAT
that crown only one can tote
racism always gets injected without basis
I'm simply being real not racist

Obvious from all seen and heard
THE G.O.A.T IS Larry Joe Bird
Complete agreement is where I'm at
to quote Bannon 'suck on that'



copyright 2/1/22

At the test match yesterday at Lord's cricket ground, an England batsman was stumped by the Australian wicket keeper for wandering outside his crease. The batsman, Bairstow assumed beforehand that it was the end of the over, so the ball was dead. But the Australian team jumped with delight at seeing him out. The umpire hadn't officially declared that it was the end of the over so technically the ball was still live and the player must be deemed out. A mass protest ensued and the Australian team were booed by the crowd and called cheats.
This brings into question the right spirit of the game and the Australians capitalised on the situation when, if they showed the right sporting attitude, they should not have stumped the England player as he assumed the ball was dead and the Australian player knew that, but took the opportunity to gain a crucial wicket without showing the right sporting spirit.
Is it important in any sport to show the right sporting attitude, or is winning at any cost the only objective.

Former Minor League catcher Dave Bresnahan didn't talk much about it on the phone, but the man known as the "Potato Caper" comes from baseball royalty.

His great uncle, Roger, was the first MLB catcher to wear shin guards. He also developed the first batting helmet after getting hit in the head by a pitch.

So, back in 1987, when Dave had to call his dad, nephew of Roger, and tell him he'd been kicked off Cleveland's Double-A team for trying to use a potato to pick off a baserunner, he was terrified.

"Great, awesome dad and very dialed in to my baseball career," Bresnahan told me. "And I was thinking, 'Goddammit, now I don't want him to hear that his son got released for throwing a potato.' I had this fear and concern, and I always wanted to make him proud. I had to make the phone call, and that was a nerve-wracking call."

"I thought, 'What if we snuck maybe a rosin bag (or for some reason, maybe because I'm Irish) a potato into the game?'" Bresnahan recalled. “It was just talk, but then it got picked up the next day and my teammates thought it was funny. They said, 'Well, why don't you do it?' I go, 'What are you talking about?'"

Bresnahan barely even played, so for him to finally get some action and then start throwing a potato around the field seemed like a risky move. One of his teammates reminded him there was a doubleheader the next week against the Phillies and he'd definitely be behind the plate for one of the games.

"I said, 'Alright, I'll do it,'" Bresnahan told me, laughing.

So, the plan was set: when a runner reached third base during the game against the Phillies, Bresnahan would grab the potato, throw wildly over the third baseman's head in an attempted pickoff and then tag the runner out with the actual ball as he came strolling into home plate. Most of the team would be in on the play -- the pitching coach (whom he told over a couple of beers a few days before and was ecstatic about it), the pitchers and most of the fielders.

"The day before, people were like, 'Hey, tomorrow's Potato Day,'" Bresnahan said. "It just seemed to give people a little life, you know, something to talk about. That's all it was."

The one person who had no idea about Potato Day? Bresnahan's manager, Orlando Gomez, who had been demoted from the Triple-A team to the Bills midseason. He was already unhappy about his relegation and would likely not take too kindly to the move.

"No, of course I couldn't ask him for permission," Bresnahan said.

Bresnahan also checked with a friend, Tim Tschida, who was a Major League umpire at the time (you may remember him as the crew chief for this ejection), to see what kind of blowback there might be from introducing a potato into the game. Tschida said if he were the crew chief, he would likely just send the runner back and have a do-over. He'd also possibly kick Bresnahan out of the game. The catcher could live with that. He just didn't want the runner to be allowed home because of his prank.

Rest if the story: