Author: Jim Ellwanger

Only trust the audience on questions about movies

Later that same episode…the second contestant, going for $64,000, is faced with the question “in 1947, who became the first African-American baseball player to play in the American League?”, and the choices Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Dan Bankhead, and Jackie Robinson.

He says that he knows it’s not Jackie Robinson because the Dodgers are in the National League, but then makes the mistake of polling the audience. The poll results: 55% for Paige, 23% for Doby, 18% for Robinson, and 4% for Bankhead. Then he takes the 50/50, which leaves Paige and Doby, says “I should have trusted the audience instincts,” makes Paige his final answer, and leaves with $32,000.

If only it had been a question about Rob Dibble!

Obscure references to baseball players

On the November 28, 2000, episode of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” the four answer choices were “nib,” “tang,” “bail,” and “dibble” for the $125,000 question “what is the name of the unseen part of the knife blade that secures the blade to the handle,” and the following ensued:

Regis: Well, I drank some Tang once, if that helps. Somebody bailed me out, as a matter of fact. And I do dibble well.
Contestant: Rob Dibble — he was a pitcher with the Reds at one time.
Regis: There you go. Good reliever. (Although as Regis said it, it sounded more like “reliefer.”)

The contestant chose to quit, and left with $125,000. If only he had been able to think of Frank Tang-nana!

Original comments…

Levi: Is it the nib?

Jim: No, it’s the tang, hence my reference to Frank Ta(ng)nana, and not to, um, Nibbles.

A nib is the metal part you write with on a fountain pen; a bail is, among other things, the metal bar on a typewriter that holds the paper against the platen; and this is a dibble (used to make a big enough hole in the ground so that you can put in a bulb or a seedling).

Well, Wrigley Field still has less signage (modern euphemism for advertising) than any other ballpark. Actually, at one point during the broadcast, I think Bill Murray was joking with Chip and Steve about putting ads on the wall behind the ivy, at a reduced price, of course, since they’d only be visible in April and perhaps October. Or maybe it was Senator Dick Durbin doing the joking and not Bill Murray. I forget. What did come up during their conversation with the senator was a suggestion that he introduce legislation to force the Cardinals to trade Albert Pujols, preferably to the Cubs, or to the American League.

Anyway, here’s this week’s “Car Talk” puzzler, posted here because it happens to be baseball-related:

RAY: Lefty McDougal, star pitcher of the Kenosha Ramblers, had an incentive clause in his contract that guaranteed him an extra thousand bucks if he won 20 games during the season.

TOM: This sounds like 1925!

RAY: It’s last game of the season. Lefty has 19 victories, and is scheduled to be that day’s starting pitcher. The opponent is a lousy team. They’ve got a terrible record, and Lefty knows he’s going to get the bonus.

As luck would have it, an hour before the game his manager approaches him and says, “You ain’t starting, Lefty.”

Lefty asks, “Why not?”

The manager says, “The owner of the team came and said, ‘If you start this bum… if he throws even one pitch, you’re losing your job!'”

Lefty’s dejected. He says, “Jeez, I was going buy a new house in the Hamptons with that thousand bucks!”

Lefty’s discouraged, and the manager is discouraged too, because he has great regard for Lefty. The manager wonders, “How can I get Lefty to win his 20th game and collect his bonus– and not throw a single pitch?”

And that’s what happens. Lefty wins the game without throwing a single pitch.

How did he do it?

Original comments…

sandor: Here’s a guess. I’m not an expert on how win-lose records are figured, so I may have this wrong.

If the game is away, the Ramblers will bat first. Assuming they get a run in in the first inning, they’ll have the lead going into the bottom of the first. Lefty starts the game, but gets pulled for a reliever immediately before throwing a pitch. Assuming the reliever does his job, and the offense does theirs, and the Ramblers keep the lead for the entire game, wouldn’t Lefty get the win?

Levi: No–to get a win, a starting pitcher has to go five full innings.

The rules for relievers are much less solid, and I’m trying to come up with an answer. The problem I’m having is that so far, the only scenario I can come up with (pitcher comes in with 2 outs, runner on first in a tie game, picks him off, team takes lead in the bottom of the inning, he gets the win) is not a situation that the manager could plan for. And technically, that pitcher ought not to get the win, because the rule for awarding wins for relievers says that they should be the pitcher of record when the team goes ahead to stay, but it also mentions that, in a game featuring multiple pitchers, the win could be awarded to the pitcher who pitched most effectively. Wins are almost never parceled out that way, but in this case, I think even the official scorer might have to agree that a different pitcher deserved the win.

I’ll keep thinking.

Jim: I have here a link to a recent example of a pitcher getting the win without throwing a pitch. It’s similar but not identical to the situation Levi described, and it would still be hard to plan for.

Luke: Who gets the win in a forfeit? Maybe the manager persuades Lefty to offer half of his bonus to the other team if it forfeits.

Or maybe lefty balks four times to each batter, thus walking him, then picks him off the bag. He is left-handed, after all. He probably has a wicked move to first.

Luke, hanger-on: Oh, what happens when a starting pitcher dies after the game starts but before he’s thrown a pitch? Is it like when your roommate dies in college and you get a 4.0 for the quarter? (It’s probably a 5.0 now with grade inflation.) Assuming it’s a home game, let Lefty take the mound in the bottom of the first, then right as he’s about to start his wind-up, he takes a big lick of the hemlock he’s hidden in his glove, next to the emory board and Vaseline.

Luke, hanger-on: Well, what was the answer?

As long as I had the scanner running…

I don’t have enough outlets, so every time I want to plug in my scanner, I have to unplug my electric pencil sharpener. (Actually, I would have enough outlets if I didn’t have so many items that had a gigantic transformer brick attached to the plug, including the scanner.)

Anyway, the result is this list of all the regular-season major league baseball games I’ve ever been to, complete with scans of the ticket stubs. The list, I’m sure, pales by comparison to Levi’s.

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to Tuffy

During the Cubs home opener today, Chip Caray asked Steve Stone about his favorite Wrigley Field opening day memory. Prompted by me yelling “Tuffy!” from my chair, Steve said it was Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes hitting three home runs off Dwight Gooden in 1994. Hard to believe that was 10 years ago. No such luck for a similar memory today, with the wind blowing in.

Also, for the pregame show and the first inning, WGN’s graphics were being cut off on the sides of the picture, which is what happens when you haven’t paid enough attention to what’s going to happen when you downconvert your high-definition feed to standard definition. I blame the Superstation WGN technical crew in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and their weird “S” logo and incessant “Becker” promos. Maybe Cubs games should be letterboxed on the SD feed, although that might confuse all the elderly Cubs fans in Florida and Arizona who they’re always sending get-well wishes to during the broadcasts.

(Yes, unfortunately, my ticket stub really is that faded, even though it’s been in an envelope in a drawer for most of its life…and that’s with me trying to use some tricks in a graphics program to make the text a little more readable. Cheap ink: another example of Ticketmaster’s evilness.)

Original comments…

Luke, hanger-on: I’m not a big fan of the new WGN baseball graphics. The strip takes up a lot of screen space without passing along much information, plus it often lops off the top of a player’s head. Seems like in past years game data took up just a small corner of the screen — score, inning, tiny dots to denote the count — plus maybe a WGN watermark in another corner. I even seem to recall that cameramen at Wrigley put masking tape in the corner of their viewfinders to remind them to leave important action out of that corner when composing their shots.

Anyway, I’m keeping my eye out at the Tower. One of these days I’ll share an elevator with someone wearing a polo shirt with “WGN sports graphics” embroidered over the pocket, and I’ll refuse to let him off until he agrees to go back to the old design.

Jim: I don’t have a problem with the WGN strip, but maybe that’s because I’ve watched a lot of sports on Fox (football and baseball), inventor of the continuous on-screen score display and then the strip. In fact, I find WGN’s strip more aesthetically pleasing and somewhat easier to read than Fox’s. And the good thing about the strip is that the horrible “Superstation WGN” bug goes away when it’s on-screen.

The strip looked fine in the first inning, and I assume they use the same one in high-definition and standard definition, just with some “white space” on the ends in high-definition. The graphics that were getting cut off on the sides were the ones at the bottom of the screen, which I would call “lower thirds” if I were being pretentious about my radio/TV/film degree.

These days, the WGN cameramen are probably using masking tape (or vertical lines drawn with a Sharpie) in their high-definition viewfinders to show them where the edge of the picture is in standard definition.

Anxiety about the trip already?

All right, enough about jingles. Last night (really this morning), I dreamed that I was at the Phillies game on this trip, and first I realized that I hadn’t done anything about the quality setting on my digital camera, so I was fooling around with that for a while. Finally, once I had matched up the space remaining on the memory card with the number of pictures I thought I’d be taking on the rest of the trip, it was time to settle in and watch the game…except that the seats were uncomfortable metal benches instead of regular stadium seats, and they didn’t slope enough so I had to crane my neck to see around the people in front of me, and the seats weren’t really facing the field, they were facing the scoreboard, which was a lot farther to the left than one might expect. Speaking of which, the scoreboard wasn’t working at first, and once it lit up, it listed the home team as “Padres,” so I thought, “They’ve got the wrong ‘P’ team listed.” Also, Levi and the other hangers-on weren’t around at the beginning of the game, so a family of four took their seats.

I woke up shortly after the game started, with the visiting team having hit a ball to left field that was just foul…at least, I think so, since I was having trouble seeing. Any amateur dream interpreters want to take a crack at this?

On another note, as I alluded to earlier in this blog, I will be visiting a place we’re bypassing on this trip and going to New York for a few days in July, planning on attending the Yankees-Devil Rays game on Thursday, July 8th. (No chance to see the Mets, or either of the two minor-league teams in New York City, unfortunately…the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Staten Island Yankees are playing each other that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but I have to go up to Connecticut for a wedding, which is the justification for the trip.)

So here’s the real anxiety about the trip: why are there cheaper rooms available at well-known hotel chains in midtown Manhattan than there are in downtown Detroit? I’m going to assume the rooms are smaller and noiser on West 48th Street than they are on Gratiot Avenue, but still…

Original comments…

maura: wait, you’re going to see the rays?! maybe i can come along!!

Jim: Yes! I’ll be in touch.

Here we go. From WCOL in Columbus, Ohio, circa 1963:

1230’s doubleheader
(15-second instrumental bed)

And a pair of jingles from 1970, from a no-longer-in-existence Washington, D.C., station:

Double play, WEAM

Triple play, WEAM

True, they’re not directly related to baseball, but they are more grist for my upcoming thesis “An All-American Pick Hit: Baseball Imagery in PAMS Radio Jingles, 1958-1975.”

I’ve gone through two of the nine CDs from the grab bag, and already have two baseball-related jingles…

From 1973:

WFIL, the Phillies

And from some indeterminate time in the ’70s:

WBAL, sounds like Baltimore sports
(7-second instrumental bed)
WBAL and the Orioles
(7-second instrumental bed)
WBAL, sounds like Baltimore sports

Unfortunately, neither of these is anywhere near as good as the awesome KDKA “World Champion Pirates” jingle I have, which Levi has already heard. There is, however, a 1974 series of jingles for WMAL in Washington based on the bizarre theme “we’re living in a city of song”; their longtime slogan was “where all is said and done,” so one of these jingles calls them “the saying and doing station.”

(P.S.: In case you’re curious after looking at their web site, yes, WFIL has a slightly different format now than they did back in 1973.)