Mike Schmidt - 1977

Michael Jack had another impressive year in 1977. He led the league in home runs for the third straight year, hitting 38 in each year. He drove in over 100 runs and cut down on the number of strike outs. He'd been first in the league for strike outs the previous 3 years but dropped to third in 1977. In the National League he was 4th in slugging, 3rd in runs scored, 5th in total bases, 9th in rbis, and 3rd in walks.

The Phillies as a team had another great year, matching their 1976 performance with 101 wins. The Phillies faced the Dodgers in the 5-game NL Championship series and lost 3-1. The Dodgers would go on to lose the World Series to the Yankees in 6 games.

The Phillies had won the first game in LA , 7-5, with 9th inning hits by Schmidt, Bowa and McBride, but got crushed in the second game 7-1, which featured a grand slam by Dusty Baker. The win was the Phillies first-ever postseason win.

The Dodgers had a come-from-behind win in the 3rd game in Philadelphia. Trailing 5-3 with two outs in the 9th, pitch hitter Vic Davalillo beat out a 2-strike drag bunt followed by a long pitch-hit double by Manny Mota. Mota reaches 3rd on a throw that Ted Sizemore mishandles. Davy Lopes' grounder hits a seam in the carpet and caroms off Schmidt's knee to Larry Bowa. Bowa's throw to first is ruled late and Mota scores to win the game.

The Phillies go down meekly, 4-1 in the clinching game before an LCS record-breaking crowd of 62,924.

Tropical Storm Edouard - Final Update

Well, thank God this series of posts was pretty boring. It was bit of an adventure getting to work. I-45 was tricky, mainly because visibility was poor. The wind wasn't really a problem and the traffic was light. I almost turned back a couple of times. But the second half of the trip, after I got off the Interstate, was no worse than a light rain. By the time I left for home (at about 3:30), the rain had stopped. There was some flooding and some power outages, but nothing very serious (unless of course, it was your house that got flooded).

Tropical Storm Edouard - Update 1

8:40 AM

Edouard is ahead of schedule and is making landfall right about now. It's been raining steady here. Winds are 16 mph, gusting to 30 mph. I just got a page from work. Everyone is expected to come to work as soon as possible, but drive safely. I was beginning to feel guilty sitting here so into work I go. I may be able to post an update from work but it looks like this is largely going to be a non event. No complaints here.


On this map, my plant is on the road connecting Pasadena and La Porte. I'm much closer to La Porte.

Tropical Storm Edouard

Tuesday August 5th 6:50 AM

One of the problems of living on the Gulf Coast is the occasional tropical storm or hurricane. In 2005 we were part of that mob scene evacuating from the upper Texas Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Rita. We spent 21 hours on the road just trying to get to the Austin area. We were lucky and the storm didn't actually hit our house.

I'm going to attempt to live blog the storm all day. It started raining here at about 6:15 and the winds are 10 mph. There is a US weather station just a few miles from my house so conditions there (from weather.com) are pretty much conditions here.

Yesterday afternoon Edouard was predicted to go right over where I live in League City. The latest update, posted at 4 AM shows the storm track a bit further east of us. I don't think its going to make much difference. 3-5 inches of rain are expected. At 4 AM, the storm had sustained winds of 65 mph. This is just short of being a hurricane. It has picked up speed, and is moving 12 mph, compared to 7 mph last night. The sooner it gets out of the water the better.
No evacuations have been ordered. Not much of a storm surge is expected and we're far enough inland to not be affected. The main problem is expected to be downed power lines due to falling trees. If I'm off the air for an extended period, I've probably lost power. Here's the latest weather map.

Nice Card File - 2005 Prime Patches

This set was produced by Donruss in 2005. There are 89 cards in the base set. There are 209 different insert sets amounting to another 4,345 cards. The inserts all have either autographs or game-used material or both. They are all serial numbered. I never saw a pack of these cards in the wild but I image they were pretty expensive since each pack had 2 inserts. They are pretty easy to find on eBay, which is where I got these. With the exception of the J.D. Drew card, which I got about a yer ago, I acquired all of these in the past 3 weeks.
Mike Schmidt (Prime Patches Hall of Fame Materials Double Swatch Prime). I'm pretty much a sucker for Mike Schmidt cards and I paid more for this ($14.32) then I normally would for a baseball card. It has a game-used stirrup and jersey. The jersey has two colors, which is a bonus. On the card it calls the jersey piece jersey-prime. I don't know what the prime notation means. I might mean that the piece is a 'prime' piece, in that it comes from a specific part of the jersey. It must be from the edge of the wide red stripe on the shoulder. The card is #54 of 65.

J. D. Drew (Prime Patches Major League Materials Triple Swatch). There are several basic designs for the inserts. The Schmidt card was the Hall of Fame version, this is the Major League version. If has pieces of a game used bat, jersey and shoe. I believe it's the only card I have with a shoe piece. I paid $4.99 for this in July 2007. The card is #7 of 150.

Tony Gwynn (Prime Patches Portraits Jumbo Swatch). This is the Portraits insert set. The jersey piece is huge, the biggest I've ever seen. Tony is a surefire Hall of Famer, so I think $5.28 for the card was a good price. I actually have another of these cards coming from eBay with a white jersey piece. This card is #268 of 499.


Jim Thome (Prime Patches Portraits Team Logo Patch). Another future Hall of Famer, I paid $6.62 for this. The card features a portion of the team logo from a jersey. Like aboriginal peoples who kill a large animal, no part of the jersey went to waste in this set. They have cards with buttons, logo patches, name plates, number patches and laundry tags. This card is #21 of 150.


Moises Alou (Prime Patches Portraits Triple Patch). Another variation on the Portraits theme, this time with 3 pieces of game-used material, 2 jerseys and a bat. Alou's last year with the Astros was 2001. I guess Donruss had some old Alou stuff laying around in the warehouse. I paid $6.20 for this card which is numbered #80 of 150.

Jeromy Burnitz (Prime Patches Portraits Quad Swatch Prime). Yet another variation of the Portraits theme with 4 jersey swatches, from at least 3 different jerseys. The upper left swatch is labeled Prime, I'm guessing because of the small piece of a patch included. I have found that game-used and autographed cards are plentiful on eBay, if you're not to picky about who you get. I'm not a particular fan of Burnitz but, for $6, the card was a good price. It is numbered $64 of 75.

Song of the Week: Drive - The Cars

I have 5,432 songs on my iTunes. This is one of them.

The Cars started in the late 1970's as a New Wave band. The leading members were lead guitarist Ric Ocasek and bassist Benjamin Orr. Ocasek wrote and sang most of the songs. I loved the Cars first album The Cars. It was one of those rare albums where just about every song was at least good and most were great. Rolling Stone magazine ranks it as the 282 of the 500 best albums of all time. The Cars song which came up on my iTunes however was Drive, from their 1984 album Heartbreak City. It was their 5th and next to last album. It had 5 top 40 hits, and Drive reached the top ten. They released one more album, the 1987 record called Door to Door. I don't know anything about this record but according to Wikipedia, it was widely panned.

I'd never seen the video for this song and kind of like it. I didn't realize that it was sung by Orr and not Ocasek until I saw the video. The video is in black and white which is very 1980s, I think. I imagine that if you were in the process of breaking up with someone when this song came out that it probably brings back bad memories. My suggestion is get over it, that was 20 years ago. I was, and am still, happily married, so, although I like the song, it doesn't have any emotional baggage attached to it.



Who's gonna tell you when,
It's too late,
Who's gonna tell you things,
Aren't so great.

You can't go on, thinkin',
Nothin's wrong, but bye,
Who's gonna drive you home,
tonight?

Who's gonna pick you up,
When you fall?
Who's gonna hang it up,
When you call?

Who's gonna pay attention,
To your dreams?
And who's gonna plug their ears,
When you scream?

You can't go on, thinkin'
Nothin's wrong, but bye,
Who's gonna drive you home, tonight?


(bye bye bye)
(bye bye bye)
(bye bye bye)
(bye bye bye)

Who's gonna hold you down,
When you shake?
Who's gonna come around,
When you break?

You can't go on, thinkin',
Nothin's wrong, but bye,
Who's gonna drive you home, tonight?

Oh, you know you can't go on, thinkin',
Nothin's wrong,
Who's gonna drive you home, tonight?

(bye bye bye)
(bye bye bye)
(bbye bye bye)

Thursday Night at the Movies - The Dark Knight

There has probably been more than enough written about this movie. You'll have made up your own mind by now. But if you haven't seen it yet, you can believe the hype. Go see it.

I give it 5 capes (out of 5)