I was thinking about Lou Gehrig this morning. People talk about how great a baseball player Bo Jackson was. Bo was like half the player Gehrig was. Shoot you compare Gehrig to Ruth. Bo is comparable to Dave Kingman, Dan Uggla – less productive than Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan.
avg OBP SLG OPS OPS+ WAR
340 447 632 1.080 179 113.8 Gehrig
250 309 474 0.784 112 008.3 Bo
Yes Bo was a great athlete. Had a handful of highlight reels, including baseball. Yet injuries and playing two sports limited his production. But a .250 career average and strikeout rate of 35% are nowhere close to that of a hall of famer.
Speaking of two sport athletes…
R.I.P. DICK GROAT [SABR Bio] who is the only man to be an NCAA College Basketball Player of the Year and a MLB MVP. In 1952 he became the only player in NCAA history to lead the nation in both scoring and assists in a season. He is the only MVP infielder who never played in the minor leagues. Groat won his NL 1960 MVP after going directly from Duke University to the majors in 1952. Only he (16 votes), Pirate teammates Don Hoak (5) and Roberto Clemente (1) received first place votes in 1960 following their franchise’s first pennant since their 1927 team. Groat finished his career playing for the Giants in 1967. No post-Dead Ball position player ever hit fewer home runs than he did in his MVP season. Groat hit just two in his 1960 MVP season, though they were off Bob Gibson & Sandy Koufax, the former one, inside-the-parker. Only Johnny Evers, 1914 NL MVP, with only one, hit fewer. Groat led NL shortstops in double plays a record five seasons between 1958-1964, as had Phillies’ Mickey Doolin 50 years earlier. He was the sixth player and first Pirate to be honored with the Lou Gehrig Award in 1960. Pirate Vern Law (1965) and Willie Stargell (1974) also won the award. In 1963 Groat led the majors in triples and had 200 hits for the first time. Groat had 201 hits and 43 doubles for St. Louis. Redbirds Bill White and Curt Flood each had exactly 200 hits. Groat was the first Duke men's basketball player to have his jersey number retired. His number 10 was retired on 02-May-1952. He ranks second in Duke history with an average of 23.0 points per game and 17th overall with 1,886 total points. The 1952 National Player of the Year, Groat was also a two-time All-American and was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007, its second year of operation. Duke has retired the jerseys of 12 additional players. Groat and Pirate teammate Jerry Lynch designed and built a golf course in Ligonier, PA and ran it for over 50 years.
Tuesday: worked past 6 pm. Stopped by Kroger on the way home. C cooked Chicken Florentine and tossed a salad. Watched the first episode of the Korean drama Doctor Cha. We’ll see if it gets better (it does - much). Not a home run yet like Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Also watched The Neighborhood and Last Man Standing.
Wednesday: Up early to lift weights. Surprise fire drill around 11 am. Marcos Pizza for lunch. It was just okay. Lots of different varieties were brought in. The thin crust pizza was soggy. So were the thick crust pizzas. Could’ve been cooked more. Our customer visited in the afternoon. Worked past 530. Donated some items to Goodwill on the way home. That helped me clean out my car.
Black beans and rice for supper. C made homemade salsa. Watched Jeopardy and the second episode of Doctor Cha. Also a chunk of Celtics / Sixers.
Thursday: spaghetti night.
M is still sick, but a little better.
Months ago I had scheduled Friday as a day off, back when my niece Jordan told Anna she was getting married on May 6. Then she didn’t get engaged for several more months, and had to schedule the wedding in June. But I took the day off away. Played golf with Reid and went to a funeral.
Often confused about what day it is, because every time I take the dog out at night I try to remember if I need to take the trash to the street. Recycling is every other week, and I can’t keep that straight either.
Insurance: some say Allstate is cheap. Or the one for the former military – USAA or TriCare.
DENISON: in a Pew Research Center report, 2/3 of Americans claimed “it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral.” They make this claim because our secularized culture has convinced them morality is personal and subjective – but the mass shooting in Texas, the deadliest Russian attack on Ukraine in months, the first US mass evacuation effort from Sudan, and widespread discouragement about the future are showing us how well our subjective morality is working for us.
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