Chattanooga's New Ballpark

Chattanooga is building a fancy new baseball stadium / event venue south of downtown. www.ErlingerPark.com - across the interstate from the Choo Choo. Opens in April. I just bought a ticket for Opening Day. Hard to figure out what it's going to look like. Being built into the side of an old tube factory. I'll pass by there in a couple of weeks.

Historic Engel Stadium still stands just northeast of downtown Chattanooga (above & below). The Lookouts played there until 1999. Where Ruth and Gehrig were famously struck out by a woman pitcher. As a high school freshman, Will pitched five no hit innings in the old ballpark. The old jewel is owned by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. UTC wants to tear down the grandstand to make way for a women's sports complex, though historic preservationists are seeking to keep the ballpark. 

JFBC is moving ahead, getting the necessary permits and surveying done, and should start clearing land for the new worship center this summer. 

Tasty biscuit places that I need to try out. 

1. Red Eyed Mule in Marietta

2. Stilesboro Biscuits in Kennesaw

3. Beaver Creek Biscuit Company in Lithia Springs

4. Biscuits And More in Marietta

5. Burger Inn, in Woodstock

There's this investor guy named Ray Dalio sounding the panic alarm about artificial intelligence. Turns out he is in cahoots with the Chinese government, a well paid pawn the Chinese are using to create chaos in the US while China uses American resources to develop even more powerful artificial intelligence. China is paying off former US Presidents and their families, politicians of both parties, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley - getting them to work against the US to develop greater weapons. China is paying off the US media to get them to not report about these things. Chinese officials have paid off Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, and even the great Lebron James. All in the book I'm reading: Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, by Peter Scheizer. There's a saying in China: "Capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them with", perhaps first uttered by Vladimir Lenin or Karl Marx.   

Finished the novel Part of Your World, by Abby Jimenez. Addresses domestic violence and verbal abuse.

R.I.P. ROY FACE [SABR Bio] For the 1959 Pirates, his record was 18-1 (with 0 starts), resulting in a record .947 W-L%. He was the first pitcher to save three games in one World Series: in games 1, 4, & 5 of the Pirates’ 1960 upset WS win over the Yankees. John Wetteland surpassed Face in 1996 setting a record that is unlikely ever to be broken: 4 saves in a single WS. Face was the first to save 20+ games twice: in 1958 (20) & 1960 (24). His career-best was 28 saves in 1962. Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers selected Face in the annual winter draft in 1950.  Two years later, Rickey drafted Face again, this time for the Pirates. Saves were tallied by most teams even though the "save" wasn't officially acknowledged by MLB until 1969, Face's final season. Retroactively, he was credited being the NL saves leader in 1958, 1961 & 1962. Face’s signature pitch was a forkball, learned in the minors after watching former Yankee star reliever Joe Page throw in 1954 Spring Training with the Pirates. Face said his own forkball acted like a cross between a knuckler and a sin.ker. “How do you know which way it will go?” he was once asked. “I don't,” he said, “but neither does the batter.” Face appeared 802 times as a pitcher for  the Pirates. Years earlier, Walter Johnson had reached the same number with Washington.

Denison: It is unusual when a book about science and faith draws endorsements from leading scientists, but that's the case with God, the Science, the Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution. A Nobel laureate and professors at Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton have all applauded its remarkable "panorama of current knowledge regarding the existence or non-existence of a creator God." The authors collaborated with 20 "high-level international specialists and scientists" over 4 years of research. It deals with arguments against God's existence from across history, demonstrating that the universe is better understood as the product of a mind-like cause than by blind process. The writers conclude: Until recently, believing in God seemed incompatible with science. Now, science has become God's ally.