*As a boy I had his 1965 card and played baseball with his glove.

RIP Willie.

Mays, McCovey and (especially) the great Ali, all gone. But not in my memories!

Mays was elite. A case can be made for him being the best baseball player ever.

trivial pursuit.. Okaydo's Bewitched lady, Elizabeth Montgomery, died in 1995 [at 62]
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000548

Big C said:

---

RIP Willie.

Mays, McCovey and (especially) the great Ali, all gone. But not in my memories!

---

From James Earl Jones' monologue in Field of Dreams: "... and cheered their heroes. And it will be as if they'd dipped themselves in magic waters. And they'll watch the game and the memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces".

Any Bay Area kid born after ~1960 can't imagine how the Giants owned the Bay Area in the early 1960s I grew up the oldest boy in a non-sports family with, from age 4-10, a single parent, so everything I learned about sports was from friends, listening to Russ and Lon, and watching the occasional Giants game on Channel 2. Baseball wasn't even my favorite sport, but like all my friends, I tried to imitate his swing and make basket catches.

As an eight year-old walking back to school from a class picnic, I remember a friend who had snuck along a transistor radio telling us about a catch Mays made in the 1962 World Series. At age 11, I was sitting in the backyard listening to my transistor radio when he hit his 52nd home run in 1965. I only made it to one game where I saw Willie play - maybe 1966? Naturally, a cold, foggy day. Ron Herbel pitched, the Giants lost, and the only notable thing Willie did was to hit a pop foul so high in the fog that the infielder dropped it. But it didn't matter, because I got to see him play.

So, life goes on, but now there's a little less joy in the world. RIP Willie.

Big C said:

---

RIP Willie.

Mays, McCovey and (especially) the great Ali, all gone. But not in my memories!

---

In the late 1980's my wife and I were playing as guests at Monterey Peninsula Country Club. Willie McCovey was in the foursome ahead of us. One of the guys we were with while we were on deck on the 1st tee said, "How are you hitting them, Willie?" The comment was not recieved well…..which vindicated my policy of never acknowledging a celebrity I see in public. It served me well at Metropolitan GC in Oakland many years later when I was hitting balls on the grass driving range when Bill Russell was next to me hitting balls and our faces were two feet apart (his was higher up) because he was a lefty. I was going to say, "Have a nice round today Mr. Russell," but I took a hard pass. No one said a word to him.

…..in other news, this is a very clear photo of this:


The Catch: Willie Mays makes his famous eighth-inning grab in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds in New York. Photo: Frank Hurley/New York Daily News via Getty Images


*I saw Willie Mays play at least once as a boy and always held dear his Topps baseball cards for the years 1964, 1965, and 1966, and his glove I played with.


Nobody bullet points the facts like Axios:

Giants' Willie Mays dies at 93


https://www.axios.com/2024/06/19/willie-mays-baseballs-towering-giant-dies-93

Willie Mays: Stats Against All Pitchers | Stathead.com


https://stathead.com//baseball/versus-finder.cgi?&player_id1=mays--002wil&utm_medium=sr_xsite&utm_source=br&utm_campaign=2023_01_player_innernav_stathead&__hstc=107817757.2f3f33a24b44870ec4a577029c49e44b.1699574400170.1699574400171.1699574400172.1&__hssc=107817757.1.1699574400173&__hsfp=966217318

*No one liked Bob Gibson on the mound (Mays BA vs: .196)

"Hank Aaron told me) 'Don't dig in against Bob Gibson, he'll knock you down. He'd knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him. Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him. He doesn't like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow, don't run too fast. If you happen to want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first. And if he hits you, don't charge the mound, because he's a Gold Glove boxer.' I'm like, 'Damn, what about my 17-game hitting streak?' That was the night it ended."
Dusty Baker

Bob Gibson Quotes, Stories, and Anecdotes Mop-Up Duty


http://mopupduty.com/bob-gibson-stories-and-anecdotes-040714/

smh said:

---

trivial pursuit.. Okaydo's Bewitched lady, Elizabeth Montgomery, died in 1995 [at 62]
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000548

---

Donald Sutherland, Don't Look Now and Hunger Games actor, dies aged 88


https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/20/actor-donald-sutherland-dies-hunger-games-dont-look-now?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Gonna watch Kelly's Heroes tonight.


Woof woof woof!

Shifty Shellshock, the frontman of rap rock band Crazy Town who sang the hit song “Butterfly,” has died. He was 49. https://t.co/3boDd3FMo8

— Variety (@Variety) June 25, 2024

Country music star Kinky Friedman dead at 79



https://mol.im/a/13577255

The Ballad of Charles Whitman

He was sitting up there for more than an hour
Way up there on the Texas Tower
Shooting from the twenty-seventh floor, yahoo

He didn't choke or slash or slit them
Not our Charles Joseph Whitman
He won't be an architect no more

Got up that morning calm and cool
He picked up his guns and walked to school
All the while he smiled so sweetly
And it blew their minds completely
They'd never seen an Eagle Scout so cruel

Now won't you think for the shame and degradation
For the school's administration?

He put on such a bold and brassy show
The Chancellor cried, "It's adolescent
And of course it's most unpleasant
But I got to admit it was a lovely way to go"

There was a rumor about a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain
He was sitting up there with his .36 Magnum
Laughing wildly as he bagged 'em
Who are we to say the boy's insane?









Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed

You uppity women I don't understand
Why you gotta go and try to act like a man,
But before you make your weekly visit to the shrink
You'd better occupy the kitchen, liberate the sink.

Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed
That's what I to my baby said,
Women's liberation is a-going to your head,
Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed.

bearister said:

---

Country music star Kinky Friedman dead at 79



https://mol.im/a/13577255

The Ballad of Charles Whitman

He was sitting up there for more than an hour
Way up there on the Texas Tower
Shooting from the twenty-seventh floor, yahoo

He didn't choke or slash or slit them
Not our Charles Joseph Whitman
He won't be an architect no more

Got up that morning calm and cool
He picked up his guns and walked to school
All the while he smiled so sweetly
And it blew their minds completely
They'd never seen an Eagle Scout so cruel

Now won't you think for the shame and degradation
For the school's administration?

He put on such a bold and brassy show
The Chancellor cried, "It's adolescent
And of course it's most unpleasant
But I got to admit it was a lovely way to go"

There was a rumor about a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain
He was sitting up there with his .36 Magnum
Laughing wildly as he bagged 'em
Who are we to say the boy's insane?









Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed

You uppity women I don't understand
Why you gotta go and try to act like a man,
But before you make your weekly visit to the shrink
You'd better occupy the kitchen, liberate the sink.

Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed
That's what I to my baby said,
Women's liberation is a-going to your head,
Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed.

---

That last one enraged a lotta feminists in Santa Cruz a while back.

Here's another

bearister said:

---

Willie Mays: Stats Against All Pitchers | Stathead.com


https://stathead.com//baseball/versus-finder.cgi?&player_id1=mays--002wil&utm_medium=sr_xsite&utm_source=br&utm_campaign=2023_01_player_innernav_stathead&__hstc=107817757.2f3f33a24b44870ec4a577029c49e44b.1699574400170.1699574400171.1699574400172.1&__hssc=107817757.1.1699574400173&__hsfp=966217318

*No one liked Bob Gibson on the mound (Mays BA vs: .196)

"Hank Aaron told me) 'Don't dig in against Bob Gibson, he'll knock you down. He'd knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him. Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him. He doesn't like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow, don't run too fast. If you happen to want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first. And if he hits you, don't charge the mound, because he's a Gold Glove boxer.' I'm like, 'Damn, what about my 17-game hitting streak?' That was the night it ended."
Dusty Baker

Bob Gibson Quotes, Stories, and Anecdotes Mop-Up Duty


http://mopupduty.com/bob-gibson-stories-and-anecdotes-040714/

---

One of my favorite games featured the Giants and Willie facing the Cubs with Ernie Banks at Candlestick.

It was afternoon in a San Francisco summer at Candlestick Park. It was sunny and cool when the game started, and early on, the score was tied at 1-1. Soon the sun disappeared, the winds came, increasing as the game wore on. Then the fog rolled in, and it got colder and colder. It was freezing, and the players on both teams were struggling to get a solid hit, or get any hit at all.

The game dragged on into the 10th inning, and most of the fans had left the park. To start the inning, Willie Mays came up to bat, and Willie was paid to hit home runs, so everyone hoped for a home run to end this thing. But Willie and all the players knew that in that wind and cold, no one, not even Ruth himself could hit one out. Mays, who hardly ever bunted for a base hit, decided to lay down a perfect bunt, beat the throw, and reached first base with a single.

Then Willie stole 2nd base. Then he stole 3rd base. And then he stole home, coming in with the winning run. Everyone cheered, and gratefully went home to get warm. Willie must have thought something like, "This is ridiculous. I want to go home, and everyone in the park wants to go home. I need for us to win this game, so I'm bunting for a hit, and we'll see what happens." He was the best player I ever saw.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jun/27/kinky-friedman-jewish-cowboy-dead




~ Kinky rocks Zevon

Martin Mull has passed. RIP

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/entertainment/martin-mull-obit/index.html

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/jun/28/martin-mull-dead-arrested-development-roseanne-actor

~ the great Marty Mull, shouted-out in this beautiful early 70s classic tune, along with Berkeley's own hot women-fronted dance rock band Joy of Cooking, & Kris K & Rita Coolidge . . .

" Well, I know Kris and Rita, and Marty Mull
Are meeting at the Troubadour
We'll get it on with the joy of cooking
While the crowd cries out for more
'Round six o'clock this morning
I'll be gettin' kinda slow
When all the shows are over, honey
Tell me, where do you think I go?"
-Lonesome L.A. Cowboy, NRPS

And now the Baby Bull is gone. RIP Orlando.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5602360/2024/06/29/orlando-cepeda-obituary/

sonofabear51 said:

---

And now the Baby Bull is gone. RIP Orlando.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5602360/2024/06/29/orlando-cepeda-obituary/

---

Your post triggered a mental muscle memory. In 1962, the local radio stations played a baseball novelty song about Orlando Cepeda. It took me a while to find it because the song wasn't about him. It was a Dodgers' song that contained a verse about Cepeda….and that verse was the only part of the song they played in Northern California (sung by Danny Kaye).



Orlando Cepeda
Is at bat with the bases jammed
Orlando Cepeda
With a wham, bam
He hit a grand slam

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/dodgers.shtml




*As a boy in 1966, this was in my stack of cards I never played gambling games with on the playground (other sacred cards were Mays, McCovey, Aaron, Mantle, Marichal, and Koufax)

random sad sunday endgame reminder..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/01/if-you-are-spiritual-but-not-religious-how-do-you-want-to-die

sooner or later, sorrry, death gonna getcha. a haunting for instance is the many years ago passing of the late great antiwar folk singer Phil Ochs [decades later his daughter became an aclu fundraiser]..
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/10/archives/phil-ochs-a-suicide-at-35-singer-of-peace-movement.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ochs

~ from comments "@simkenglee
4 years ago
"You want a good life? It's not complicated. Tell the girl you love, that you love her. And tell the truth to everyone"

June 22:

As ‘Chinatown’ Turns 50, Robert Towne Reflects on His Netflix Prequel Plans With David Fincher and Writing Jack Nicholson's Most Iconic Role https://t.co/7RdMw3wSfH

— Variety (@Variety) June 22, 2024

July 2:

Oscar-winning writer-director Robert Towne died Monday in Los Angeles at age 89. Pictured is Towne on the set of "Days of Thunder" (1990), which he wrote with Tom Cruise.

Read more about Towne's life and legacy here: https://t.co/vo9SQRVBm4 pic.twitter.com/Sw5SSwBgvU

— Variety (@Variety) July 2, 2024

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/2024/07/11/shelley-duvall-a-beloved-avatar-for-creative-individuality-who-defined-1970s-new-hollywood/

^Will have to check out "3 Women",

Dave Loggins has passed. RIP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Loggins

*Sam Kinison mention her in a bit where he referred to a "grilled cheese sandwich."

> Sam Kinison mention her in a bit where he referred to a "grilled cheese sandwich."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jul/13/sex-therapist-dr-ruth-dead-age-96
from the link..

Quote:

---

The legendarily frank sex therapist and cultural icon Dr Ruth Westheimer, known simply as Dr Ruth, has died at the age of 96, according to her publicist.

Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family.

Her training and expertise and her humorous, accepting manner contrasted with her high-pitched German accent and diminutive frame (she was 4ft 7in), a juxtaposition that helped to catapult her local radio program, Sexually Speaking, into the national spotlight in the early 1980s.

---

Shelley Duvall celebrated her 75th birthday on Sunday. She died on Thursday.

Richard Simmons celebrated his 76th birthday on Friday. He died on Saturday.