Ramirez, greater than Mantle?

Manny Ramirez has passed Mickey Mantle on the MLB all-time home run list.

People who follow baseball people continually argue about the value of statistics of one era vs. those of another. If you have ever discussed the game with me you have probably heard some rambles on the theme.

It is the contrast between Ramirez and Mantle which amazes me, specifically the way they treated their bodies.

Mickey Mantle was an old timer who did not treat his body well. Ever since late in his career, people have speculated how many he could have hit had he taken care of himself and better watched what he put in his body.

Manny Ramirez is from the newer age. He is not putting things in his body which he thinks will have a detrimental effect on his career or maybe even his teammates. On the contrary, he was recently suspended for what he put into his body to improve his career.

If I had a son I don’t know that I would want him to grow up to be like either of them.

Mary Jo Kopechne, 1940-1969

Mary Jo Kopechne died forty years ago this weekend. Nobody seems to be noting this. Yes, I know there are other things going on -- health care, Cronkite, Apollo 11.

Ted Kennedy is no longer a pro-life U.S. Senator, but he is still in office.

Sexual harassment is still a problem.

We just never get around to looking at all the stories.

Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite is dead.

I have to agree that his passing does have to mark something. I recollect seeing him on the television when I was a kid. We usually were eating when the CBS evening news was on and not watching the sin box, but when we did watch a network newscast, his was the one we saw.

All the major media are playing the story, CBS the most. But if I hear the “most trusted man in America” again I think I might reel. Cronkite was good, but I don’t know that he was that especially trustworthy.

And in the middle of all this, we need to remember that even CBS was not always supportive of Cronkite. In 1964 they had him anchor the Republican convention in Daly City, California, but dumped him from the booth for the Democratic convention in Atlantic City the next month. [I remember hearing a rumor that summer that CBS was going to make Cronkite the president of another venture they were acquiring, the New York Yankees. I never heard more of that. That was before the internet made all rumors truth and if not eternal truth, perpetual truth of some kind.]

I overheard it in a store last night that Cronkite had gone on to get an interview with a certain well-known pedophile who recently died. But as much coverage as his passage is getting, it will never catch up with what that guy got.

ferrous faucets

Farrah ‘Fawcett died a few days ago. It was bad timing for her that just as the news of her passing was starting to get national circulation that a pedophile who was more famous, it seems, died whose death eclipsed hers.

But I did start to remember some of what I had known of Ms. Fawcett from her heyday of three decades ago.

And I remember seeing a picture in a newspaper of an old guy holding some plumbing fixtures that he was selling as “ferrous faucets.” Some were labeled “cold.” Others were labeled “hot.” It seemed that Ms. Fawcett [or her attorneys] wanted him to quit selling them since they felt that he was infringing upon

I don’t remember that I ever heard he disposition of the case, but I remember thinking that if Ms. Fawcett prevailed that a former Detroit Tiger outfielder should have a good time taking on the battery companies for their “alkaline” batteries.

Media values -- RIP division

A noted pedophile died Wednesday. He would probably want his name mentioned.

I’m not sure that anybody else who never held public office whose passing has been given more hoopla by the various medis since Mother Teresa.

And to make that comparison seems almost sacrilegious.

Now what will be written when that film director/ clarinetist who married his girlfriend's daughter goes?

Forgive us our debts, but you pay yours

A Monticello debt-collection agency is facing a federal law suit because it sends out notices with a “WWJD” header.

And every Sunday we say “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Story

Advertising in our era

I guess I will never understand the world of marketing.

We hear it said that a good salesperson could sell refrigerators to Eskimos or carburetors to Amish. After all, sometimes you have to create the demand before you can sell it.

And it helps sometimes when you know where and to whom you are advertising. Several years ago a commercial for feminine hygiene product somehow got slipped into [I believe] a Cubs game on WGN. I wondered whether they knew something about who watches ball games that I didn’t. But since I never saw that repeated I assumed that it was some kind of aberration.

But this has been happening repeatedly. Have you noticed the commercials lately for genuine California milk?

These commercials are being aired in Minnesota and Wisconsin, for crying out loud. What are they thinking?