Opening Day 1969 When ‘The Kid’ Returned

Opening Day 1969 When ‘The Kid’ Returned

By Joe Guzzardi

During the 1969 spring, spirits were high in the nation’s capital. The cherry trees along the Potomac River were in bloom. Cautious optimism prevailed that newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon would fulfill his campaign promise to end the Southeast Asian war. But more than anything for DC’s sports’ fans, legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi had agreed to assume the Washington Redskins general manager and head coach positions. And Hall of Fame great Ted Williams, “The Kid,” accepted owner Bob Short’s offer to manage the moribund Washington Senators. Baseball fans were shocked that Williams, nine years after he homered on his last at bat, agreed. Earlier, Williams had rejected Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey’s offer to manage Boston, spurned the Detroit Tigers’ offer, and once said that he considered managers the lowest form of human life.

Short, a trucking and hotel mogul, had previously owned basketball’s Minneapolis Lakers and moved the team to Los Angeles before selling the Lakers for $5.2 million, a $3 million profit. Among Short’s goals were to entice more Senators fans, turn a profit. To achieve those objectives, he wanted a big name to take the Senators’ helm.

The new owner’s first moves were to fire general manager George Selkirk, the New York Yankee outfielder who took Babe Ruth’s place in right field, and to boot pilot Jim Lemon, a one-time Senators’ slugger. Under consideration to replace Lemon were Jackie Robinson, Elston Howard, Maury Wills, Monte Irvin, and Williams who rejected Short’s first offer. Short had reveled in Teddy Ball Game’s 1938 Minneapolis Millers, AAA American Association career. Williams won the Triple Crown with a.366 batting average, 43 home runs, 142 runs batted in, thirty doubles, nine triples, and 114 walks. But then the persistent new owner solicited American League president Joe Cronin to persuade Williams to reconsider. Cronin and Williams spent several seasons together as Red Sox teammates.

Williams was certain that he could help the punchless Senators. When Short offered a five-year, $65,000 annual salary with perks that included a $15,000-a-year hotel suite, an unlimited expense account, a title as vice president and an option to buy 10 percent of the team for $900,000, Williams became the new Senators manager, and set out to prove that he had leadership skills.

The woebegone Senators that Williams inherited were mocked throughout baseball including in their home city. The 1968 Senators finished in 10th place, dead last, with baseball’s worst record, 65-96. The team also drew the fewest fans, 565,000, a 206,000 decrease from 1967.

The 1968 club had a .623 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, fourteen points below the league average. In 1969, Senators batters had a .708 OPS, eighteen points above the league’s .690. The Senators drew 630 walks in 1969, compared to 454 the previous season. Even with the rule changes that lowered the pitcher’s mound and tightened the strike zone, the Senators showed an astounding improvement of 176 free passes. Williams understood the age-old axiom that a walk is as good as a hit.

Pitchers also improved under rookie manager Williams. The hurlers listened to Williams’ daily spring-training sermons on hitting and how to exploit American League opponents. In 1968, the Senators ERA of 3.64 was sixty-six points above the league average, 2.98. The next season, Washington’s pitchers reduced their ERA to 3.49, 14 points below the rest of the AL, 3.63. Williams’ 1969 Senators won eighty-six games, a 21-game improvement over 1968 and the team’s best record since 1945.

Fans flocked to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to watch the Senators; the team drew 900,000 paid admissions, and Williams won the Manager-of-Year Award. Unfortunately, the 1969 Senators proved to be a one-year wonder, returning in 1970 to their habitual doormat as “first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” A 70-92 record landed the Senators in sixth and last place in the American League East

Despite high-profile trades, which brought Curt Flood and a washed-up Denny McLain to the Senators in 1971, the team declined to 63-96. The Cleveland Indians spared them last place in the American League East.

Short had raised ticket prices, and fans refused to pay more to watch a lousy team play in an unsafe neighborhood. Senators’ frustrated fans—14,500, about twice the daily 1971 attendance– saved their worst behavior for September 30, the final American League game played in Washington. When the fans destroyed the field, umpire James Honochick forfeited a Senators’ 7-5 lead to the visiting Yankees. The fall out: a long-anticipated September 1971 announcement that Short was moving the Senators to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, to the ingloriously named Turnpike Stadium. The Senators were renamed the Texas Rangers.

Williams befuddled the baseball world when he agreed to accompany the limping Senators to Texas. One disastrous year in Texas was enough for “The Kid.” The Rangers lost one hundred games, had a .217 team batting average, a 15-game losing streak, and finished 20-1/2 games behind the next to last California Angels. Williams retired, and headed home to Islamorada to pursue bonefish, a skill that gained him a place in the International Game Fishing Hall of Fame.

For more than three decades and through multiple league expansions, Washington unsuccessfully sought a major league team. Finally, in 2005, the Montreal Expos moved to D.C. to become the Washington Nationals, the 2019 World Series champions.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com The 2024 season’s opening day is today, March 28.

Opening Day 1969 When ‘The Kid’ Returned

Delay is preferable to error William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 3-28-24

Delay is preferable to error William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 3-28-24

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Delay is preferable to error William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 3-29-24

Answer to yesterday‘s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson

Pennsylvania LEO Idiocracy

Pennsylvania LEO Idiocracy — We’re told this video is special agents with the Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General drilling on private property in Centre County.

And here’s a scene from the movie Idiocracy

Pennsylvania LEO Idiocracy

Weaponized Immigration Wrecking Sovereign America

Weaponized Immigration Wrecking Sovereign America

By Joe Guzzardi

Weaponized immigration has come to America and is bringing low-skilled illegal aliens to the labor market. Since July 2018, the economy has created zero jobs for American-born workers.

Kelly Greenhill, a senior research scholar at MIT Center for International Studies and author of “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy,” wrote in her analysis that the U.S. has been a frequent weaponized immigration target dating back as long ago as President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration and through George W. Bush’s eight years in the early 21st century. Greenhill blamed Western governments—Europe is also a migrant warfare target—that don’t understand how engineering the movement of foreign nationals across international borders exploits political divisions within the targeted countries. Unless policymakers confront the forces that enable weaponized migration “it is unlikely to go away anytime soon,” she concluded.

Since 1951, Greenhill has identified 81 worldwide cases, all of which achieved their weaponized immigration objectives. The targeted countries were disproportionately liberal democracies whose lax attitudes toward the threat determined the degree of success the subversive mission achieved. The Biden administration is a perfect fit for nations that want to implement weaponized migration to undermine the sovereign U.S. Not only has Biden demonstrated enthusiasm for the open border policy that he created and encouraged, but his administration has also promoted, at every turn, globalism at the expense of nationalism.

Nicaragua is a major weaponized immigration enabler. Motivated by his deep hatred of the U.S., President Daniel Ortega loosened visa requirements for Cubans in 2021, and then expanded his list to include Haiti, other Latin American countries and eventually several Asian and African nations that include Indians, Uzbekistanis, and nationals from Mauritania and Senegal. Travelers going through Nicaragua avoided the dangerous trek through the Darien Gap, and Ortega could not only subvert America, but he could also make big money at the same time. Nicaragua hired a private company to organize contracts with charter flight companies across Asia, Europe, and Africa. The flights pay landing fees, and travelers are assessed airport taxes that range from $100 to $200 per person. Transporting migrants from their home countries to Nicaragua is a multimillion-dollar business.

With weaponized migrants arriving at the U.S. border faster than officials could detain them, the Department of Homeland Security decided to process them into the U.S. rather than deport them. The strategy culminated in the May 2023 “The Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Final Rule.” The title summarizes the objective: for illegal immigrants, DHS created, without congressional approval, an entirely new set of administratively sanctioned methods of being processed into the U.S. DHS moved “to expand safe and orderly pathways for migrants to lawfully enter the United States.” Included are “establishing country-specific and other available processes to seek parole for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit; expanding opportunities to enter for seasonal employment; putting in place a mechanism for migrants to schedule a time and place to arrive in a safe, orderly, and lawful manner at ports of entry via use of the CBP-One mobile app; and expanding refugee processing in the Western Hemisphere.” 

An earlier DHS document, the “Los Angeles Declaration of Migration and Protection,” which 21 countries endorsed in June 2022, resulted in the U.S. committing to resettle 20,000 so-called refugees from Central America during fiscal 2023 and 2024. In fiscal 2022, the federal government issued more than 19,000 H-2B visas to Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, a 94% increase from the previous fiscal year. Not surprisingly the 21 endorsing countries were overwhelmingly potential migrant sending countries: Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Honduras and other economically failing nations.

As part of making their case to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Republicans identified more than a dozen parole programs which, they argue, Mayorkas illegally created to circumvent congressionally established immigration laws. Texas, Florida, and other states have sued over many of DHS’ programs that have allowed illegal border crossers to remain in the U.S., concurring with the committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., who led the impeachment charge. Always a long shot in the Senate, the House has not yet sent impeachment articles to the upper chamber. Even though the Senate outcome is predetermined, enforcement-minded, patriotic Americans will be denied the cold comfort of a Mayorkas impeachment trial. Worse, the consequences of his brazen disregard for enforcement and protecting the homeland will continue to play out until January 2025, or until Mayorkas’ DHS releases about two million more illegal aliens into the interior, bringing the total to well over 10 million during his term as secretary.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Weaponized Immigration Wrecking Sovereign America

Weaponized Immigration Wrecking Sovereign America

Even from the enemy William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit  3-27-24

Even from the enemy William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit  3-27-24

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Pdkiwo Fabbanokj 

Even from the enemy William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit  3-27-19 Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing ye to the Lord and bless his name: shew forth his salvation from day to day. Psalms

Answer to yesterday‘s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: It’s right to learn, even from the enemy.”
Ovid

 

Collapse Of Key Bridge Strategic Attack

Collapse Of Key Bridge Strategic Attack — Lara Logan is reporting that the the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore 1:30 this morning, March 26, was caused by a planned “strategic attack” on US critical infrastructure.

The 1.6 mile bridge collapsed in seconds after it was hit by the container ship Dali.

It was most likely cyber-warfare she says.

Second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material now down for 4-5 years – which is how long they say it will take to recover. Bridge was built specifically to move hazardous material – fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, highly flammable materials, chemicals and oversized cargo that cannot fit in the tunnels – that supply chain now crippled, she posted on X

With an open border and an armed forces directed by “diversity” rather than courage and competency, now is not the time to go to war.

Collapse Of Key Bridge Strategic Attack

AG Wants 30 Days To Answer Connolly RTK

AG Wants 30 Days To Answer Connolly RTK — The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General says it needs another 30 days, or until April 24, to answer the right-to-know (RTK) request Sean Connolly submitted March 18.

RTK Officer Sharon K. Maitland said the extension was needed due to the extent of Connolly’s request.

Connolly of Collegeville bought a Toll Brothers-built house in 2017 and says its shoddy construction makes it barely livable.

He has recorded his grievances at TollBrothersFraud.com

He says state, municipal and Montgomery County authorities are protecting Toll Brothers and then Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

Connolly seeks communications between the AG office and attorneys Jennifer Horn and Carter Williamson of Horn Williamson relating to Toll Brothers along with documents such as inter-office emails and meeting agendas involving former Consumer Protection Division Director Sarah Frasch in which Connolly was mentioned.

He also seeks financial records relating to use of special agents used to contact Greg Stenstrom and Leah Hoopes, both of Delaware County, after they reported election irregularities in November 2020 to former US Attorney Bill McSwain.

Connolly also asked for all communications sent to Dr. Scott Rifkin who is an advisor to now Gov. Shapiro. He says Shapiro, Rifkin and others were involved in a backdoor deal to sell the 200 acre county-owned Parkhouse property while Shapiro was a county commissioner.

Connolly has numerous other request in his RTK and we are including a pdf of the attorney general office’s response.

AG Wants 30 Days To Answer Connolly RTK -- The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General has informed Sean Connolly they will need another 30 days,

Old forget William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit  3-26-24

Old forget William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit  3-26-24

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Old forget William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit  3-26-19 Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing ye to the Lord and bless his name: shew forth his salvation from day to day. Psalms

Answer to yesterday‘s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: The old forget the young don’t know.
John Quigg

Check out the Dom Giordano Show on WPHT 1210 AM

Mighty power William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 3-25-24

Mighty power William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 3-25-24

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Dibh Kocaa

Mighty power William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 3-25-19 Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing ye to the Lord and bless his name: shew forth his salvation from day to day. Psalms

Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.
Ephesians 6:10

Check out the Dom Giordano Show on WPHT 1210 AM

Accompanying Christ On Palm Sunday

Accompanying Christ On Palm Sunday — Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives. Today He returns from Bethany and proceeds of His own free will toward His holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation.

He who came down from heaven to raise us from the depths of sin, to raise us with Himself, we are told in Scripture, above every sovereignty, authority and power, and every other name that can be named, now comes of His own free will to make His journey to Jerusalem.

Let us run to accompany Him as He hastens toward His passion, and imitate those who met Him then, not by covering His path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing what we can to prostrate ourselves before Him by being humble and by trying to live as He would wish.

Then we shall be able to receive the Word at His coming and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.

In His humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world and He is glad that He became so humble for our sake, glad that He came and lived among us and shared in our nature in order raise us up again to Himself.

And even though we are told that He has now ascended above the highest heavens — the proof, surely, of His power and godhead — His love for man will never rest until He has raised our earthbound nature from glory to glory, and made it one with His own in heaven.

So let us spread before His feet, not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, bur ourselves, clothed in His grace, or rather, clothed completely in Him.

We who are baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before Him. Now that the crimson stains of our sins have been washed away in the saving waters of baptism and we have become white as pure wool, let us present the conqueror of death, not with mere branches of palms but with the real rewards of His victory. Let our souls take the place of he welcoming branches as we join today in the children’s holy song: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.

Saint Andrew of Crete who was the bishop of Gortineia in Crete from the late 600s to his death in the early 700s.

Courtesy of Holy Myrrh Bearers Church, 900 Fairview Road, Swarthmore, Pa. 19081. Services are 5 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m., Sundays.