Our new schedule essentially begins today, with the first of the twice-a-week anecdotal columns. Friday will be another full-length piece and Saturday our first podcast in 18 months. Enjoy.
Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:
NO, IT’S NO NO-NO: Young fans are excited that they got to see a no-hitter pitched by four Houston pitchers against Philadelphia in the World Series.
Boy, do I feel old.
Let’s get one thing straight. Nobody pitched a no-hitter last night.
Cristian Javier, Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly pitched a wonderful game last night as Houston pulled even in the World Series. But those folks saying it was the second no-hitter in World Series history and the first since 1956 are nothing but wrong.
A no-hitter has never been a team accomplishment. A no-hitter is one pitcher getting 27 outs in a regulation game without anyone getting a base hit. If the game goes to extra innings, the pitcher only gets a no-hitter is he completes the game without allowing a hit.
That’s why maybe the best-pitched game in history is no longer considered a no-hitter. Pittsburgh’s Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings in 1959 against Milwaukee before losing 1-0 in the 13th inning.
Haddix used to get credit for a 12-inning perfect game, the only one in history. But in 1991, the rule was changed and no-hitters that were spoiled in extra innings.
Of course that has nothing to do with yesterday’s game. Yesterday’s game wasn’t a no-hitter because it wasn’t accomplished by one pitcher getting more and more tired in the late innings and still finding a way to get the job done.
Period.
***
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEX: My grandson was born 11 years ago today, the second of three from my daughter’s first marriage. We acquired three more when Pauline married her second husband, and Lex instantly acquired three older brothers.
He was the only one of the original three to be born in this country. His older sister Arti was born in Beijing in 2008, and little Albanie was born in Jamaica in 2014. Pauline was stationed in Indonesia when he was on the way, and she wasn’t pleased with the medical conditions. She and her family went to Seattle, where Lex was born.
He has been such a terrific little guy.
I’m really looking forward to watching him grow to adulthood.
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LEAVE ME ALONE: I have been making small donations — usually of $25 — to Democratic candidates for the last 15-20 years.
I haven’t been donating in the current cycle, but I have been getting more e-mail requests that I ever have before. I swear I’m getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 requests a day from just about every competitive Senate race in the country.
I rarely even open them, but the small amount of copy I see at the beginning of many of them is sort of obnoxious. I see where so-and-so in such-and-such state is in despair or giving up on the election because of a lack of money.
Yes, I’d love to see Tim. Ryan beat J.D. Vance in Ohio.
I’d love to see Val Demings beat Marco Rubio in Florida.
I certainly don’t want Herschel Walker to be one of my senators here in Georgia.
But I will vote next Tuesday and that’s it for this year.
I think I need to get off some of these mailing lists.
***
CHARITIES ARE EVERY BIT AS BAD: It’s not really an e-mail thing with the charities, but because of that, they’re actually even more intrusive.
We still have a landline in addition to our cellphones, and 80-90 percent of our calls on the landline are asking us for money.
The awful thing about it is that it doesn’t require any effort at all for them to call us day after day. They use a computer to go through a long list of calls, and someone sitting at the computer comes on the line only when someone answers.
I actually tried answering one of them once and asked them to take us off their list and stop calling us.
They still call every day.
I’ve been on the Do Not Call list almost since it existed, but there are so many exceptions.
I’ll try again and let you know how it works out.