1. For some reason, as I was continuing to learn more about my new MacBook Air, Graham Parker popped into my mind and I realized I couldn't remember the last time I listened to him. I flashed back to about 1989 or so when Paul F. had made me a cassette tape recording of Parker's LP, Squeezing Out Sparks, a tape I played obsessively, listening to "Discovering Japan", "Local Girls", "You Can't Be Too Strong", "Passion is No Ordinary Word", and the rest of this album.
I've never quite understood what music from the 1970s and on into the 80s is known as New Wave, but I know that Graham Parker is considered one of the first New Wavers along with Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, and others and my mind retreated back to 1978-79 when these artists along with Ian Drury, Nick Lowe, The Cars, The Talking Heads, The Kinks (especially "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman") were getting air time on FM radio and were staking a claim in my musical consciousness, to my delight.
Today, I thought about I came often came to the music I've come to love from the 1970s much later than it was recorded. I didn't really listen to Patti Smith's "Gloria", The Modern Lover's "Roadrunner", anything by The Velvet Underground, or anything by The Ramones, among many others, until 1987 when Rolling Stone published a special issue listing the top 100 albums of the magazine's first twenty years of publication and I pursued buying or borrowing (mostly) almost every one of those albums. I threw an epic party in October of 1987 that featured cuts from about 97% of those recordings. To this day, that night stands out as one of the most fun times I've ever had. The tapes I made for that party, though, are long gone.
I'd like to add that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers first came to my attention in about 1982, thanks to MTV. But, it wasn't until quite a few years later, around 2004, thanks to my now defunct subscription to Sirius/XM satellite radio, that I started to be really blown away by Tom Petty. Today, I hand washed a load of dishes and fixed a huge canned salmon, Romaine lettuce, feta cheese, Kalamata olive, celery, cucumber, and carrot salad and listened to all Tom Petty songs while doing so, a pleasure that wrecked me.
2. The last two winters, ice sliding down the back roof destroyed segments of the gutters and today a couple of guys, as planned, arrived and replaced the back gutters, straightened out the gutters in the front, and installed snow breaks on both the front and back with the hope that they will protect the gutters. I have my fingers crossed.
3. Time will tell if Dodgers' manager Dave Roberts made the right decision regarding which pitcher he assigned to start Game 2.
Roberts could have taken an aggressive approach and started Walker Buehler who last pitched on Saturday and would have been pitching with three days of rest. Those, like David Ortiz, who favored starting Buehler today argue that the Dodgers, having won Game 1, should have bet the house in Game 2, started their ace, Buehler, for as long as he could pitch, and not worry about anything beyond Game 2. Those who think like Ortiz saw starting Buehler as giving the Dodgers their best chance of winning Game 2 and putting the Rays in a 0-2 hole.
Roberts (and I don't know who else was involved in this decision) took a more conservative approach. Thursday is a day off in the World Series. Not pitching Buehler tonight would give him two extra days of rest before he pitches on Friday. Buehler has had recurring problems with blisters on his pitching hand, for one thing, and, for another, the more cautious approach assumes that Buehler will pitch better with five days of rest than with three.
It'll be interesting to see how Walker Buehler pitches on Friday, especially because he'll be matched up against the Rays' Charlie Morton who has been pitching superbly in the playoffs.
So, no one knows how Game 2 might have gone with Buehler on the hill, but we do know that tonight the long slumbering bat of the Rays' best hitter, Brandon Lowe, woke up. He hit two home runs and drove in three runs and Joey Wendle also drove in three runs with a double and a sacrifice fly.
It's not like the Dodgers were asleep at the bat. Chris Taylor slammed a crucial two-run homer and both Will Smith and Corey Seager added solo shots.
Home runs are fine. They are the centerpiece of contemporary baseball's analytics driven baseball strategy. I get it. It's similar to the way that analytics have made the three point shot the centerpiece of offensive strategy in the NBA.
That said, I get a special thrill out of runs scored without home runs. Tonight, I loved how the Rays had two innings when they capitalized on walks and hits that stayed in the ballpark, and scored two runs on a Wendle double and later a Wendle sacrifice fly.
I love the action when hits stay in the park, runners have to decide whether to take an extra base, and infielders and outfielders have to make accurate throws -- I love seeing a ball hit in either the right or left center field gap with runners on base, watching the outfielder run down the ball, watching runners fly from base to base, and then feeling the suspense of whether the relay from outfielder to infielder will nab a runner or not, whether at second, third, or at home.
Maybe it still is, but these runs scored without home runs used to be called manufacturing runs.
I enjoyed how the Rays manufactured runs tonight.
The Dodgers didn't, but, believe me, they can manufacture runs with stolen bases, moving runners along, and with timely hits that stay in the ballpark -- in addition to being a potent home run hitting squad.
It's what makes them such a formidable team at the plate.
A limerick by Stu:
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