B is for Bill

White Sox Homerun hitters from A.J. to Zeke

B is for Bill

"Beltin'" Bill Melton

For many years of my life my dream job has been being the starting third baseman for the Chicago White Sox.  Bill Melton, played that position so marvelously for the White Sox when I was a kid, that I wanted to follow in his footsteps.  

Melton hit 154 home runs for the White Sox from 1968 to 1975.  That is 96.25% of his 160 career home runs.  The 154 dingers  puts him 8th overall on the WhiteSox HR leaderboard. Melton was first on that list until 1987, when surpassed by Harold Baines.      Through his career, Melton has averaged 23 home runs for every 162 games played.   Melton's 2 best home run years were in 1970 and 1971 where he hit 33 each year.  This was about the same time that his performance was making Third Base for the White Sox my dream job.

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B is for Bibimbap (Thing)

Day 2 of nouns.  Did a person yesterday.  Today a thing is on the docket.   Tomorrow, we will do a place, but after that it will be up for grabs. We might go place, place, thing, person, place, person.  Who knows?  All I know is that there will be nouns and there will be plenty of them.

Today's thing is bimimbap.  Which up until a few minutes ago, I had never typed, or printed, or wrote in cursive.  I had eaten it.  Boy, had I eaten it.  Bibimbap is a Korean dish and looks like this ...

I first fell in love with bibimbap at first sight as it is a multisensory treat.  The texture, the taste and the look all meld together.  I used to frequent this Chinese/Korean restaurant in Evanston, Illinois back in the 1980's.  The owners were Korean so I always ordered the Korean fare rather than the Chinese.  In all the times I went there, I think I only got the Bibimbap, it was so wonderful there was never a reason for me to branch out.  I have to tell you, I'm the guy who loves to get new things on the menu.  I once had fried pork brains while waiting for a train at a Memphis dive.  I ordered them because they were the most unique thing on the menu.  So when Mr. Pork Brains has a go-to dish that is high praise indeed.  I realize that I have major league digressed as well as not yet told you what Bibimbap is.  So, click here to see what Food Republic says about it.

About 10 years after I first ate this Korean wonder food, I found myself serving as a missionary in Russia with several Korean Amercian Missionaries.  Once they found out that I loved bibimbap, they would make it for me every time I was over.  This of course was awesome.  Now in the past 20 years I have not eaten a lot of the aforementioned dish.  But when I think back about it, I celebrate the memory of every morsel.  If I have made you interested in this fantastic dish, check out this recipe from  Bon Appetit.

For more A to Z blogging click here.  Be sure to check out my Boring A to Z  post from 4-2-12 

A is for AJ

White Sox Homerun hitters from A.J. to Zeke

A is for A.J.

AJ "The Ajitator" Pierzynski being punched by Cubs backstop Micheal Barret in 2006

A.J Pierzysnki is an easy guy to hate.  Unless of course he plays for your team as he did from 2005 to 2012 for the White Sox.  All his attributes that I hated when he played for the Twins (his ability to get the best out of his pitchers and his ability to make the most of every opportunity ,offensively and defensively,  to give his team a chance to win) I fell in love with when he played for the White Sox .  These attributes are most remembered to the outside world when he got safely to fist base in a 2005 ALCS against the Angels by  running on a third strike that had not been called the third out of the inning.  The pinch runner for Pierzynski later scored the winning run of the game.

A.J. hit 118 of his so far 177 MLB home runs with the White Sox.  This puts him 16th on the ChiSox all time home run list.  Through his career so far, Pierzynski has averaged 15 home runs for every 162 games played.   His first and last years with the CHI SOX were his most prolific home run totals, hitting 18 in 2005 and 27 in 2012.  Pierzynski ended last season with the St. Louis Cardinals and is signed with the Atlanta Braves through the end of 2015.  

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A is for Allen Levi (Person)

Today is the end of Blogging from A to Z 2015 26 posts in 30 days. Wow! I have had so much fun.

APRIL FOOLS!

Today is actually the first day of Blogging A to Z. My theme this year is nouns. So evaryday in April excluding Sundays you will get a blog about a person place or thing.

Today we start with a hero of mine, Allen Levi. I first met Allen in 1995 at a concert at my church in South Carolina. I have only seen him 4 times in the past 21 years. Each time at one of his concerts. The last time he and I met us was in 2004 at my surprise 4oth birthday party. He provided the music. Allen was an attorney and left his practice to become a full-time musician. Here is footage of him in his former habitat a concert.



I say former natural habitat because he recently did another career change and became a judge. Here is a video explaining the job change.





For More A to Z Blogging click here.

I participated in A to Z blogging back in 2012. To see what I wrote April 1st 2012 click here.

One Thing You Can do for the kid who sabotages family time - Post of the week #2

On 2/23 I shared the inaugural post of the week.  The idea for post of the week was for each Monday to share a post from my blogroll ,that I had read over the past  week and found interesting, inspiring, or some other positive adjective that begins with the letter I.

well 3-2 was the next Monday and I looked for a post of the week and got distracted and never put one up,  3-9, 3-16 and 3-23 came and went and I didn't even think about a post of the week. Now, here we are 5 weeks removed form the innaugural post and I am finally getting around to sharing a post of the week.  This comes from one of the best blogs in the free world (There are hundreds of better blogs in North Korea), We Are That Family.  The post The One Thing You Can Do for The Kid Who Sabotages Family Time. is a great idea, I am not sure if it will work for our sabotagical (I just made up that word if you did not realize it)  kid.  But it is the best idea yet that does not include shipping said kid to Siberia.

I hope to return next week with Post of  the week #3. If I don't I am going to seriously consider a name change to post of the month.