Mike Schmidt - 1975

1975 Topps #70.

1975 was another good year for Mike Schmidt and another good year for the Phillies.

Mike lead the National League in home runs for the second straight year with 38. He also led the league in rbis with 95. Unfortunately, he also lead the league in strike outs, with 180, and his batting average dropped almost 40 points, from .282 to .249. It would be his worst year for strike outs and the lowest batting average for the rest of his career except for his last two seasons when he was hobbled by a shoulder injury.

The Phillies finished the 1975 season with a record of 86-76, good enough for second place in the NL East. Danny Ozark was in his third year as manager. It was the first season since 1967 that they'd finished with a better than .500 winning percentage. In 1967 they were 82 and 80.
This was in the days before there was a wild card position in the playoffs, so second place meant sitting at home in October.

Stats (league position):
Games - 158
At Bats - 562
Runs - 93 (7th)
Hits - 140
Doubles - 34 (10th)
Triples - 3
Home Runs - 38 (1st)
Slugging - 0.523 (3rd)
Runs Batted In - 95 (1st)
Stolen Bases - 29 (9th)
Batting Average - 0.249
Fielding percentage: 0.954

Song of the Week - She's A Beauty - The Tubes

I have 5,351 songs in my iTunes library. This is one of them.

My alphabetical playing of my iPod has gotten me to songs starting with the word "She". There are a bunch of them. This song is by The Tubes. The song was released in 1983. To me, it has the perfect 1980s sound. That doesn't necessarily make it a good song, there was a lot of terrible pop music in the '80s. For me, this song is kind of a guilty pleasure. I'd never seen the video for this song but found it on YouTube. It's pretty bizarre but, again, a perfect example of videos from the period.

"She" songs:

She - The Monkies
She Belongs to Me - Bob Dylan
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window - The Beatles and Joe Cocker
She Has Funny Cars - Jefferson Airplane
She is Still a Mystery - Lovin' Spoonful
She Knows Me Too Well - Beach Boys
She Loves You - The Beatles
She Said She Said - The Beatles
She Shook Me Cold - David Bowie
She Sings Songs Without Words - Harry Chapin
She'd Rather Be With Me - The Turtles
She's a Beauty - The Tubes
She's A Woman - The Beatles
She's About A Mover - Sir Douglas Quintet
She's Always a Woman - Billy Joel
She's Coming Home - The Zombies
She's Got a Way - Billy Joel
She's Leaving Home - The Beatles
She's My Girl - The Turtles
She's Not There - The Zombies and Santana
She's On Fire - Train
She's Right on Time - Billy Joel
She's Your Cocaine - Tory Amos

Thursday Night at the Movies

Get Smart

This movie could have been terrible but in fact its pretty good. The cast has a lot to do with its success. Although Steve Carell has been in The Office and several movies, I'm not really familiar with his work. What distinguishes his work here is that he doesn't try to imitate Don Adams. Anne Hathaway is good as 99, especially when she gets to wear a slinky dress about mid-way through. Alan Arkin plays a more aggressive Chief then in the TV show but it works. There are a few cameos, watch out for Bill Murray as Agent 13. They've got all the catch phrases, like "Would you believe..." and "Missed it by that much", but they didn't overdo it. The goofy gadgets like the shoe phone and the Cone of Silence make an appearance but they had lots of new goofy gadgets like a Swiss Army knife which doubles as a cross bow and exploding dental floss. The movie actually works on two levels, comedy and action. The humor seldom descends to bathroom level (by itself a big achievement these days). The action scenes were very well done and actually exciting. All in all we like the movie very much. I think you'll like it too even if you aren't familiar with the original series. You'll miss a few jokes but there are plenty of laughs to go around.

The worse trailer we saw was for the new Eddie Murphy movie called "Meet Dave". Except for the fact that he's got 5 more movies working over the next two years (including Shrek 4), I would say this is the movie which should end Eddie Murphy's career.

Mike Schmidt - 1974

It is no secret to those who know me that Mike Schmidt is my favorite baseball player. Contrary to most fans, I wasn't much of a baseball fan as a kid. I started to be interested in the very early 1970s which coincided with the growth of the Phillies (I lived in Philadelphia) team which would eventually win the 1980 World Series. Mike Schmidt was a huge part of that team as it got better and better through the 1970s. Schmidt would go on to dominate the 3rd base position and also hit over 500 home runs (back when this was pretty rare).

I already posted his 1973 rookie card. Mike was the Phillies 2nd round draft pick in 1971 and cracked the majors in 1972 for 13 games. The Phillies were not very good in 1972, finishing with a record of 59 and 97. Over their long history the Phillies have had a lot of terrible teams and this was one of the worst. Of course, a franchise doesn't get to lose over 10,000 games without have a few bad seasons. So even thought Mike didn't have a good year, no Phillie had a good year in 1972 except of course Steve Carlton, who was 27-10.

He didn't look too good in 1972 but the Phillies brought him up again in 1973. This also was not a great season. He played 132 games, hit for a 0.196 average and 18 home runs. 1973 would be a better season for the Phillies, with a record of 71-91. Not great by any means but better.

The 1974 Phillies showed more improvement with an 80-82 season. 1974 turned out to be a breakout season for Schmidt however. He hit for average (0.282) and hit 36 home runs, which was good for 1st in the NL. He would go on to lead the league in home runs in 8 seasons. The photo on this card looks to have been taken at spring training. Today, one of the practice fields at the Phillies complex in Florida is named for Mike Schmidt.

This will be the first of a series. Eventually I will post all 205 Schmidt card which I own. I'll probably have to keep this blog going for years to finish this series.

Song of the Week - Everyone is Good by The Roches

There are 5,319 songs on my iTunes, this is one of them.

I'm not sure how I first The Roches. They are a sister act (Margaret, Terre and Suzzy) with wonderful harmonies. There main career stretches from 1979 to 1995 and I have 5 of the 10 albums they released during that time. They disbanded as a trio in 1995, after their father died, but released a new CD in 2007 (which I haven't heard). According to Wikipedia they were never real popular and don't get much air play. I probably heard them on University of Penn's radio station (WXPN) when I used to live in Philadelphia. Hopefully you'll like them as much as I do.

This is from their 5th album, "Speak" which was released in 1989.

Gift from Dinged Corners

One nice thing about being part of the BCB (Baseball Card Blogosphere) is that once in awhile, a fellow blogger sends you a present. A month or so ago I made a trade with the lovely ladies (Patricia and Lucy) who run the Dinged Corners blog. In return for a Mike Piazza jersey card they sent me a bunch of Phillies and Astros cards. Even though I have a lot of Astros and Phillies cards, most of the cards they sent were cards I didn't have. Well, since then, they've been collecting Astros and Phillies cards and sent me a bunch. And once again they scored. Of the 13 pre-2008 cards they sent, I only had 5. Even better, of the 13 2008 Bowman cards, I only had 2. My luck getting Astros or Phillies Bowman cards had not been good (although the one Future Autograph card I got was a Phillie).

I decided to post two of the cards. The Tyler Green card isn't really anything special (as Tyler Green wasn't really anything special) but it's a card I didn't have. Even better, I didn't have any of the 1st Round Pick subset cards from 1992 Score. I don't care much for this set so didn't buy much. So my baseball collecting heart was pleased on two levels.

This other card is a 2003 Playoff Prestige. These cards are very nice and, of course, Jimmy Rollins is one of the top players in the National League. But in addition to that, I not only didn't have this card but I didn't have any Phillies card from this set. Packs of these cards were a bit pricey and I didn't buy many of them. So again, joy on two levels.

Thanks, Patricia and Lucy, for the wonderful cards.

Bonsai - Sago Palm

In an earlier post, I commented that you've got to have a lot of patience to grow bonsai because stuff is only going to grow at the pace its going to grow. You can't do much about it. And in most cases, its going to grow slow.

But sometimes, something will grow in a spurt. This plant is called a sago palm. Its not really a palm and I'm not sure how good a bonsai its going to be. I bought it at Home Depot already potted. These plants can get pretty big but I suppose if I keep it in its current pot it will stay small.

Fronds grow out of the center brown area. When I got it, it had a set of 4 frounds and soon after it grew another set of 4. Last summer it didn't get any new fronds. I have a relatively young one of these in the back yard. It didn't get any fronds either last year. The big plant grew two huge set of fronds (each frond is at least 3 feet long) in about two weeks. I was hoping the little guy would take the hint.

On May 26th it was maybe showing signs it was going to sprout. The next day it had sprouts about 2 inches long (the first photo - click on it to see a larger image).
4 days later the fronds were about 6 inches long and by the 31st about 10 inches. By May 4th they were over a foot long. This is about as long as they are going to get. It only put out a set of 3 fronds but I happy to see it do something.

The fronds are a nice bright green color as they unfurl. Eventually they turn a deeper green. The plant is evergreen and doesn't shed fronds with the seasons. Eventually the older fronds weaken and fall off. As it gets taller, it only has fronds on the top.

The next pictures will hopefully be my crepe myrtle. It got about 4 flowers last summer but overall it is growing much better this summer. It looks like it is about to set some buds on the ends of most of the branches.