The Daily Dose/May 23, 2021
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Editor’s Note: Gaylon is working on a project and most elements of The Daily Dose – Leading Off, The Sunday Bottom 5, On This Date, Some Philosophy Crap, Trivia – are either on hiatus or running intermittently. Your full-service Daily Dose will return, probably later this spring, though perhaps in the summer.
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
ANCHORS AWEIGH: To paraphrase something we used to say – not without some regularity – in the Navy, major league baseball would muck up a wet dream. As we discussed last week, they are unable to properly define a no-hitter. Now, they can’t even count to 20,000.
Don’t Get Out Your History Books: The headline said Jose Godoy of the Seattle Mariners had become the 20,000th player in major league history. All right, that’s a nice little milestone but the mark turns out to be false because the article also noted:
The list of big leaguers began in 1871…
Dry, Technical Matter: No it did not. 1871 is when the National Association (NA) began play, however the list of big-league players begins on April 22, 1876, when the first ten players took part in the first at-bat in the National League’s first game.
And You Wonder Why You Don’t Get Invited To Any Parties: Any halfwit knows the National Association does not qualify for major league status. Yes, of course, it was the highest level of professional baseball played at the time. We give it that, but that’s where it ends because the NA was merely a collection of teams that played games when it suited them, with many teams not making road trips because of the cost. This is not the trait of a league entitled to major league status.
Please Pass The Dry, Technical Matter: Proof of the NA’s minor league status – as if more is required – can be found in the major league record book, which ignores NA marks, though it does include records from the several defunct major leagues that dot baseball’s historical landscape.
FunFact: Of the 24 teams that played official NA games, only three – the Philadelphia Athletics, the New York Mutuals and the Boston Red Stockings (now the Atlanta Braves) – played all four seasons.
The Bottom Line: We’re sorry, Godoy is no more the 20,000th player in big league history than you are, and some research shows he was actually the 19,674 big league player. Source: baseball-reference.com. The wait for 20,000 continues.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – For the 3,235th time, Sparrow requests you ring the bell at the hotel’s front desk. Today’s Diary.
Shortly thereafter you can hear him farting around at the sundry stand and when he gets to the desk with his crap and says “yoo hoo” as if I’m a chocolate drink and yelps “ding ding ding ding ding ding”…Christ, I’m ready to drag him out back for summary execution…Finally, he rings the bell (a typically weak ring, as if pushing the button all the way down is hard) and I head out…He looks as impudent, breezy and flippant as he sounded, but ol’ Sparrow is service personified, treating him like I wanted a loan from him and he was out the door – heading to work it appeared – in short order.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
It was hard to believe he had evolved through the natural process of conception, birth and growing up.
McKinley Kantor
Andersonville
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