It is time to lay Sago Boulevard to rest. Thank you to all who commented here, debated with me on their blogs, linked to me, and otherwise made my blogging experience enjoyable and stimulating.
Goodbye.
Phil Rizzuto, the Hall of Fame Yankees shortstop, passed away today at age 89. He won 9 pennants and 7 World Series Championships with the Yankees between 1941 and ‘55. See here for his baseball statistics.
Holy Cow.
I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a movie I hadn’t seen in years, on HBO last night. I had forgotten just how great it is. First of all, the premise of blending animated, ink-and-paint cartoon characters with flesh-and-blood live actors is amusing. Having grown up with Looney Tunes, I appreciate the tribute it pays to the cartoon industry and its most famous characters. The plot is a clever spoof of hard-boiled American crime fiction. The dialogue, especially between the live actors and cartoon-characters, is witty and hilarious.
The best movies are the ones that are both fun to watch and interesting to think about afterwards. Who Framed Roger Rabbit definitely qualifies in my book.
A boy named Max Hell is having trouble getting into an Australian Catholic School (via Maverick Philosopher).
Mr Hell said he initially decided to enrol Max at the school under his wife’s maiden name, to avoid the ridicule he himself had suffered as a schoolboy.
The decision won the support of the school’s head teacher and parish priest, he said.
But at the last minute, he and his wife decided against the name change.
Mr Hell claimed the priest refused to accept his son as Hell, and was told by the school’s head he had “made a rod for your son’s back”.
“It’s Hell. That’s our name, it’s our heritage,” Mr Hell told The Age newspaper. “It’s who he is, and if he wants to change his name at 18 then that’s up to him.”
For my uncultured readers, the title is a reference to Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.”
The Yankees have been an incredibly frustrating team to follow over the past 6 seasons. It’s one thing to watch your team rebuilding but it’s quite another to watch an All-Star team falter in the post-season year after year. Hopefully this year will be different but I also thought last year would be different, and the year before that. In an effort to figure out why the Bombers keep on losing in the post-season, I decided to look at the great Yankee teams of late 90s (’96-’00) and what I found was puzzling. The Yankee teams of ‘01-’06 were considerably better, at least statistically, than the teams of ‘96-’00. From ‘96 to ‘00, the Yankees’ winning percentage was .601, an average of 97 wins per season. From ‘01 to ‘06, their winning percentage was .609, an average of 98.67 wins per season. In fact, the worst Yankee team of the past decade was the 2000 team (87-74), which won the World Series. The championship team of ‘96 won only 92 games and the Yankees have won more games than that in every season since 2001!
I can’t figure it out. What is it that made the Yankees better in the regular season and worse in the playoffs? And I’m not interested in any theories of the “Yankees suck” variety. I want serious answers. Anyone?