How now, Spotted Cow, the Wisconsiners are here.
First pitch: 7:10 Central
Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, kinda swampy, 85°
Opponent’s SB site: Brew Crew Ball
TV: Twins TV. Radio: Where you miss Bob Uecker the most
23-year-old righthander Jacob Misiorowski made his first MLB start on June 12; he threw five no-hit innings before rolling his ankle a little and leaving as a precaution. The youngling throws REALLY hard, frequently topping 100, and with a slider in the upper 90s. His curve and change are works in progress, and his control’s been an issue in the minors (as you’d expect for a 6’7” beanpole), but the strikeouts have always been there. So that’s who he is.
Our great old friend LaTroy Hawkins finished his college degree last year, and attended his graduation ceremony last month. He got a degree in sociology; his daughter had to help him learn how to create PDFs for course submissions. Dan Hayes at The Athletic has the story.
The Athletic credits this as “photo courtesy of Southern New Hampshire University.”
Hawkins said his mother and grandmother, both deceased, always wanted him to finish his degree, which motivated him. I finished my college degree in 2009 (I think that was the year), for the same reason. (And I had to learn new ways of submitting course assignments, too.) What was lazy Hawkins doing in 2009? We’re the same age, after all. Oh — he was pitching in 65 games for the Astros with an ERA of 2.13.
And in talking to Betsy Hefland, Hawkins says he’s thinking about graduate school, too.
We need that good news, because as BH-Baseball told us last Friday, Bailey Ober received threats from disappointed gamblers after a recent outing. So did his family. Ty France says it’s happened to him and his family, too (from this Phil Miller Star Tribune story). The Twins’ director of security says these are happening more and more frequently.
I used to think the worst possible outcome of sports (and state governments) embracing online gambling was that a major 1919 scandal could happen, and kill public trust in the game. I no longer think that’s the “worst” thing that could happen. Not even close to the worst.
About gambling, etc., here’s classic sportswriter Robert Lipsyte being disgusted with why Pete Rose was named eligible for the HOF. (Lipsyte’s been around a long time; he covered the Mets’ opening 1962 season, and the 1964 Sonny Liston / Cassius Clay fight.) I don’t disagree with Lipsyte on this, I’ve just lost my capacity for disgust. Everything that’s now bad is what I expected would happen, and I expect much worse.
Um, the Dodgers and the Goon Squad. Barry Petchesky of Defector with the tale.
Less disgusting is TNG porn. Craig Calcaterra’s Cup Of Coffee baseball blog is free every Thursday, and last Thursday Calcaterra expanded my knowledge of the universe by sharing a 2013 Star Trek: The Next Generation porn video, with all the dirty parts edited out. I have watched this thing. It’s 27 minutes long, so… probably about 100 minutes in the full version. (Some rather abrupt cuts in the edit from, “Dr. Crusher, welcome” to UMM, NEXT SCENE.)
Porn actors aren’t generally chosen for their thespian skills, although the guy playing Geordi tries to mimic some of LeVar Burton’s hand gestures. Actually made by people who REALLY know their TNG alternate-timeline stories very well. I’d say go watch the 1997 documentary Trekkies instead, from Tubi/Plex or your library. But I had a chuckle or two.
Along those lines, not baseball, but on how fun things are for writers right now. The Guardian has a excerpt from a book by a freelancer in Canada. She wades through a ton of horse racing clickbait for one client, and wrote 8000 words a week of erotica for another. Because of a disability, she had to type using a voice-to-text program, in a building where the neighbors could hear pretty easily, so some of this was rather embarrassing voice-to-text stuff. Once again, if your children ever say “I wanna grow up to be a writer,” slap them with limp celery until they say “I wanna be a corporate lawyer.”
Updates on $tadium $windles: wow, has Neil deMause had a busy few weeks! First, just as expected, the Cardinals are using the Royals/Chiefs stadium plan to go after more state money themselves. Plus, now the Royals/Chiefs are demanding even MORE money. The Diamondbacks just got $500 mil. Oregon’s setting aside $800 million for an MLB staduim (which could run incredibly short on revenue), and John Fisher wants to sell his San Jose Earthquakes soccer team to pay for a stadium in the smallest market in baseball. (And it still wouldn’t cover all the construction costs.) And I skipped a few! Busy few weeks, indeed.
As for Milwaukee, they’re currently content with the $500 million in upgrades they got from the state last December, prompting the team owner to say “we never considered going anywhere else.” The sweet deal also prompted Brewers executives to make the maximum political contributions to Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Vos is proud of having prevented giving Medicaid to more people in Wisconsin. Just another reminder that with these people, “cutting spending” is NEVER about cutting spending. It’s about giving it to the truly deserving.
The day belongs, however, to Larry Yount (Hawkins had his day with his friends and family last month, he doesn’t need ours!)
Larry Yount’s younger brother, Robin Yount, is a Brewers legend — 20 seasons, all with the same team, a three time All-Star, and a first-ballot HOFer. Larry Yount, a pitcher, never threw an official MLB pitch.
Yet he was still in a game. Just one. For the Astros. As John Odell at the HOF writes:
As Larry warmed up in the bullpen, his elbow began to stiffen, but he buckled down and reported to the game, where he was announced as the next pitcher. He hoped the elbow would loosen up with a few more pitches. “You figure you’ll run out to the mound, that the adrenaline will be pumping and that you’ll figure out what’s wrong,” Yount recalled later. “I went to the mound, and took a couple of tosses.” The pain, however, got worse as he took his final warm-up pitches. Yount was smart and did not want to risk his career in his debut. He called in the trainer, who took him out. Both surely expected that Yount’s turn would come again soon.
It never did.
But since he was announced as the next relief pitcher, MLB officially credits Larry Yount for having appeared in one game. Here’s an image from a 1989 Astros program, as transcribed by someone at a wonderfully old-fashioned blogsite (sadly, no longer with us), AstrosDaily.com.
Credited as “Tom Griffin, Ken Forsch and Larry Yount in a 1971 photo (c) Houston Astros”
Yount’s arm did get better; he just struggled in the minors after that point. In 1974, the Astros traded him to Milwaukee, where his brother Robin was in camp as a rookie; Robin made the team, and Larry didn’t.
Larry left baseball after the 1975 season, and moved to Arizona to make money as a real estate wheeler-dealer. He’s still at it! He recently started a development project in the west Phoenix suburbs. Not that I’d generally care about such things… but locals were panicking, saying the development would “increase our taxes, it’s going to lower our property values, it’s going to increase crime.” Which sounds like the type of thing a**holes always scream when anyone wants to live near their a**hole community. (If new neighbors reduced your property values, your taxes would go DOWN, morons.)
So, that’s the story of Larry Yount. So naturally he was immortalized in song form!
OK, you can read the story about the LaTroy Hawkins Fan Club again, too. It’s always a good one.
