Yankee4Life

This is another tough one this month Jim!

Updated to 11-24 ...Hey! It was another great year of Yankee baseball and if it seems like this is a yearly occurrence of me lamenting how disappointing the season was you’re right. I will be doing that at least just for a little bit. Considering that they won the American League pennant there is a lot to be happy about. I'm grateful for a lot of things like Aaron Judge having another good year, Giancarlo Stanton's turnaround and Juan Soto's stable and welcome presence in the lineup. There was so much to like about this team because all you had to do was think about the 2023 Yankees and you can see the difference every time they took the field. As much as the eternal optimists out there can point out all the good things about them this year they cannot cover up their weaknesses and it was something that cost them the World Series. When they did not have a bat in their hand they looked very beatable. Each time a ball was hit to Gleyber Torres I expected him to turn it into an error. He, along with the rest of the team ran the bases like kids in their first year of T-ball. Fundamentals was something that other teams did. I saw teams that were in the Little League World Series tournament that had better work ethics than the Yankees. These guys were terrible at it but when it came to posing and bat flipping after a homerun and elaborate and customized handshakes they were second to none. I try to be positive about the New York Yankees but it is an extremely hard thing to do especially when you know Aaron Boone is still in the dugout and because of that nothing is going to change. ..Fan of the year Dept: For the first time in decades the award for the fan of the year in major league baseball does not go to someone from the cities of Boston or Philadelphia. Those two towns have habitually produced the most disorderly, drunken and violent fans in baseball. But not this year. A twenty-five-year-old Dodger fan celebrated a little bit too much during a gathering of hell-raisers in downtown Los Angeles after the Dodgers won the 2024 World Series. He somehow got his hands on some fireworks and if you haven't heard what happened you can probably guess. Remember when you were little and your mother used to say don't touch the stove because it's hot? Even though the stove wasn't on she wanted to get you into the habit of not touching it. Well, the same thing can be said if you ever plan on lighting a firework. If you have to light one, keep your hand away from it. Apparently no one told this guy because as soon as the firework went off so did two of his fingers and the meat portion between the pointing finger and the thumb area on his left hand. Since this happened he has already had two surgeries and is preparing for a third one very soon. The guy has a job as an oil driller but he is unsure if he is going to return to it. I bet his employers have a pretty good idea that he won't be. I am sure using the restroom will now become one of his biggest challenges. Either that or being able to count to ten. But his Dodgers won. At least he has that. ...A banana duct-taped to a wall sold for $6.24 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week by someone named Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of a cryptocurrency platform. Sun explained that the piece he bought was not just artwork because it represented a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community and he believed the piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I'm sorry but I don't see it. It's just a banana that I want to have with my Cheerios in the morning and this guy thinks he has a Picasso. I thought the price of groceries was high but this is way out of my price range.It seems to me that this guy is trying to justify spending over six million dollars on a banana. I want to be a fly on the wall when he sobers up. They rebuilt Steve Austin for that same price and got a lot more out of him. But now that I think about it I need to get in touch with these people somehow. I have a twelve ounce bottle of water that I have sitting on my porch steps right now that I would like to sell. I am not greedy and not looking to sell it for as much as that banana went for. I'd be happy to sell it for half that much. Three million and it's yours. 🙂 ...This took place in Florida?, Dept: Usually you do not hear anything sane and reasonable coming out of the state of Florida but in this case that is exactly what happened. A Florida sheriff who was so tired of “bogus” school shooting hoaxes plaguing his county announced that he was going to be coming after the kids and the parents of the kids who did this prank. Fighting fire with fire is how he put it and I couldn't agree more. This guy was not fooling around. Florida law gives him the right to release the kid's photo and the video of them being arrested and the police report and for the parents he was going to come after them and charge them criminally or civilly for the cost of the investigation for endangering the child or endangering the welfare of the child. No matter what this will hit the family very hard in the pocketbook if their little angel decides to do something like this. Naturally not all people agree with this approach. Some believe the release of the video of the child being arrested and led to jail would be a form of "public shaming" where it would impact their lives. The way I see it, the kid's life was already impacted the second he picked up the phone or told people about a threatened mass shooting at school. Not just his classmates would be affected but the entire school and every single parent and teacher associated with that school would have their lives impacted also. When they want to commit or threaten to commit a crime like this then they should be able to accept all consequences of their actions. ...Are the Dodgers linked to every player that comes out of Japan now? Roki Sasaki is the latest out of Japan that the Dodgers have shown interest in and as soon and Sasaki converts the yen to dollars they’ll be holding another press conference. Why don’t they just sign everyone out of Japan and be done with it? And notice how no one objects? ...There is going to be a new woman’s basketball league that will begin play in 2025 during the WNBA’s off season. That means you’ll have more of a chance to meet women. Unfortunately your best chance at succeeding is if you are a woman. ...I have a lot of reasons to dislike the modern game of baseball because of the way it is played now as compared to how it was played when I was first introduced to it. I won't nitpick about all the new rules even though that has a lot to do with it. I think the biggest problem that I see is that there is an accepted lack of hustle by ball players on every single team in the major leagues. Some of these guys run so slow down the first base line that they make Gary Sanchez look like a track star. Here is a perfect example which happened at the worst possible time. The Houston Astros were about to be eliminated in their best of three wildcard series with the Detroit Tigers as they entered the bottom of the ninth down by a score of 5 - 2. The first two batters were retired and Astros final hope was with Mauricio Dubon but Detroit relief pitcher Will Vest got Dubon to ground out to second base to end the game. Houston was eliminated from the playoffs and Detroit advanced to the division series. But if you look at the way Dubon ran to first base it was almost like he was going through drills in spring training. That is how slow he was going. And again this was a playoff. I'm not saying if he busted it down the line that he would've been safe but you never know what is going to happen on any given play in baseball and what this guy did was quit before he got halfway down the first base line. So, I figured that the next day Dubon was going to get roasted. I checked the Houston newspapers and not one word was said about what he did. Nothing. Like it never happened. I checked the Detroit newspapers and while they were celebrating the Tiger victory, they too chose to ignore what Dubon did. No big deal! It's not important. That is the attitude that is around baseball and that is what I cannot stand the most about this game. If you don't run down the line you don't have to worry about anything. I grew up watching no-nonsense managers like Earl Weaver and Whitey Herzog and Billy Martin. There were many more but none of these guys would have tolerated anything close to what Dubon or any other players do almost daily. I cannot even imagine what Martin would have done to Dubon if he made the last out of the game like that. This is the same guy that sent Paul Blair out to right field in Boston to let Reggie Jackson know he was out of the game in 1977. Mauricio Dubon would not have been on the same team as Martin the very next year let alone the very next day. These guys make more money than the players before them but they are slowly ruining was once was a great game. ...A Rose by any other name, Dept: My view of Pete Rose changed as the years went on. When I was a kid it was just Rose the ballplayer and nothing else. And nothing else did matter. Kids at that time saw him on the Game of the Week and when Cincinnati was in the postseason and all we knew was what the announcers told us. I knew kids I was in school with that were Reds fans because of Rose. Hey, he ran everything out and always hustled the TV guys made it sound like he walked on water. That all changed during the 1980s when the whispers of his gambling problems became louder and louder until Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti suspended him for life for betting on baseball in August 1989. By that time I did not care. I am not sure but I think my disillusionment with baseball started around this time. Rose denied over and over that he did not bet on baseball and we did not find out until 2004 that he did in fact bet on baseball and on the Cincinnati Reds. During that time it was tough being a baseball fan especially if you were Yankee fan because they were at the bottom or close to it in the American league and I recall reading articles that if he was caught betting on baseball were any other players doing it too? And then a few years later the players strike came and the World Series was canceled. Pete Rose was someone that was a good player but when you took the time to really look into him you saw that the only good thing about him was when he had a bat in his hand. He gambled and gambled too much. He went to jail for tax evasion. He cheated on his wives and in the 1970s carried out relationships with underage girls. Talk about the bloom falling off the rose. But all people to this day want to talk about when you bring up what he did was his baseball statistics because somehow they think it explains everything. The only thing it explains was that he was very good at hiding who he was until he couldn't do it anymore. I won’t hide it. I respected him as a kid, grew to dislike him as I grew older, was entirely in Mr. Giamatti’s corner for suspending him for life and was happy every time an appeal of his went nowhere. I am however not happy he is gone because he did have a family. R.I.P. ... Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who thirty years ago drowned her three-year-old and fourteen-month-old sons into their car seats and let the car roll into a lake near her home was unanimously denied parole after she appeared before the board for the first time last Wednesday. First she lied to the police and said a black man carjacked her and kidnapped her sons and since this was South Carolina 99% of the people believed her. But as the police looked into it a lot of her story did not add up and when they confronted her she admitted to the killings. She checked all the boxes during her hearing. She was repentant and sorry. She wished she could take back what she did. She's a Christian and God already forgave her and most of all she cried and dabbed her eyes constantly. She's right about one thing and that God forgives but the state of South Carolina does not. Thinking about it, the safest place for her to be is behind bars. Remember the guy who shot John Lennon? Mark David Chapman is his name and next month it will be forty-four years that this took place. What if the parole board saw to it to give him his parole? He wouldn't last two weeks outside of jail because one or more crazed Beatles fans would literally kill him. If this woman received parole she just might fall down a flight of stairs two or three times until she didn't get back up. This is the problem with life in prison vs. death penalty. Eventually, the people who face the death penalty get the opportunity for parole. Her two children never had the opportunity to get out of the car. ...I took my what has slowly become my monthly trip to Walmart back on November 13th and by that time the entire store was more than ready for Christmas. I go there when they first open up the place at 6:00 a.m. for two reasons. First to avoid the crowds and secondly to avoid the children that are attached to some of them. They are loud, obnoxious and unruly. And the kids are even worse. Like I said, Walmart was ready. Anything that you wanted they had. Trees, boxes, bows, wrapping, and on and on. There was one full aisle devoted to candy. I’m not someone who hates this holiday but I do dislike how long it is played out. The Hallmark channel has been playing Christmas movies non-stop since before the World Series started and they won’t be finishing up with them until after the new year. I don’t care how much someone likes Christmas that is way too much for anyone. It’s like having a hot fudge sundae for one of your meals every day; it starts out well but then you are soon sick of it. I was able to fly around the store and get everything that I needed while avoiding the store employees that were busy stocking the shelves. I had a smile on my face because I was out of there before 7 a.m. and I knew I’d be home having coffee before the store started to become crowded. As I began to drive off something occurred to me, something so small but at the same time inescapable. Walmart was not playing Christmas music inside the store when I was there. Happy holidays indeed! ...This Thursday is Thanksgiving and for the rest of you not in the United States it just means that it’s just a regularly scheduled Thursday. There will be more football on TV over the weekend so if you forget to stop and get something to eat that’s on you. Wednesday morning I will be in line waiting for a bakery to open up with fifty or so strangers waiting to buy desserts for their families. Ironically I do this every year even though I don’t have any of the cakes or pies that I pick up. As usual there are three NFL games to keep half the household occupied because if everything goes to plan they’ll be asleep before the second game reaches halftime. That’s thanks to the Dallas Cowboys. More on them in a second. The first game which is on 12:30 p.m. ET on CBS has the Chicago Bears at the Detroit Lions and this is a Lions team that you usually do not see on Thanksgiving. That’s because they have a good team. The next game is the New York Giants vs. The Dallas Cowboys and that’s on 4:30 p.m ET on FOX. Having the Giants on is bad enough but combined with the Cowboys is like taking a valium with some NyQuil. Lastly the Miami Dolphins go to Green Bay to take on the Packers at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC. If you survive watching all three games without having your wife, kids or any other member of your family bothering you then I want to shake your hand. And since the NFL does not know what too much of a good thing means they are going to have another game on the next day, Friday November 29th when the Oakland Raiders visit the Kansas City Chiefs. That game will begin at 3 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime. See what they did there? It’s a subtle way to get people to sign up and try out Prime. I’ll save you the trouble. Oakland will score less than ten points and they’ll lose. Have a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving!

You should have done this at the start. There is so much information in these forums and all you have to do is make an effort.

10 out of 10, 36 seconds. One slight hesitation cost me dearly.

8 out of 10, 38 seconds. I got stumped on two but one of them I should have had. This one here I had no idea. These kind of questions get me every time!

It figures. But you don't so please do not put down someone else's work any longer.

Did you bother to check the 2k12\support section to see if your question was answered there because there is a good chance it was. You have been here fifteen years so you have had to see others given this same advice.

I suggest then that you release this instead of the hard work that eliamvpmod is doing. Thank you eliamvpmod for this. Hey Jim, we wrote that at the same time!

10 out of 10, 32 seconds. I really needed this one today.

6 out of 10, 56 seconds. Grasping at straws today my friends. Arjen Robben played for? Who the hell is Arjen Robben? Who was the coach of Steaua Bucharest in season 2004-05? Yeah, like I know. My guess was Joe Girardi. 😅

8 out of 10, 65 seconds. I needed this today because terrible Thursday is right around the corner! 😮

7 out of 10, 43 seconds. Thank you for some football questions. Which NFL team was coached by Tom Landry? Wow!

Oscar Melillo It sounds like a parody of Popeye, but the doctor was deadly serious when he told Oscar Melillo in 1926 that if he wanted to live he could eat nothing but spinach. Facing a potentially fatal kidney problem (Bright’s Disease), the 27-year-old Melillo wisely followed the doctor’s remedy and recovered from the disease, enabling him to continue his baseball career and live to the age of 64. Rather than having parodied Popeye in fact, Melillo’s story may have actually inspired it. The comic strip was created three years after Melillo’s diagnosis, by E.C. Segar, who may have known of the ballplayer’s story. Melillo reached the major leagues in 1926 after six seasons in the minors. He then played 12, through 1937, mostly as a second baseman. The first nine-plus were for the St. Louis Browns and the final nearly three seasons were as a member of the Boston Red Sox. He finished with a career .260 average, driving in 548 runs and scoring 590. Melillo then coached at the major-league level for 13 more years. Melillo was of slight stature, standing 5-feet-8 and weighing 150 pounds. He was born on August 4, 1899, in Chicago to Italian immigrant parents Maria Scaldaferri and James Melillo, a painter and shoe cobbler. Both had come to the United States from Tuscany in 1883. Oscar was the youngest of five children; his older siblings included Josephine, Munzie, James, and Rosie. He started a working life early, dropping out of high school almost as soon as he got there, “playing hookey and golf and baseball, particularly baseball.” He took a job in the office of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, attending night school to take stenography, but too much teasing about being a “sissy” led him to apprentice as a tool maker at International Harvester in West Pullman, Illinois – certainly a more masculine-sounding job. He started playing baseball on weekends with the Alma Maters, the company semipro team. A connection to International Harvester dated back to his grammar school days. The company’s football team had a popular left tackle named Frank Fiske, whose nickname was Ski. Some of the other kids saw the way Melillo kicked the ball and helped pin the nickname on him. Years later, when he himself was working for the company, Oscar cheered Fiske on so much that his fellow workers started calling him “Ski” as well. Catcher Jake “Tomatoes” Kafora, who played in parts of a couple of years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, recommended him for his first job on organized ball, to manager Jack Sheehan of the Winnipeg Maroon. He signed with them in the fall of 1919. He played two years of outfield in the Western Canada League in 1920 and 1921. After the two years of Class B ball, it was on to Milwaukee, where he played four years (1922 through 1925) in the American Association, improving his average each year from .280 to .294 at Double A. His contract had been packaged as a late “throw-in” when the Brewers bought pitcher Eddie Schaack. Midway into his second year with the Brewers, he transitioned to the infield when the team’s second baseman, Fred “King” Lear, jumped the club to play with a team in the Wisconsin Industrial League. Oscar had played second base with the team in some postseason barnstorming in the fall of 1922, so he volunteered to take the job; shortstop Johnny Cooney seconded the notion, and he kept it. His final year with the Brewers, 1925, saw a .294 average, with 46 extra-base hits (13 of them home runs). Major league scouts were following him, and the Brewers reportedly turned down $50,000 in cash but accepted five ballplayers from the St. Louis Browns. Manager George Sisler was trying to strengthen the Browns’ defense and dealt for the second baseman that some writers were beginning to call “the new Lajoie.” With Milwaukee, Melillo had set a new record, handling 1,096 chances at second in 1925, and took part in 132 double plays. In the fifth game of the 1926 season, he took over late in the game for third baseman Gene Robertson and went hitless in his first major-league at-bat. His first hit came the next day, a double with a run batted in. His first game-winning hit came later in April, as he singled in the bottom of the 12th inning in a 2-1 victory over the White Sox. He didn’t homer often (22 in his 12 seasons); the first and only one of his rookie year was hit off Washington pitcher Dutch Ruether on June 18, tying the game in the eighth inning. His fielding won acclaim: On July 21 the New York Times wrote, “One reason the Yanks lost was Melillo’s beautiful stop of Keonig’s fast grounder near second, resulting in a double play of what should have been a base hit. Ruth’s homer followed immediately, but nobody was on.” Melillo appeared in 99 games in 1926,a year in which the Browns tumbled to seventh place after they finished third the year before. Melillo’s season had ended prematurely, after the August 9 game when he was hospitalized for six weeks with what was described as “complications due to a bad case of tonsillitis.” Indeed, he was only released at the end of October, after being diagnosed with what was termed kidney poisoning. For the season he batted 255 with 29 RBIs and 54 runs scored. His fielding was good – although he committed 22 errors, that was just two more than player-manager Sisler at first base and far fewer than Wally Gerber’s 37 at short. Following the kidney poisoning diagnosis, Melillo began his unusual diet. “They told me to eat nothing but spinach for the next few months if I wanted to live,” he said. “I tried to talk them into letting me have a steak, spaghetti, ravioli, or goulash once in a while, but they said nothing doing. When I told them I couldn’t stand the monotony of spinach three times a day, they told me I could have some variety by boiling it for breakfast, making a salad of it for lunch, and baking it for dinner.” Between meals, he was allowed to chew on raw carrots. It’s not surprising that he also earned the nickname “Spinach.” He was fortunate to survive, but there he was reporting to the Browns for spring training in 1927. He played all season long, getting spelled a couple of times a week while appearing in 107 games. He didn’t hit as well (.225), though, and his fielding suffered (36 errors, a .935 fielding percentage). Still, at the end of the year manager Dan Howley had him penciled in as his regular second baseman for 1928. In the spring, however, Otis Brannon played so well that he looked to have taken the position from Melillo by the end of March. Melillo had suffered some illness over the winter, so his stamina may not have been what it should have. There were several stretches in the 1928 season when Melillo had to sit out for a week or more. It was a disappointing year in which he struggled to play as regularly as he would have liked, and he only hit .189 in his 132 at-bats. Brannon hadn’t hit that well that season, either. As a result, the team pinned some hopes on prospect Eddie Grimes, and Melillo was seen as a reserve for the 1929 season – until that spring, when he proved himself and became Howley’s starting second baseman by Opening Day. On May 5, he had the only hit against Rube Walberg, denying him a no-hitter, but in general he started slowly, only really passing the .250 mark around the end of June. He had a strong second half though, finishing with a .296 average – well above the team’s .276 average – in 141 games, driving in 67 and improving in the field. St. Louis finished fourth, two games behind the Indians. Bill Killefer took over the helm in 1930, but the team sank to sixth. Melillo’s average dropped to .256 that season, although the team’s average was only .268. He played in all but five games, clearly having addressed his health issues. In 1931, Melillo had his best year, batting .306 and at times was among the league leaders in the early going, batting around .340 as late as mid-June. He drove in 75 runs. In the field, he handled 1,003 chances. He even placed eighth in the most valuable player voting, and earned an extra $3,000 thanks to a bonus for hitting .300 promised him by owner Phil Ball. In 1933, he set a career mark with 79 RBIs, in part on the strength of a .292 average. His fielding was excellent, at one point handling 316 chances without an error and setting a new record at second base with a .991 fielding percentage. Rogers Hornsby took over as manager about two thirds through the season, but the Browns finished last. They’d still never won an American League pennant. Not surprisingly for a last-place team, there were trade rumors throughout the offseason, and Melillo was often among them. He wasn’t moved, though, and played another full season in 1934. His average fell once more, down to .241. Though St. Louis climbed back to sixth place, Hornsby announced that for 1935 everyone was on the trading block. Joe Cronin had taken over as manager for the Red Sox, Tom Yawkey’s checkbook was open, and the Red Sox were looking for a second baseman. There were rumors galore during the winter, but nothing came of it until May 27. The two teams finally made a trade, with Melillo going to Boston and Moose Solters and a reported $25,000 in Yawkey cash going to St. Louis. Because of his inconsistently at the plate, his fielding was what kept him in the game. He played a deep second base and excelled at positioning himself well, anticipating the action – “playing the batter.” Hornsby wasn’t happy to give up so much on defense, but said he really needed a .300 hitter. Solters came through and hit .330 for him. Melillo had only been hitting .210 before the trade, no doubt a little preoccupied with all the rumors. After he landed with the Red Sox, he hit. 260. In Boston, he found himself with a home locker next to Lefty Grove. That presented an awkward situation because of a moment on August 23, 1931 when Oscar’s RBI double for a 1-0 Browns win had prevented Grove from extending his streak of 16 consecutive wins. Grove had never spoken to Melillo again, and didn’t for the first several weeks they were lockering neighbors. Finally, Grove relented and told him, “You’re eating with me tonight.” He was the starting second baseman in 1936, too, but appeared in only 98 games and hit just .226. He was 36 and perhaps starting to show his age, with a series of minor injuries that limited his playing time, though he did not miss any long stretches. A young ballplayer from Southern California joined the Red Sox in 1937: Bobby Doerr. It became Melillo’s job to tutor the promising prospect. It was predicted that he “may not appear in 50 ball games, but if Manager Joe Cronin carries out his plans the infielder will earn his salary.” It turned out to be Eric McNair who moved over from shortstop to second and handled the lion’s share of the action, while Doerr became accustomed to major league ball. Melillo appeared in just 26 games, hitting an even .250. In early December, Melillo requested and was granted his release so he could take up a job with the Browns as a coach under Gabby Street. Doerr said, early in the season, “I’ve learned more about second base just watching Ski these few weeks than I picked up in my whole three years on the coast.” He coached off and on through 1956, first with the 1938 Browns (managing the last 10 games of the season after Gabby Street left the club, finishing 2-7 with one tie.) He later served as a coach for the Indians under Oscar Vitt and Lou Boudreau. After the 1947 season, he was dropped from Boudreau's coaching staff at the insistence of owner Bill Veeck. Melillo spent part of 1948 managing in the Indians' farm system, but returned to Cleveland to serve part of the year as an aide to Boudreau for the 1948 world champions. After spending the 1949 season as a minor league manager, he coached under Boudreau in 1950, his final year with the Indians, then again with the Red Sox and Kansas City Athletics.

8 out of 10, 80 seconds. These questions were a struggle but not impossible but I should have done better. I can not get going this month.

He is unstoppable this month! Not counting today he has won eight of the sixteen days! 👏

10 out of 10, 36 seconds. I had some pressure on me trying to keep up with everyone else today. Can you believe there are two weeks left?

8 out of 10, 54 seconds. Again I missed one I should have easily had.

9 out of 10, 37 seconds. No, just no. It should have been a clean sweep today. It's been a hard month.

Thank you to both of you. It explains my question perfectly.

Those screen shots look beautiful. What has been preventing me from attempting me to acquire this game is that I won’t be able to get deeper into it. I see some things written in English to get by but not a lot. I was thinking why didn’t Konami release it here? Major league baseball is followed and viewed over in Japan so why not sell this game here? Then I realized why. Major league baseball probably does not want any competition from anyone in this country and they don’t want to have the casual or uneducated fan to see how baseball is played without launch angles, bat flipping and personalized hand shakes for every player on the team. In short, these Japanese guys play the game and this game from what I’ve seen and viewed on Youtube is the real deal. If it was sold here I would even buy a Playstation 5.

6 out of 10, 76 seconds. The time may not have been there for me but it never is on Thursdays but I'm happy because I was given a rare Oakland Raiders question that I had no chance of missing.

9 out of 10, 72 seconds. I took it a little slower today based on the questions that were thrown at me and it worked out well. I figured I had to do well today because Thursdays for me can be a struggle.

6 out of 10, 69 seconds. I should be happy that I got this many right but I'm sitting here wondering how I did it. 😄

5 out of 10, 55 seconds. As soon as I read question one which was a baseball card question I knew I was in trouble. Turns out I was right! 🙂