It Was The Beer!

Do you like Shaggy Dog Stories (groaner jokes)? Here is one for you!


Do you know about Mel Famey? He was a great pitcher in the major leagues back in the Roaring 20’s. Famey was an incredible talent, his fastball was legendary, no one liked facing him. He had a wicked breaking pitch, and a change up that was devastating to batters. His control was pin point on all three pitches and his arm was never sore.

One year, on the next to the last day of the season, he pitched a shut out and won, to put his team in a tie for the league championship. After the game, Mel and some of his friends went out to celebrate. And that was always a problem for Mel Famey. He did not know when to quit drinking. He loved his beer. When his teammates went back to their hotel to get ready for the final game of the season, which would determine the championship, Famey continued his binge. After all, he would not pitch the next day. Or so he thought.

Famey came to the stadium the next day with a ringing hangover. He felt awful and was hardly aware that the game was a real battle. His team was ahead by one going into the ninth inning. But the opponents were able to get a couple of runners on base. Mel’s manager called for him to get loose. He wanted his best pitcher on the mound to put down the rally and secure the championship. He was unaware that Famey had really tied one on the night before.

By the time he got his arm loose, the bases were loaded with two out. So Mel came to the mound needing just one out to be a hero. But it was not to be this day. Famey walked in the tying run and the winning score. He never regained his success.

In an interview with the winning team’s manager, a newspaper reporter asked what had happened. The manager knew Famey’s reputation as a heavy drinker. He told the reporter what he believed, “It was the beer that made Mel Famey walk us!”

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How Could You?!

In May of 2005, on consecutive nights, I took several boys, then girls from my junior high Bible class to watch a game at Minute Maid Park in Houston. It is a real time to build friendships and be more than a teacher & preacher to the kids.

Morgan Ensberg had fallen out of favor with me; I do not like how often he takes called strikes, especially with men in scoring position. That is the season he had been moved into the middle of the order and was supposed to be a run producer, which he is capable of being. In fact in the middle of the season, he went on a power surge that saw him finish 4th in the MVP voting. But that makes it all the more galling when he gets called out in scoring situation.

The night the girls were there, Ensberg had struck out in his first two at bats. He also made THREE errors at third base. When he made the third error, I booed him. Now I sit in the front row of the 4th level of the park, but I figure that if you are going to boo, you might as well give the player a chance to hear you. So I was loud.

As we left the stadium, Emillie said, “Mr. Ralph, you are a preacher, how could you boo like that?” In all sincerity, I replied, “Emillie, I am a preacher and Ensberg needed to repent, and I was just letting him know!”

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Where Are The Bats in a Clutch?

Well, the Houston Astros found a new way to add to the agony. Last night they scored in the first inning, but were trailing three to one in the ninth. They scored two runs to tie the game. Then in the bottom of the 16th, with the aid of a throwing error by catcher, the Pirates scored a run to win the game. What made it so agonizing is the Astros left 18 men on base.

Oh, for a clutch hit!

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What's In a Number?

Well, Jackie Robinson they didn't turn out to be as kind to the Houston Astros as they would have liked. Craig Biggio hit a home on the first pitch of the game, for his 51st leadoff home run, which is the record for National League batters. And Lance Berkman finally hit his second home run. After three innings the score was tied at four, but the Phillies won on a barrage of 20 hits and ended up clobbering the Astros.

So much for wearing number 42!

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Raining Cats and Dogs!

The thought of "raining cats and dogs", makes me wonder about where such statements origingate, but it also makes me think of lots of other things we say that make me laugh. I want to share a few with you this morning before I go get into my tux.

Being a big baseball fan, I was very happy when I learned that the very first words of the Bible are that "In the big inning, God created the heavens and the earth." I do not know how He got distracted in the middle of the big inning, maybe there was a pitching change, and He got bored. Or maybe he already knew the outcome. But what ever caused the distraction, He did some good work, don't you think!

And you tennis fans are probably aware of the biblical reference to your sport, in that Moses served in Pharaoh's court! It must have been a powerful serve, because the next thing you know Moses was made to leave the country.

When we were in church, I always got a bit nervous when we sang about "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear." But I never saw him, so maybe he lived somewhere else.

And I thought how lucky the folks in north west Texas were when we sang, "Have you seen Jesus, my Lord? He's here in PLAINVIEW."
I have never been to Plainview, but it must be heavenly there.

Those are enough to prime the pump, do you have any that make you laugh when you hear them?

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Wilt the Stilt and Me!

I have a friend who used to put on baseball card shows. Merchants would bring in their memorabilia and their sports cards, and we traders would all show up and have a good time buying and selling and trading our sports memorabilia.

My friend would also get some sports stars to come in and sign autographs at the shows as an attraction to get more traffic to the shows. He asked me to sit with those stars while they were signing autographs. (I will tell more about how that came about in another post soon). My job was to make things easy for the star by getting the baseballs out of the boxes and the pictures out of plastic pages and just make things move smoothly. I also was to make sure that folks only got the number of autographs for which they had tickets.

I got to meet a lot of high-profile stars over the years, and I will tell more about them in days to come. One of the fellows I met was Wilt Chamberlain. It was shortly after his book income out that told about some of his multitude of encounters with the opposite sex.

His autograph session was three hours, and we talked about a lot of things in between the signings. We hit it off pretty well actually. Wilt was due back the next day for another session, and I was to be back to work, so we thought we would see each other.

The next morning when I got to the show, my friend asked if I would be willing to sit with the ladies from the All-American Girls League. I was happy to do that, and we have a great day together. But their session overlapped the session when Wilt was to be signing. When Wilt came in he was introduced to the man who would be sitting with him for the session that day. He asked my friend, "where's Ralph?" My friend pointed across the room to where I was studies over there with those three women from the baseball Hall of Fame.

Wilt's response to my buddy was, "that's my kind of guy!"

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Field Day

My grandsons are in kindergarten and first grade. Today was Field Day at their school. I signed up to volunteer with whatever they needed me to do. I was assigned to conduct a relay race. As each class came to my station they were divided into two teams. Each student was then in-line to compete in this relay. First they had to take a rubber chicken and run to a box. They had to deposit the chicken in the box as they extracted the burlap bag that was in the box when they got there. They were to get in the burlap bag and hot to a circle, which was actually a hula hoop lying on the ground. Once inside the circle they shed their burlap bag, then ran and jumped a hurdle. After the early had to pick up a hockey stick and used it to manipulate a soccer ball around the cone that marked the end of the course. Then they brought the ball back to the spot they picked it up. They left the ball and ran back, hurdling the obstacle to the circle where they had left their bag. They donned their bags again, and hopped back to the box where they had deposited the chicken. Again they shed their bags, and picked up their chickens and raced back to the next contestant online. I had 13 classes come through my station.

I'm tired!

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Three Below The Mendoza Line!

I looked at the batting averages of the Houston starting line up of last night's Astros' game. Three of the players are batting less than .200! And none of them is named Ausmus or Everrett! It is Burke, Berkman, and Ensberg. I have no doubt about Berkman, but the other two have me a bit nervous. I have hopes for Burke to have a long and productive career, I expect nothing from Ensberg. If it was up to me, Mike Lamb or Mark Loretta would start at third.

As it is, I surely hope that those bats heat up a bit.

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This is a True Story, But You May Not Like It!

If you are a cat lover, you may not like to read this post!

Twenty six years ago my family moved to a new address. The day we were unloading the moving van, we had several folks from the congregation come to help. We had another visitor that was not as welcome. It was a cat that rushed into the house every time someone opened the door to bring in some of our belongings.

I do not like animals in my house, whether it be dogs, cats, mice, roaches, or what ever. I do love dogs, & always had a dog or two when I was a kid. But they lived outside. And I do not like cats. I could tolerate and feed a cat if I lived on a farm and wanted him to live in the barn and keep rats out of the corn crop. But I do not like cats, especially in my house.

So my intruding visitor on moving day was caught and put out of the house several times. But every time we opened the door he came in again. Someone in the moving party, who was familiar with the facts, told me that the cat had belonged to the previous residents of the home, and that the cat had lived there all his life. He thought it was his house.

To avoid having to chase him after each load of furniture, I caught the cat again and tied him up in the back yard. I then called animal control and told them the situation. I was told that someone would come by later to pick up the cat. So we got busy and the work went pretty fast after that.

When we finished, I got a big glass of ice water and sat down in the den of our new home. It overlooked the back yard. To my dismay I saw the cat had climbed the tree, gone over a limb and hanged himself. He was literally swinging in the breeze, dead!

I called animal control again and was told to put the cat in a plastic bag, and someone would come by to pick it up. But that was not all there was to the story.

I found out later that the previous owner of the cat had not simply gone away and left the cat. He had been given to the little girl next door, who was then in sixth grade. The cat was not yet used to his new residence and was just going back to his place of comfort.

To make matters worse, the little girl next door had seen the dead cat hanging from the tree. When I learned of the fact that the cat was supposed to be hers, I went next door to explain. The mother of the girl was very understanding and cordial, expressing acceptance of us and forgiveness for tying up the cat. But her daughter could not bring herself to even speak to me. And the whole eight years I lived next to her, she never did speak to me. She even had little to do with my two older girls, though they were all within three years of the same age.

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Butchering the Language!

I wrote this post on another of my blogs about a year ago. I had a lot of fun with it and thought it might be fun to bring it back for a new run here.

Yesterday I was playing around with a couple of bloggers, and I used a local idiom from the South that I use in the place of expletives, the word, "Cottonpickin'!" You can use that in mixed company without embarrassing anyone, and it fits a similar number of syllables as some much more vile expletives that are used far too frequently these days. But I digress.

As we had our little exchange yesterday, I began thinking about a blog that would describe some ways we butcher the language, but not in the erudite manner of Ed Butts.

Some of the things I find funny/irritating have to do with mispronunciation of a single word. For instance, here in South Texas, a lot of folks pronounce the word "lack" as "like". My dad might ask me "How much do you like bein' done?" What he wants to know is how much I lack to be finished with the project I am doing. Being the wise acre I am, my reply to that question is "I like being done a lot, but I have a few more minutes work to do."

Now, as a matter of instruction for you who might find yourselves in South Texas, I have a little dialoge you might hear. Do not worry as you read through it, I will translate it for you.

"Jeet yet?"
"Gnawd, jew?"
"Yount two?"
"Okiedoke."

Translation:

"Did you eat yet?"
"No, did you?"
"Do you want to?"
"Yes."

This kind of butchering probably only happens in South Texas. Or have you heard such butchering where you are?

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It Is Always More Fun To Win!

The Houston Astros won in the bottom of the ninth tonight, 4 to 3 against the Florida Marlins. I am impressed with the young Marlins, they have some really exciting young talents on offense, Handley Ramirez and Dan Uggla in front of Miguel Cabrera! They also have some quality arms on the mound as well!

But the Astros were able to overcome them and win. It is always more fun to win.

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100 Books

Two of my favorite bloggers posted this list and asked that we embolden the ones we have read, then drop a link to the original posts to build a net of readers (or non readers!). Here is my list. Why not join in the fun?

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austin)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Silmarillion
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The Restaurant at the End of The Universe
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
The Chronicles of Narnia
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
Tis
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 1/2
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
Rumble Fish
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

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Snowed Out

Spring time in Chicago is a bit different than spring in Houston. We have had temperatures in the 80s. But yesterday's game in Wrigley Field was snowed out. It will be played in July. By then, the temps will be warm in Chicago and the wind will be blowing out at Wrigley!

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Wheeler and Everett win this one!

The first outing for Dan Wheeler as closer for the Astros turned out to be a positive one. When Adam Everett hit the two run homer to take the lead against the Cubs, Wheeler was able to nail down the win, 5-3. I hope this is the first of many such days, for Wheeler, and for Everett!

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Lidge Demoted.

Brad Lidge lost his status as closer for the Houston Astros. I know there are many who have been calling for his replacement for a year. I understand the move, yesterday was a horrible outing. I hope it pays dividends. But the problems with the Astros in the first week of the season were not even primarily the bull pen or Lidge. It was with the offense. If you average 2 runs a game you are not going to win many games. Beside, the guy who replaced Lidge, Dan Wheeler has not gotten of to the greatest of starts either.

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Three Errors Lead to Third Loss

The Astros found a new way to lose on Wednesday night. They made 3 errors in one inning, allowing 4 runs to score. The final score was 5-4 in favor of the Pirates! Yes, the Pirates swept the Stros in Houston. Not the start to the season most of us were expecting!

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On the Way to Opening Day!

My Wife and I celebrated our 40th anniversary on Saturday! On our first anniversary we did not have much money, and it was opening day at the Astrodome, which at the time was still very new and the place to go, even more so for a baseball fan! We could buy tickets for $4 each back then, park for $.50 and eat for $5--both of us! WE continued to go to Opening Day for our anniversary till it became a tradition with us. We have only missed two Opening Day games with the Astros since 1968, one when we took a cruise for out 25th and one when I took her to see Beauty and The Beast on Broadway for our 35th.
Today we debarked from a cruise to Cozumel at 10:15 in Galveston. We dropped off our dirty things at home, took a shower and now we are off to see the Astros open the season against the Pirates!

This is Wedded Bliss!

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