Mike O'Connell

On Friday’s podcast I referred to a book by an incorrect title, an embarrassing error with an unfortunate corollary in my own life. The name of the book is Bushville Wins!, the story of the early days of the Milwaukee Braves. (The full subtitle is The Wild Saga of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the Screwballs, Sluggers, and Beer Swiggers Who Canned the New York Yankees and Changed Baseball.) On Math and Musings I couldn’t even remember the two-word title, mistakenly referring to the work simply as “Bushville,” rather than “Bushville Wins.” Small detail, I know, but when someone calls Wallpaper Jam simply “Wallpaper” I’m mildly upset they miss out on the clever (IMO) pun.

Long-winded way to come around to saying the book is great, and though now 10 years old still a timely read. The “Bushville” in question is the aforementioned Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and its baseball team, a band of country rubes compared to the sophisticated fans and stars of the New York Yankees. (They sip Manhattans and they live there too.) Even though the team of my youth is the villain in the story, the story is compelling nonetheless. And I now have a soft spot in my heart for the Milwaukee Braves, a team that existed for only 13 major league seasons.

Which brings me to book #2 on my summer reading list: Clayton Trutor’s Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta–and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports. The “Loserville” detailed is in fact Atlanta, a city that was the beneficiary of the Braves’ move from Milwaukee in 1966. This was the first major league team from Atlanta among the “Big 4” of American sports; by 1972 they had teams in each league.

Much of the financing and professional wrangling to secure these teams (Braves, Falcons, Hawks, and Flames) went through public funding sources. As in, like, the government was responsible for building the arenas and securing the dough. Kind of the first time it occurred on this scale, though now it’s standard procedure. Basically before the Atlanta model it was rich guys building stadiums themselves; now it’s corporations in league with state and local governments. Trutor goes into a bit more detail (the man does have a PhD and teaches this stuff at the college level), so the book is therefore several hundred pages of kind of weighty reading. There are side plots of racism and public accommodations regarding such, of course, and thoughtful cost-benefit analyses of public investment in entertainment. If you can handle more than just sports, the book is for you. And Loserville? Well, Losers for a long time in pretty much every sport, but the Braves did win 14 straight division titles in non-strike years from ’91 to 2005.

Not as cool as Milwaukee in the ’50s, but they did win the World Series last year.

For years I thought the word memento (as in, like, a souvenir) was actually momento, similar to the word “moment.” It captured a moment in your life, no?

Turns out it’s actually related to the word memory, which in retrospect makes much more sense.

Some online dictionaries accept “momento” as an alternate spelling, but I think only grudgingly as a sop to so many 21st century folks like me getting it wrong. My real-life paper dictionary from 1956 doesn’t even mention it.

I have a lot of boxes at home labeled “momentos” that I now have relabeled “mementos.”

Or is it mementoes?

Oh crap here we go again.

The official halfway point of the baseball season was a dozen games ago, but now’s as good a time as any to take stock of the good and bad.
The good? My team in the Junior Circuit, the team of my youth, the Yankees of New York.
The bad? Yeah, my other team, that of my son’s youth, the Nationals of Washington.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Much of the discussion in yesterday’s math class centered around “7-Eleven Day,” one of the great national holidays in which one can get a free small Slurpee at 7-Eleven on 7/11. That would be July 11. (Suckers in other countries who put the date first followed by the month lose out apparently.)

How many free Slurpees did you get?

How many bizarre flavor combinations did you concoct?

Never mind the things are only a dollar anyway; it’s the principle.

And the rest of the week? Not to be outdone? Wawa offering free Icees through July 18.

Keeping up with the Joneses, frozen beverage-style.

Nice.

There are two men I admire and aspire to be above all others. One is Michael O’Connell Sr. The other is Robert E. Gallagher, subject of today’s episode of Math and Musings. Enjoy.