September is almost upon us, indeed. Which is when we will see which clubs are truly ready for the big postseason dance, and which are not.
This has been a very weird season for the Texas Rangers. Despite numerous rotation injuries, and underwhelming rotation performances, and a horrible two month stretch where the club simply could not hit, the Rangers have maintained one of the best records in baseball all season long.
But, Ranger fans, myself included, are not pleased. Some, in fact, are openly hostile towards their club, practically disgusted. It is certainly a strange situation to be in.
Meanwhile, the Rangers are wrapping up the "foreplay" section of their schedule and seem primed to really get down to "bidness", if you know what I mean. They have won four in a row, eight of their last ten, and are sixteen and eight overall for the month of August. And, they are not just winning games lately. They are crushing their opponents; in the Rangers last ten games they have outscored the opposition seventy-two to thirty. (Which according to the pythagorean theorem of baseball adds up to an expected winning percentage of .852. The Rangers are right below that with a winning percentage of .800 those last ten games. Meaning the Rangers, as well as they have been playing lately, have actually been a little bit unlucky, too. Scary.)
But, how about the plucky little Oakland Athletics, who have just taken two of three on the road from one of the hottest teams in baseball right now, the Tampa Rays? Like Ratto says, "It is all foreplay until September." We will see how serious the A's are about the postseason very shortly.
Here is the backstory on the song above: The song that "hit' was the b-side. They cobbled that together in like a day, just to fill both sides of a 45. No one remembers the a-side, of course. All the djs flipped the single and made it in to the monster smash that it was. And, it is still a staple in many ballparks around the country whenever the road starter is chased from the game. I think it was the 1977 Chicago White Sox who were the first to use the song in that manner.
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Watched The Man Who Never Was last night, streaming on Netflix. It was not a particularly great movie, but it has a great true backstory, and it does star Gloria Grahame. Ms Grahame was obviously mailing her performance in in this picture, but I was still a sucker for her trademark Damaged Fuckable self.
The cool backstory is that the British Military and Intelligence "placed" a dead "pilot" off the coast of Spain with misleading information about the Allies' plans to invade Greece, as opposed to their real target, Sicily. The pilot was carrying letters to Eisenhower and the head General for the British forces. He also had a letter from his "fiancee", theatre tickets, receipt stubs from a clothing store, and other random items. The Germans fell for the ruse, and the Allies were able to secure Sicily.
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Also saw a very excellent doc, streaming on Netflix, The Woodmans, about the artist family, whose daughter Francesca Woodman committed suicide in the early Eighties.
Honestly, I am not seeing the amazing talent that Francesca was concerning her provocative sexual canon of photography. I like her journal instead, although, for idiosyncratic reasons. The journal is certainly not "art' in the strictest sense of the word. I love the fractured sentence structure, the ellipses, the extremely deep and insightful look in to a young woman's sexuality, and her passion for creating art.
I will watch it with Renee soon. Renee is a damn fine photographer, herself, and I would be interested to get her thoughts on Ms Woodman's work.
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And, finally, a great quote from one of Renee, Meghan, and I's great friends, Charles:
"Charles, is not it a bit early to be drinking?"
"Hell, no, honey. Just throw some juice in it and it's brunch."
All my Sunday love,
Ardent
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