by John Walters

Starting Five

Live And Let Die

As President Trump (sans mask) toured a mask factory in Arizona yesterday, no one thought to turn down the rock music the employees play to make the time pass better. And so it was that his chat with one worker was mostly drowned out by the vocals of Paul McCartney on Wings’ classic “Live And Let Die.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

As The New York Times reports that black people as an ethnic group are far more susceptible to Covid-19 than any other American ethnic group, and as Prez Trump himself notes that people over age 60 with underlying medical conditions are more at risk, you don’t have to wonder much as to why the GOP is so eager to get the country up and running again. The coronavirus isn’t a danger; it’s a godsend.

Live and let die.

Old folks with health problems are just a drag on the system. And black folk? Well, except for Tiger and Kanye…

Live and let die.

Mask Transit

For the first time since it began operating in 1915, the New York City subway system had an overnight planned stoppage of service last night. No trains ran at all between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., which is peak time for anyone whose lives are really not going in the right direction (particularly on a Tuesday night).

The MTA closed the subway so that it could massively disinfect all trains. It’s also a good way to persuade potential straphangers that the trains are safe: ridership is down 90% since the virus struck and at least 109 subway workers have died due to the virus.

I don’t know how they were able to get some of the people who ride the train during those hours out of the cars last nigh (a lot of jostling, a lot of “Wake up!” and maybe even a hose or two), but they did. This is something that will continue for the foreseeable future and really not the worst idea to keep doing.

Live And Let Diet

British superstar siren Adele posted a recent pic of herself on Instagram and we instantly thought of a sale: 30% off. In music this is known as “the Belinda Carlisle makeover” and it may be only a matter of time before she weds a Republican congressman and changes her hair color.

Sit and Listen (Sit and Listen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYaR_qVBsnk

Here’s Curt Smith of Tears For Fears and his daughter Diva covering the band’s breakout 1983 hit, “Mad World.” Father and daughter just released this a month ago.

Sports Year 1886

Yale wins the national championship again, Richard Sears wins the U.S. Open again, William Renshaw wins Wimbledon again, and John L. Sullivan knocks out another mick to retain the World Heavyweight Championship. Are dynasties ruining sports???

***

At Lillie Bridge, a cinder bicycle track in London, Walter George and William Cummings meet on August 31st in a Challenge Mile race (the two had first squared off a year earlier with George winning in 4:23, despite walking part of the last lap). Despite Cummings taking an eight-yard lead early in the fourth and final lap, George surges ahead and breaks the tape in a world-record 4:12. No one will run a faster mile officially until 1926.

MH’s crack research staff will continue to investigate if this was the inspiration for the phrase, “By George, I think he’s got it.”

***

In St. Louis, The Sporting News is established by Alfred Spink, a director with the St. Louis Browns. It is a national periodical focusing on sports and soon becomes renowned as “The Bible of Baseball.” The Browns defeat the White Stockings to win the World Series.

Guy Hecker of the Louisville Colonels wins 26 games pitching and also the batting title with a .341 average. He remains the only pitcher to ever win a batting title.

***

Arsenal F.C. is formed by a union of munitions workers in London.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Lies and Lives

Once upon a time there was a TV show on NBC, a reality show. And it wasn’t a bad show before all of the contestants were celebrities. One of the hallmarks of the show each week is that contestants would make, if not promises, then at least projections of what their team would be able to accomplish versus the other team. And you know what happened every week? The leader of the team who failed to meet projections, almost always, was called into the board room where the man above to the left would announce, “YOU’RE FIRED.”

February 26: ““You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

YOU’RE FIRED.

April: Trump predicts the death toll could reach 60,000 Americans. Then, this past Saturday night he adjusts his number to Fox News’ Brett Bair that it could eclipse 100,000 Americans (which means gird yourselves for at least 150,000… at least).

YOU’RE FIRED.

We didn’t realize it until CNN’s Don Lemon reminded us, but the U.S. Senate formally acquitted President Trump on February 5th. The next day the first recorded U.S. coronavirus death occurred.* If there is a God, he has a sense of vengeance.

*We think many Americans were dying of it at least two months earlier and we’d honestly be curious if this isn’t what was behind the curiously quick demise of ESPN reporter Ed Aschoff, who was only 34 when he passed in late December.

Finally, something very Trumpian to keep in mind. In the past two months Trump has publicly laid claim to “zero accountability” and “total authority.” Nothing better defines his perverted sense of values.

When The Levee Breaks

In Austin, a park ranger was politely and affably reminding park goers to remain a respectful distance from one another (i.e., doing his job) and a d-bag pushed him in the water. In Flint, a security guard turned away a woman from a Dollar Store for not wearing his mask (working security at a Dollar Store is in the “You-couldn’t-pay-me-enough” Hall of Fame of undesirable jobs) and her husband returned 20 minutes later, said something about “disrespecting my wife” and fatally shot the guard.

In Florida and Washington, D.C., they’re hailing the “reopening” of America and looking the other way at data that this will mean the loss of tens of thousands more lives. Who cares, the stock market’s up 400 points for a second day in a row!

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break

At what point do the doctors and nurses and park rangers and security guards say, “F*** it” and walk off the job? And who could blame them? We’re risking our lives out here for you and you don’t even have our backs? In fact, you’re exacerbating the situation (and then someone explains to Donald Trump that the word does not mean self-pleasuring)?!?

All bills eventually come due (unless you can get yourself elected president). And while this bill may not personally affect Trump, the death toll’s about to rise precipitously and doctors, nurses and others, already overworked literally to the point of death for some, may begin to wonder why they’re being put in the front of the firing line day after day after day. Oh, and the Treasury Dept. plans to borrow a record $3 trillion in the second quarter for coronavirus relief. From whom, you may rightly ask?

Cryin’ won’t help you prayin’ won’t do you no good
Now cryin’ won’t help you prayin’ won’t do you no good

From a market perspective, and you should have learned by now not to heed our advice, we see this irrational (and somewhat vulgar, considering how many more people are needlessly about to die) exuberance extending for awhile as businesses reopen and Americans, being Americans, recklessly and rapaciously storm back into malls, restaurants and bars.

And then the bodies will pile up. And someone will go, “Oh yeah, maybe we jumped the gun a little bit” (but only after one of their own family members die). And then there’ll be a massive reckoning and the market will once again go off a cliff. Be ready for that day. Have a lot of your funds in $$$. It’s not coming immediately. But it’s coming.

We were trying to think of a movie scene this reminded us of. Not sure if this is the best metaphor, but it reminds us of The Perfect Storm. Here’s the Andrea Gail with a hull full of fish and two choices: head farther out into the Atlantic and squander the catch but save the crew or sail into the hurricane with a chance to save the prize haul while putting every crewman’s life in mortal danger. And you know how that turned out.

Hot Dame, Judi!

If Dame Judi Dench can earn acclaim as an octogenarian cover model for British Vogue, then we’ve got to step up our efforts to promote Phyllis. We’re thinking an Arizona Highways cover could be in the offing.

Speaking of New York beauties of Italian descent born before Pearl Harbor was attacked, this is Carmen Del’Orefice, 88, who is arguably the world’s most successful model-T (!). She’s been runway’ing it and cat walking it and photo shooting it since age 15. A highly successful career despite a problematic surname. Carmen’s daily motto is “Enjoy oneself, at no one else’s expense.” We can get behind that.

The Last Don

Legendary coach Don Shula, still the only NFL coach to lead a team (Miami Dolphins) to an undefeated Super Bowl championship season, in 1972, passes away at the age of 90. Shula coached the Baltimore Colts in the Sixties and the Dolphins in the Seventies, Eighties and up through 1995. In 33 years of coaching, Shula had two losing seasons. Two.

Shula retired with 328 victories (regular season), which is the standard. George Halas had 318. Bill Belichick has 273 and is currently three years older than Shula was when he retired.

Shula, who grew up outside of Cleveland, played at John Carroll and then for an outstanding Cleveland Browns (don’t laugh) team in 1951 that finished 11-1 and lost the championship game. Shula then played a few more seasons with the Baltimore Colts as a defensive back. There may be a lost photo somewhere of Shula defending wide receiver Bud Grant, who is still alive an whose Vikings tangled with Shula’s Dolphins in Super Bowl VIII.

Sports Year 1885

Richard Sears wins his fifth consecutive U.S. National (precursor to the U.S. Open) Singles Championship in Newport, R.I. The event is in its fifth year. William Renshaw wins his fifth consecutive Wimbledon singles title. Why do these two keep ducking one another?

***

Princeton, which had defeated its first seven opponents by a cumulative score of 457-10, trails Yale 5-0 late on November 21st in New Haven. Then Henry “Tillie” Lamar fields a punt on his own 10-yard line and races 90 yards for the go-ahead touchdown. Old Nassau wins 6-5, its first defeat of rival Yale since 1878. Princeton beats Penn 76-10 five days later (their third defeat of the Quakers of the season) to finish 9-0 and win the national championship.

***

Using Queensbury Rules (i.e., gloves), John L. Sullivan defeats Dominick McCaffrey in six rounds in Cincinnati to win the World Heavyweight boxing championship.’

****

Two extraordinary association football scores on Sept. 12: In the top division, Dundee Harp defeat Aberdeen Rovers 35-0. In a lower division match, Arbroath FC defeat Bon Accord FC 36-0. The two outcomes remain the most lopsided final scores at the top level and at any level of English pro soccer, respectively.

***

John “Phenomenal” Smith loses his first start as a Brooklyn Gray by a score of 18–5 after his teammates commit 14 errors behind him, seven alone by shortstop Germany Smith. “Phenomenal”‘s boast of being so good that he could win by himself doesn’t sit well with the other Brooklyn players, who are fined $500 for their intentional poor play. In the interests of team chemistry, Smith is immediately released. #IABD

The World Series between the Chicago White Stockings ends in a deadlock, 3-3-1, after the first game was called due to darkness and the next six were evenly split. It apparently occurs to no one to finish Game 1. At least the Rays and Phillies figured this out in 2008.

On October 17 owners agree to set players’ salaries between $1,000 and $2,000. Five days later a small coterie of players clandestinely form the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players, the first players’ union. #IABD

by John Walters

Starting Five

“We’re Finally On Our Own”

The Kent State massacre. Fifty years ago today. If you were a college student in 1970 you had already, just since puberty, experienced the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Malcolm X. Then again, if you are a college student in 2020 you’ve probably already lived through 9/11, the Iraq War, the financial collapse of 2008 and now the coronavirus pandemic. Tragedy, to-mah-to.

It says something about the way news was dispensed 50 years ago that Neil Young (a Canadian living in Los Angeles at the time) was more struck by the photos that he saw in Life magazine than by what he saw on television. That moved him to write “Ohio,” which Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded just 17 days later and released in June.

One undergraduate who was spared that day in Ohio? A Kent State football player named Nick Saban, who had decided along with a teammate to eat lunch first before attending the war protest.

The student photographer who took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, John Filo, went on to work at both Sports Illustrated and Newsweek and now works at CBS. That woman wailing in the photo is a 14 year-old runaway, Mary Ann Vecchio. Fill recounting the experience:

The bullets were supposed to be blanks. When I put the camera back to my eye, I noticed a particular guardsman pointing at me. I said, “I’ll get a picture of this,” and his rifle went off. And almost simultaneously, as his rifle went off, a halo of dust came off a sculpture next to me, and the bullet lodged in a tree.

I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition. I don’t know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity … I started to flee–run down the hill and stopped myself. “Where are you going?” I said to myself, “This is why you are here!”

Here’s a good read on Kent State and its ramifications…

A World Of Waste And Wonder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMiUrdEYpxk

Let it not be said that the 2020 pandemic did not inspire great art and thoughts. Above, Tom Foolery with a Seussian poem on what the pandemic (hopefully) taught humanity, and here, David Eggers on “Flattening The Truth.” Stay with it, the bottom half is better than the top.

Justin Time

Imagine, a democratically elected leader of a country in North America who actually has the best interests of the majority of citizens in mind. Astounding, right? Meet Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.

On Friday, less than two weeks after a gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia, making it the largest mass murder in Canada’s history, Trudeau announced the immediate ban of 1,500 types (!) of assault weapons. “

“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only — only to kill the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time,” he said in a press conference. “You don’t need an AR-15 to bring down a deer” (besides, they’re so much more difficult to clean and dress with 37 slugs in them).

What an explosion of, I dunno, common sense? I mean, banning assault rifles won’t eliminate murder any more than speed limits eliminated speeding, and yet no one seems to have a problem with driving at least near the speed limit.

Murder Hornet

If 2020 were a film, the tagline below the title would be, “It came from Asia.” First it was Parasite invading the Oscars. Then Covid-19. Now it’s the giant hornet, also a creature that mysteriously found its way across the Pacific and which also first appeared in the state of Washington.

Hmm. Maybe those Chinese really are up to something clandestine and sinister. Will the murder hornet go the way of the snakehead fish (whatever happened to that species?) or are we in for yet another tsunami of terror and death? The worst part about the murder hornet, besides its nom de guerre, is that it decimates bee populations, something Americans were already doing a pretty good job of ourselves. We need bees. In school you need A’s, but in gardens and nature in general you need bees. Come to think of it, you need seas, too.

Sports Year 1884

Jackie who? Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes the first black major league ballplayer when he makes his debut for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association. Adding legitimacy to this claim, the American Association champion, the New York Metropolitans, meet the National League champ, the Providence Grays, in an event called “the Original World Series” in October.

A screenwriter couldn’t conjure a better name than Moses Fleetwood Walker, now could she? Walker would only play one season, but he would go on to earn four patents for inventions, kill a white man in self defense (an all-white jury acquitted him), go to jail for a year for postal robbery (he was also a mailman) and own a theater.

Ned Williamson becomes the Babe Ruth of the 19th century, shattering the existing single-season home run record of 14 with his 27 dingers. Williamson’s record will last for 35 years before you-know-who breaks it (with 29).

***

A divinity student enrolls at Yale to play for coach Walter Camp. His name? Amos Alonzo Stagg. Not coincidentally, Yale defeats Dartmouth 113-0. One week later Princeton defeats Lafayette 140-0. People were intent on impressing the Committee even then.

****

Everton F.C. moves into Anfield, a new enclosed stadium. They’ll remain for seven seasons and then Liverpool F.C. will become the tenant, where they remain today. Up the Reds!

***

In a sign of more literate times, a boxer named John Kelly earns the nickname Nonpareil Dempsey and becomes the world’s first middleweight champion. Burying the lede, boxing establishes weight classes.

***

For the first time, Wimbledon stages a Ladies Singles championship. Maud Watson, 19, the daughter of a local vicar, wins in three sets. She plays in a corset and petticoats.

by John Walters

Starting Five

The Cruelest Month

April ends. If you visit cnbc.com, you’d know that it was Wall Street’s best month in more than 30 years. The S&P was up nearly 13% and the Dow was up more than 11%.

Of course, if you read anything else, you might also know that it was likely the deadliest month in the United States in your lifetime. At least 60,000 Americans—the attendance at a packed Notre Dame Stadium pre-1990s—died due to the coronavirus. When April began, only about 3,000 Americans had died due to the virus. A plethora of duplicitous Trump pressers and one Jared Kushner victory lap later, more than 63,000 have perished.

We imagine an extraordinary event hasn’t claimed that many American lives in one month since the Spanish Flu or, before that, the Civil War.

Swelter In Place

As the mercury hits the triple digits here in Devil’s Gulch and the rest of the country begins to get enthused about not thinking in terms of layers, a team of top epidemiologists (some of whom have even made multiple covers of Epidemiology Illustrated) released a report saying that we’ll be dealing with this pandemic at least until 2022.

“The length of the pandemic will likely be 18 to 24 months, as herd immunity gradually develops in the human population,” they wrote, adding, “The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology.”

Soooooo, it may be time to get even more creative with your crock pot. And because your local Republican governor is about to begin easing restrictions on what can or cannot be open (and we can appreciate both sides of this argument), we’re going to rescind our prediction of fewer than 100,000 domestic deaths due to Covid-19 (it could top that number by Memorial Day, after all).

If the pandemic lasts as long as these germ studs say it may, needing to infect at least 60% of the population before it subsides, you could be looking at half a million deaths. If you were worried about your preferred Senior Living community having no vacancies, that likely won’t be a problem.

Amazon’s Wild Day

We imagine Susie B. having a Shirley Temple-level meltdown at the Amazon seesaw of the past 24 hours. First, yesterday, shares of the monolithic middleman delivery service hit an all-time high of $2,475 as it leaps more than $100 in one day before an after-hours earnings report.

Then comes the report, where Amazon (predictably) crushes it. Then, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos releases a statement in which he announces that Amazon will reinvest ALL of its Q1 profits into fighting the coronavirus. “Providing for customers and protecting employees as this crisis continues for more months is going to take skill, humility, invention, and money,” Bezos wrote. “If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small.”

And with that shares of the stock plummeted more than $175. Stay strong, Susie B.

Covers Week Concludes

The Japanese female trio Shonen Knife with their original and guitar-blazing cover of The Carpenters’ “Top Of The World,” which they put down for a 1993 tribute album by various artists called If I Were A Carpenter (clever).

Sports Year 1883

A year of firsts: the first luge competition is staged in Davos, Switzerland; the first professional side, Blackburn Olympic, wins the FA Cup; the first championship ice hockey tournament is held (McGill University of Montreal wins it); and the inaugural Home Nations rugby championship is staged and won by England.

***

In the National League, the Chicago White Stockings score 18 runs versus the Detroit Wolverines in one inning on September 6. That record still stands today.

Also in September, Long John Reilly of the Cincinnati Red Stockings has quite a week, twice hitting for the cycle and in a third game hitting two inside-the-park home runs.

President Ulysses S. Grant is one of 15,000 fans in attendance for the inaugural National League game of the New York Gothams. MH is not sure if this is the first time a president attends a Major League Baseball game but it may be.

****

William Renshaw against defeats twin brother Ernest in the Wimbledon singles final, and again in five sets. Excruciating.