Starting Five

1. “Day After Day, Alone on a Hill….”

Yesterday afternoon Matt Harvey of the New York Mess, who has the lowest WHIP (Walks plus Hits divided by Innings Pitched) in the history of Major League Baseball after 31 starts, took the mound in Miami to face the Marlins. Harvey began the game with five scoreless innngs of work, bringing his total to 22 consecutive such innings since the All-Star break.

However, he would lose, 3-0, after one bad inning.

Harvey has the second-best WHIP (0.88) in baseball this season, as well as the second-best ERA (2.21), but the Mess have scored one run or fewer in five of his starts. He has 12 no-decisions in 22 starts, primarily because his teammates think of his starts as the Sabbath. And not the Sloane Sabbith. If Harvey is not the best pitcher in baseball, he certainly is the best pitcher in baseball with an 8-3 record.

Misery loves company, and Harvey has plenty of it. Chris Sale of the White Sox who, like Harvey, was an All-Star a few weeks ago, is in the top 20 in both WHIP and ERA. But Chicago has failed to score a single run in three of his past six starts. No pitcher in all of baseball gets less run support (2.55 per game), which may be why Sale is 6-11 while fellow A.L. Central pitcher Max Scherzer of the Detroit Tigers, who has a worse ERA but receives the MOST run support of any pitcher in baseball (6.14), has baseball’s best record (15-1).

Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers. Leads the majors in BOTH ERA (1.87) and WHIP (0.86) but is only 10-6 as only four pitchers — of 92 listed– receive worse run support. Two nights ago Kershaw and Yankee ace Hiroki Kuroda (6th in ERA, 10th in WHIP) threw seven scoreless innings versus one another. Neither got a decision.

And finally, there is Felix Hernandez of Seattle, the Barry Sanders of baseball. Three years ago King Felix, or as a reader of Bill Simmons once dubbed him, “F-Her”, won the Cy Young Award –deservedly so –with a 13-12 record. Last night Hernandez, who has the fourth-best ERA in baseball, allowed one run through seven innings at Fenway Park against the team with the best record in the American League, the Red Sox (66-44). He left with a 7-1 lead, but the Mariners allowed six runs in the ninth to lose, 8-7. And squander what should have been a sure W for Hernandez (11-4).

F-Her? You can imagine that Harvey, Sale, Kershaw and Hernandez, all of whom are stoic in clubhouse interviews afterward but none of whom will come close to sniffing a 20-win season, often think of their teammates and mutter, “F them.”

2. First Date: She Fell, But Not For Him

Comely brunette Jennifer Rosoff, 35, invited Stephen Close back to her 17th-floor apartment after their first date two nights ago. She poured herself a drink and lit a cigarette, then leaned back against the metal railing of her balcony, which alarmed Close, also 35.

“You know, you shouldn’t do that,” Close reportedly told her.

“I do it all the time,” Rosoff, a media ad executive at an internet startup, replied.

Close told police that he then heard two sharp pops. The railing gave way, and Rosoff plummeted 17 stories to her death.

Gravity. Still undefeated.

3. “And Now, For An Incredibly Awkward Segue…”

 

One thing that is not plummeting (wait? what!?!) is the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average struck an all-time high yesterday, closing at 15,628. The economy may be in disarray –if you watch Fox News –but somehow this major indicator of economic growth has never been more robust.

Then again, when the Fed continues quantitative easing (QE) with no signs of abatement, well, let’s just say the our economy is in its steroid era. The government is literally pumping money into banks. The Fed is Biogenesis.

One example of the Dow’s vitality: Yesterday, Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM), a Phoenix-based natural and organic foods retailer, issued an Initial Public Offering (IPO). The stock opened at $18 per share and closed trading at $40.11 per share, a 123% gain (and I’d like to thank those friends of mine who apprised me of SFM’s IPO after trading began).

Meanwhile, fast-food workers at McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other chains are contemplating a nationwide strike in order to earn more than their $7.25 per hour minimum wage. McDonald’s, for one, made $5.5 BILLION (that’s “b” as in “burger”) in profit last year and saw its stock price soar more than 10%. That’s fantastic news if you’re a millionaire investor looking for a safe haven for your currency stockpile. The bad news is that most people earning $7.25 per hour lack discretionary income to invest in the market.

As John Oliver reports on The Daily Show, there’s a lot of people out there who don’t really care. And most of them appear on air at Fox. Tracy Byrnes, for example, who is shown saying, “The goal in life is not to be on minimum wage forever….this notion that we’re gonna keep raising (the minimum wage) just to share the wealth because, well, we’re almost socialists anyway at this point, is ridiculous…” Kudos to the The Daily Show staff for then plumbing a three year-old on-air comment by Burns who scolds a guest about taxes on the wealthy by saying, “$250,000 is not rich. You’ve lived in this city long enough. It is not rich. It is actually, close to poverty.”

So if you’ve dozed off during this item, a recap: A Fox anchor is scolding minimum wage earners on one hand who yearn to earn $10 per hour (that’s $400 per week for a 40-hour week, which is basically what you’d earn via unemployment, so…WHY EVEN WORK!?!?) while attempting to sell the idea that earning $250,000 per year (or, $120 per hour) is “close to poverty” when it comes to asking the wealthiest few percent to pay their share of the tax burden.

It’s a great economy. If you are already wealthy. For the rest of America, it blows.

Oh, and there’s a Wendy’s and a Burger King directly below the NewsCorp Building on 49th St. and Sixth Avenue. If I were Tracy Byrnes I’d avoid those for, like, eternity.

4. “And Now, For a Less Awkward Segue…”

Speaking of things that keep going up (okay, that’s better), how about buildings that aspire for their spires to be the world’s tallest. The Shanghai Tower, which will be the world’s second-tallest building at 632 meters (2,073 feet, or nearly seven football fields tall), topped out today. It still needs to be completed, but the 121-story tower has reached its apex.

Of course, the world’s tallest structure remains the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai (for the record, it is not black and yellow), which stands 828 meters (2,716 feet, or about 905 yards, or more than anyone on Notre Dame will rush for this season) and is 124 stories. It opened in 2010.

How long will Burj Khalifa be the world’s tallest, though? And will Shanghai Tower even be the tallest edifice in China a year from today? Last week builders broke ground on Sky City, a planned 838-meter (2,749 feet) structure in the central Chinese city of Changha (me neither). The most incredible aspect of this project, perhaps, is that builders expect it to be completed in 10 months, which is less time than it takes most contractors to renovate your kitchen.

No shortage of Babel-like structures being erected, and most of them in Asia. So apparently The Fountainhead is available in Farsi and Mandarin?

5. And Now, For a Somewhat Contrived Segue

Speaking of lofty summits in Asia (were we?), earlier this summer –in fact, on the Summer Solstice — the Pakistani peak Nanga Parbat, the western anchor of the Himalayas and the worlds’ ninth-tallest peak at 26,660 feet, was the site of a grisly massacre of climbers. A group of men bearing knives and Russian-made Kafelnikov rifles invaded a base camp and, announcing themselves as Taliban and Al Qaeda, murdered 11 people at the 13,000-foot elevation base camp.

None of the victims were American-born (one was a naturalized citizen from China), which may be why the story escaped your (my) notice. However, Men’s Journal  has an in-depth report in its current issue, thanks in part to the fact that one man from the party survived.

Reserves

There’s not much we’d want to give Aaron Hernandez credit for this summer, but thanks to his jailhouse letter yesterday, let’s credit him with introducing the term “down talkers” into the lexicon. Oh, and please keep this off social media.

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Six unknown white guys performing the year’s best song a cappella.

Four unknown black guys performing the year’s best song acoustically.

 

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The point worth making about Riley Cooper, and I believe my friend Bomani Jones and others may have made it yesterday: A culture that itself uses a term so profligately and ubiquitously, no matter the intention, as African-Americans use “nigger” and “nigga”, begins to forfeit some of its right to be offended when others use it as well. It’s a little like alcohol: If it’s okay for everyone 21 and over to imbibe, just how outraged are we allowed to be at the idea of 20 year-0lds (and Heisman Trophy-winning ones, at that) following suit?

You can argue that Cooper used the epithet in its most disgusting fashion, spoken with malice and hostility and even racism. You may be correct. But in a moment that was likely fueled by both anger and booze, Cooper’s remark was, for me, less scandalous than if a completely sober CEO had used it during a meeting with his Board of Directors.

It was a stupid and vile thing to say. I still find Tracy Byrnes more offensive.

Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer does not agree. He believes that the Eagles would have been justified in going so far as to release Cooper.

One thing I did not know: the other dude in the video is Eagle teammate Jason Kelce, who tries in vain to placate Cooper. Kelce has a beard and can be seen early on, with his left arm on Cooper’s shoulder.

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“A Long, Long Time Ago…at Band Camp”

Not particularly tied to this date, but because I heard the song,  not just a classic but arguably one of the top ten pop songs ever written, the other day. Have you ever really listened to the lyrics in Don McLean’s 1971 hit “American Pie” and wondered just how many references were soaring over your head? This site may tell you more than you actually want to know.