There’s a newish program available on Netflix from American Masters, subject one Theodore Samuel Williams. You know him as Ted. The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.
Basically the hour-long show is a Ken Burns documentary minus everything that isn’t about Ted Williams.
Oh, I’m not knocking it–I think it’s great.
As a matter of fact I’m waiting for the Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, and Koufax versions as we speak.
My “local” paper yesterday did me the favor of putting together my summer reading list. The Washington Post printed a baseball-themed book review section, highlighting a dozen or so 2019 releases. Nice.
The book I look forward to reading most is called Chumps to Champs, an examination of the New York Yankees, the team that sucked in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s (when I fell in love with the team), then became perennial contenders. My students are always stunned to hear that the Yankees used to be terrible.
Maybe now they’ll believe me.
Inspired by a certain Mr. Woods, I swung a golf club for the first time in about two years yesterday. Yeah, it wasn’t the Masters, only my local driving range, but still… it felt good. Every shot I hit: perfect. False confidence? Perhaps. But it did remind me of a television commercial from about 20 years ago.
I’m Tiger Woods.
O Spring Break, how I love thee! Let me count the ways… Tiger, the Caps, a trip to the desert…
and five more days away from work.
The first 14 times I saw Tiger Woods win a major championship I always knew there’s be another one. The first 13 times it happened pretty quickly. But in the years and surgeries and off-the-course problems Tiger has had since his last major win (the 2008 U.S. Open), it became more and more unreasonable to think that it could ever happen again.
Oh, it would be glorious if it ever did happened again though. But it could never happen, right?
Enter Sunday at the 2019 Masters, and one of the greatest sports moments any of us has ever witnessed.
Yeah, that was Tiger Woods, age 43, more than twice as old as he was when he won his first Masters at the age of 21. That was 1997, and I was a freshman in high school, totally obsessed with the game of golf after seeing Tiger’s victory at the 1996 U.S. Amateur and subsequent ascent through the pro ranks. Here was this guy, barely older than I was, barely bigger than I was, beating grown men at a grown man’s game. The grown men didn’t necessarily like the upstart back then. Now the old men dig him because, well, he’s one of the old men. So am I, I guess.
Tiger Woods got me interested in golf when I was 14 years old. I think he’s making it happen all over again. Funny how Tiger and I still aren’t that different. He’s still just a little bit older than I am, and he has kids and a bad hairline just like me. True he does have 15 more major championships that I do (and a few more million dollars), but the first person he wants to hug after he finishes a round of golf is his son.
Me too.
Thanks, Tiger, for making me feel young again. (Or maybe making me feel old.) Thanks for getting me interested in the game, thanks for the past 23 years, and thanks for the thrill of seeing a win.
I know there’ll be another one.
Baltimore Orioles slugger Chris Davis is mired in possibly the worst slump in major league baseball history. Going back to last year, Davis is hitless in his last 53 at bats and 61 plate appearances. This is apparently an all-time record for a non-pitcher.
(Side note: Davis makes about $23 million a year.)
I’d like to think this is a record that personally I could break. Come on, MLB, just give me a chance!
I’d even do it for less money.
there is a championship.
It’s a solid two hours even without traffic to get from my house in Loudoun County to the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. People from Northern Virginia never speak about our flagship state university, down there in, you know, the red part of the commonwealth.
But put us in the championship game of the NCAA Tournament?
We are all bleedin’ orange and shouting Wahoo! at the tops of our lungs.
This is what Jefferson had in mind.
I’m not exactly sure the last time a Washington baseball team won back-to-back midweek day games, but I’m pretty sure Walter Johnson started one of them.
I’m a big fan of the Twilight Zone franchise, now appearing in its third reincarnation on TV. You remember TV, right? The screen that was like a big computer and you had to tune it at a certain day and time to watch a “show”? Well, all that tuning in business is history, replaced by something even Rod Serling may not have foreseen.
I think the most interesting aspect of the new Twilight Zone is its presentation. Not the presentation by Jordan Peele (who’s no Serling on the screen, but gets the job done I suppose), and not the Mad Men-like costume and set design. No, it’s the way CBS is bringing us the material, at least those of us who don’t have “TV.” (Can you even see this thing on TV? Is there anything just on regular TV anymore?)
I watched the first two episodes of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on something called CBS All Access. It’s a subscriber service, and is kind of genius in the way one can purchase material. Five ninety-nine a month gets you “all access” with limited commercials. Nine ninety-nine a month gets you all access with no commercials. Oh, this is delicious; I can pay a different rate depending on how many commercials I want to see. Can I say I’m being paid to watch commercials? In a manner of speaking I am. I’m paying to view CBS’s content; they’re paying me to watch their sponsors’ content. This is exactly how the world should work.
Impetus behind all this? Gotta be Netflix. Again. They really changed the way the entire world operated. Basically it went caveman, fire, wheel, Netflix in that order.
Slight exaggerations brought to you in… the Twilight Zone.