The White Sox have been playing pretty good of late. But I did not realize until this morning that they were as of games ending 5/16/2021, the best team in baseball. The Sox started the season started the season 1-3 but finished April with a respectful 14-11. So far in May the Whiite Sox have gone 10-4 including winning 8 of their last 10 games. This chart of the Top 16 teams in the major leagues shows which teams along with the White Sox are playing .500 ball or better almost 2 months into the season.
In April my blogging efforts are almost entirely spent on the A to Z challenge. This doesn't mean I don't have other content that I am pursuing. I just don't usually have the time, inclination or energy to get into it. On one of the last Friday's in March Amy, myself and the girls went bowling. I wrote a draft of this the next day but all thing A to Z kept me from completing it until now.
About 25 to 30 years ago I decided I would try to bowl in every state. When Amy and I got married, she embraced that and quite often when we were in a new state for the first time we woud bowl I'm not an especially good bowler, even though it used to be one of my favorite things to do . I used to bowl somewhere between 80 and 120 a game. If I broke 100 I'd consider it a good game. Over the last 10 years, 100 has become more of a rarity. I have my own ball, but lately when we have bowled it's been at the spur of the moment, and I have not brought my ball. My ball is probably a little too heavy for me now, but when I found out we were going bowling I decided to bring it.
I did not start well. I ended getting1 pin down in the first frame. two more in the second frame and then 2 straight gutter balls in the third frame.
At this same point all of my family members were bowling better than me, and my wife was suggesting that I switch to a lighter ball. I decided that better or worse I would stick with my ball. I knew though, that something needed to be done and on the next frame I decided to go with the Fred Flintstone approach.
I generally do this novelty move once each time I bowl and always have fun with it and also a bit of success. I have bowled many a strike with the "twinkletoes" approach. However, this was not the case on this occasion. I guttered to the left, mustered what was left of my pride and attempted the maneuver again only to gutter to the right.
3 pins in 4 frames, quite the auspicious start, So, when in the 5th frame when I got 7 pins down on the first roll it more than doubled my previous score even though I guttered the 2nd ball.
. In the 6th frame, faced with the prospect of my lowest score ever, things began to get a little better. I changed my approach and instead of bowling in stride I stopped at the line and then sent the ball down the lane. I got a strike and followed that up with a spare in the 7th or 8th. I knocked down pins in all of my first rolls during the 2nd half of the game. As I started the 10th frame. I had gained 59 points since the Flintstone debacle in the 4th frame, I was the last to bowl in our party and I had already caught up with my daughters and was just a few pins behind Amy. (Nobody was especially bowling well, but we were all enjoying our selves)
I was able to get a spare in the 10th frame and followed it up with a strike to end the game. It was a definite tale of two halves. I had a score of 10 entering the 6th frame and bowled 72 (88% of my total score) in the latter half to finish with a normally measly 82. But as I said in the title it was the best 82 I ever bowled.
I'm glad I got the ball rolling on post A to Z blogging. I may still have a little more A to Z aftermath in the near future, but it's good to be back to abnormal.
The A to Z challenge is finally over and back at HSD I am finished blogging every day for the month of April. Yesterday in my A to Z reflections post, I quoted from We Didn't Start The Fire to show how many people mentioned in the song were alive in 1921. Today I am sharing this parody of WDSTF about Avenger's Endgame. Excelsior!
1921 seems like a long time ago. And in a way, it was. Spending the month looking back at it through the lens of people who were alive then has given me the perspective that 1921 is still visible in our rear view mirror.
Every morning on my way to work I listen to music from one or two artists and every few weeks I change up those artists. Consequently, I have heard Billy Joel's. We Didn't Start the Fire many times in the past few weeks. This was at the same time I was participating in the A to Z challenge and I was surprised as to how many people mentioned in the song, I had featured in my 1921 theme. I have included the lyrics below wit links to all the people mentioned by both Joel and myself. I have also placed in bold anyone in the song who was alive in 1921 but not mentioned in my posts.
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye" Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye
We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev Rockefeller,Campanella, Communist Bloc Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez
We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai" Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide
Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, space monkey, mafia Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go U2, Syngman Rhee, Payola and Kennedy Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo
We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land" Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion "Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex JFK – blown away, what else do I have to say?
We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law Rock and roller, cola wars, I can't take it anymore
We didn't start the fire It was always burning, since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire But when we are gone It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on
I knew I was going to mention more than 26 people alive in 1921. That being said, I was very surprised when I tabulated that I had mentioned 69 people and 1 stuffed bear that were around in 1921.
At the first mention of each these people, I always included how many years they had lived before 1921 and after 1921. On average these people lived 30 years before 1921 and 48 years after. This means my average subject was born in 1891 and died in1969. In 1891 there were 44 states in the U.S.
During the challenge I tried to include material from my other blogs, both new material and previously published material on the people I was profiling. I also tried when possible to include people living in 1921 who were still alive in 2021. I started with Al Jaffee on my first post, Prince Phillip passed away during the challenge before I got to Q for Queen's Consort. I discovered today that I had already included someone years ago in the A to Z challenge who is currently living. In 2015 I participated in the A to Z challenge from, Crazy Uncle Dave's Sports Blog and my theme was White Sox Home Run Hitters. For E I wrote about Eddie Robinson. At the time Eddie was 94 years old and the 21st oldest living major leaguer. Since then, Eddie has become the oldest living major leaguer. He was born December 15, 1920. That means I began the A to Z challenge with someone from 1921 who is still alive and I get to end the challenge the same way.
I really enjoyed participating in the challenge again this year. I have my theme all set for next year but first I'm going back to the simpler non a to z blogging lifestyle. I am looking forward to the a to z road trip after a little rest. Working for a century can do that to you.
When I think of Zero Mostel, I think of Tevye from Fiddler On The Roof. I never saw him on Broadway and he was not in the motion picture version. However I listened to the Broadway album many times as a kid and now own it on c.d. He put his stamp on that role more than any other actor ever had.
Born Samuel Joel Mostel, he received the moniker Zero when performing in the New York night club, cafe society because "he was a guy starting with nothing.
Besides being a night club comic, he worked on the stage, in movies, and on television. This career was derailed somewhat in the 40's and 50's as he was blacklisted in Hollywood before there even was a blacklist. In 1952 he was officially blacklisted by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and called to testify in front of HUAC in 1955. His testimony is very reminiscent of Jim Carey's character's testimony in The Majestic. One highlight is when he refers to his former employer 20th Century Fox as 19th Century Fox because of (in his opinion) their antiquated views.
By reading this it is pretty easy to infer that Zero Mostel was a little odd. So it didn't surprise me that his 3 Tony awards were in odd years. In 1961 He won best actor in a play for Rhinoceros. In 1963 he won his first Best Actor in a Musical Tony for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum, and In 1965 he won his secon Best Actor in a Musical Tony for his career defining role in Fiddle on the Roof.
Speaking of Broadway, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder starred together in Mel Brook's movie The Producers which years later became a Broadway smash. Mostel and Wilder reunited in the famous Electric Company segment Letter Man with Wilder voicing the title hero and Mostel in the role of the evil Spellbinder.
Mostel also appeared on Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. He is the only guest star on The Muppet Show who passed away before their episode could be aired. Mostel is one of at least 3 of my a to z profiles who hosted The Muppet Show, the other two are Peter Ustinov and Ethel Merman. Now that the A to Z challenge is over, I may watch all 3 of those episodes on the Disney Plus App with the extra time coming my way.
So that's it 1921 A to Z has come to an end. I wonder what anybody might say about it 100 years from now.
