Starting Five
1. Seems Like Old Times
Soriano in the 2003 World Series…
Whoever wrote “You can’t go home again” (Thomas Wolfe) never watched a baseball game. After all, every batter who scores starts and finishes there.
…and celebrating a home run on Sunday with The Captain.
Alfonso Soriano is also proving Wolfe’s maxim wrong. On Sunday the erstwhile New York Yankee had a walk-off single (and earlier in the game, a home run) to lead the Yanks to a 6-5 defeat of the Tampa Bay non-demonic Rays. Derek Jeter –The Captain — also hit a home run off the first pitch he saw after his latest return from the Disabled List.
Here is the remarkable aspect: Derek Jeter, Alfonso Soriano and Mariano Rivera (who pitched the 9th inning and got the win) all appeared on the same Yankee lineup card for the first time since Game 6 of the 2003 World Series, which they lost to the Florida Marlins. That was October 25, 2003, or roughly nine years and nine months ago. And if was Hideki Matsui Bobblehead Day, as the retired Japanese star also returned and donned pinstripes for a pregame ceremony.
And last night, the cleanup hitter for that 2003 Yankee squad, Jason Giambi, hit a walk-off home run for the Cleveland Indians. Giambi, 42, is the oldest player in MLB history to hit a walk-off home run.
Summer of 42: Giambi’s age
2. “Who Am I To Judge That Person?”
The pope, before takeoff, informing passengers that he cannot accept cash, only credit cards, for all alcoholic drinks.
Those seven words, uttered by Pope Francis on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Rome this weekend, were the most memorable uttered by a pope since John Paul I got his first look at the Vatican apartment and cried, “If this is poverty, I can’t wait to see chastity.”
Okay, maybe JPI did not say that. That’s just what KTVU reported.
Anyway, the most brazen follow-up in journalism history might have taken place if one of the papal press horde had asked Francis if he himself were gay, but who wants to be thrown from a plane that is 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean?
Good for Pope Francis for what he said. With an inordinate percentage of Catholic clergy being homosexual, it seemed foolish and hypocritical for the Catholic Church to be so hard-lined against it.
3. Are You Good With Tape and Cardboard Boxes?
Dude, may I borrow your masking tape?
Amazon announced yesterday that it is hiring 7,000 new employees. You have to love a country in which one of the most successful companies of the past 15 years manufactures almost nothing (outside the Kindle) itself.
4. Glorious Goodwood…
… is not a film that you will find on “HBO After Dark” but rather, as all Brits know, the highlight of the English horseracing season. And it begins today at the Goodwood Race Course in West Sussex, England, which sits along the English Channel. Goodwood is known as the most beautiful race course in England, but that is not what makes it peculiar. What makes it peculiar, at least to us colonists, is that the course is a six-furlong straightaway.
5. In Case You’re Thinking of Crossing Between Panama and Costa Rica
And the Rio Sixaola below is home to crocodiles and snakes.
This old railroad bridge is also an international border between Costa Rica and Panama. The planks are loose, too. And if an 18-wheeler happens to be crossing while you are, well, just lean against the fence.
