Brenda Fricker, actress.
Other credits include “A Time to Kill”, “Quatermass” (1979), “The Quatermass Conclusion” (1979), and “Angels in the Outfield”.
I’m a little behind on this, but: Janice McNair, co-founder of the Houston Texans. NFL.com. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Major League Baseball is at the all-star break, so I probably owe everyone a loser update.
I haven’t really been keeping up this year because there hasn’t been anyone historically bad this year.
The lowest winning percentages in MLB right now are the Los Angeles Angels and the Kansas City Royals, both 38-59 for a .392 winning percentage. After that, the Colorado Rockies come in at 39-59 for .398. The White Sox are actually on top of their division (50-45, .526).
.300 is the cutoff for Wikipedia’s historical list of worst MLB teams. I’m going to say: we’re probably not going to see anybody really bad this year.
But maybe we’ll get lucky in the upcoming NFL season.
A catch-all for several things:
Happy 46th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night! I think I may have used this before, but it has been a minute I believe:
Obit watch: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). NYT. WP (archived). Lawrence.
You know, for a movie that is often called one of the worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture1…”The Greatest Show On Earth” is actually pretty swell. Is it better than “High Noon”? I don’t know that you can make a head-to-head comparison, but I thought “Show” was much more fun. And sometimes that’s what you want out of a movie: fun. (And I say this as a person with conflicted views about circuses.)
While we were watching it, I mentioned that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had gone out of business in 2017. I went to double-check my dates…and ran into an interesting philosophical question.
While RB&BB closed in 2017, they restarted in 2023 according to Wikipedia. But: the new shows do not have clowns, animals, or a ringmaster.
Which raises the question: if you don’t have animals, clowns, or a ringmaster, are you still Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus? Heck, are you even still a circus at all?
The long version of the Lucille Ball story from IMDB.
We all know that Jimmy Stewart was one of the greats, but he’s brilliant in this. Especially since he spends the entire film in clown makeup, for reasons.
And how many movies can you think of that have a love…pentagon? Brad is in love with Holly, who loves him. But she takes up with The Great Sebastian, who returns her affections (though, honestly, it seems like The Great Sebastian would return the affections of anything female). He also has a past with Angel, who also falls for Brad, but is claimed by the pathologically jealous elephant trainer Klaus. (I wonder if this is patient zero for the evil elephant trainer in fiction. See also.)
John Wilson should go eat a bowl of something disgusting.
Happy Bobby Bonilla Day!
Please celebrate responsibly.
Carlos Mendoza out as manager of the New York Mets.
ESPN.
Mendoza, 46, was in his third season as manager with a club option for 2027 that was not exercised. He led the Mets to an improbable appearance in the NL Championship Series in his first year at the helm in 2024, guiding the club from one of the worst records in the majors in June to within two games of the World Series.
But his second season was a failure as the Mets inverted the results from 2024, jumping out to the best record in the majors before capsizing over the season’s final 3½ months and failing to reach the postseason.
Lance Rentzel. He was 82.
Mr. Rentzel started out with the Vikings, but didn’t do that well, mostly due to injuries. He was traded to the Cowboys, and was a solid player. Quoting Wikipedia:
He was on top of the world. He married Joey Heatherton in 1969. But he had a problem.
In 1966, he exposed himself to two young girls in St. Paul. That incident didn’t get a lot of attention, and he pled down to “disorderly conduct”. But in 1970, he exposed himself to a 10-year old girl in University Park, Texas. That got more attention: Ms. Heatherton divorced him, and he was traded to the LA Rams. He was less successful there, and was suspended at the start of the 1973 season after being convicted of possession of marijuana. (He was still on probation for the indecent exposure charge.)
He also wrote a book, When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow, which I have in a box somewhere but haven’t read.
There were rumors a few weeks ago that the Christmas special was going to be cancelled, as the BBC and showrunners couldn’t find anybody who was willing to play “Doctor Who”.
Today is the 52nd anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night!
If you live in the area around Cleveland or Euclid, Collision Bend is hosting their fifth observance of the event.
I thought about doing a top ten list of my personal “greatest sporting events”, but I have trouble deciding between Ten Cent Beer Night and Disco Demolition Night for second place. (First place is, of course, the Heidi Bowl.)
Also, I have trouble coming up with a list of ten. I’d probably put this one on the list:
mostly for childhood nostalgia. I might add the final game of the Washington Senators in 1971. But then it gets tough.
The NYPost is reporting the firing of Sean Hudson as “Director of Community Relations” for the Washington Nationals.
This is actually kind of amusing. Mr. Hudson was apparently fired as fallout from a James O’Keefe video, in which he said “…the team doesn’t use pitcher Trevor Williams in video promotions on social media due to his religious beliefs.”
I don’t have a Twitter account, and I apparently have issues embedding Twitter. So here’s a link from the NYPost article.
“The Dodgers had a group… who were drag queens who sometimes dressed up as nuns. He [Trevor Williams] went on social media like… ‘This is my religion. You all are mocking it.’”
“Because of that, we [Washington Nationals] don’t use him [Trevor Williams] on social [media].”
…
What? Does that make any sense to anyone?
Well, that’s kind of interesting, too.
Derius Swinton II out as “senior special teams assistant” for the Steelers. He was hired about three months ago. “Reports” say the firing was for a violation of team policy.
The archiving service I use has been having problems for the past few days, and I’m running low on NYT share links.
Kyle Busch. ESPN. Oddly, I don’t see any coverage of this in the NYT: it looks like they’ve shuffled off the coverage to their sports vertical, “The Athletic”, which they make you pay extra to read.
41 seems awfully young these days.
Edited to add: Shortly after this went up, the NYT posted an actual obit in the obituary section. I apologize that this is paywalled, but, as I said earlier, archive.is is having problems and I only have three share links left until June 1. (No, they don’t roll over from month to month. I wish.)
Kirk Foyle. He was a local man: Tuesday night, he was eating on the patio at Green Mesquite (one of our local barbecue restaurants), when a tree fell on him. He died from his injuries the next day.
Tomorrow is promised to nobody, whether you’re a NASCAR driver or a barbecue eater. Be prepared.
Sam Sianis. He owned and ran the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, also known as the “Cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger cheeps cheeps Pepsi!” place from SNL. (Though my understanding is that sketch was also heavily influenced by the Belushi family, who were in the restaurant business as well.)
The Billy Goat Tavern is also famous for triggering Cubs fans.
Mr. Sianis’s uncle Billy bought the bar — which was originally across from Chicago Stadium (now United Center) and called the Lincoln Tavern — in 1934. After a goat wandered in the door, he renamed the bar the Billy Goat and adopted the animal as a pet.
The goat, called Murphy, became something of a celebrity himself. In 1945, the elder Mr. Sianis brought him to Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, at Wrigley Field.
It began to rain. Murphy began to stink. The Cubs’ owner, Philip K. Wrigley, kicked them out.
As he was leaving, Billy Sianis put a curse on the team, vowing that it would never win a championship. When the Cubs lost the Series that year, he sent a note to Mr. Wrigley: “Now who stinks!”
…
In 1984, when the Cubs were contesting the National League championship, the team relented and allowed Mr. Sianis bring a goat onto the field.
But the Cubs did not win a World Series until 2016.
Watching the tiebreaking seventh game that year from the tavern, Mr. Sianis banished the curse by ringing the bell that had been worn by Murphy in 1945. The current goat stood beside him, looking as nervous as the rest of the crowd. Then it urinated on the floor. Mr. Sianis led it away.
“Don’t touch the goat,” one fan said, according to The Financial Times. “It’s bad luck.”
“Then it urinated on the floor.” I cannot tell a lie: one of the reasons I enjoy NYT obits so much is the telling details.
I’m a little behind, and, to be honest, not feeling great. But Lawrence would give me a hard time if I failed to note that the Dallas Mavericks fired Jason Kidd.
Five seasons, 205-205 overall.
Sorry for the lazy ESPN link, but, as I’ve noted before, the Dallas media is all but unlinkable.
Jamahl Mosley out as coach of the Orlando Magic.
The problem seems to be that they’ve gone to the playoffs three straight times…and lost in the first round each time.
The Magic still haven’t won a series since 2010 despite three trips to the playoffs under Mosley.
Most recently, they took the Detroit Pistons to seven games, and lost game 7, and the series, on Sunday.
ESPN.
Rob Thomson out as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.
But: they are 9-19 so far this season.
Two weeks ago, on April 13, the Phillies trounced the Cubs, 13-7, at Citizens Bank Park. They lost the next 10 games by a combined 69-26. Last Tuesday, in the midst of that skid, Dombrowski offered a vote of confidence for Thomson, saying there was “nothing to ponder at this point” about a managerial change.
But the losing continued. The Phillies are off to their worst 28-game start since 2002. They have dropped six consecutive series. After bowing again Sunday in Atlanta, they slid to 10½ games behind the NL East-leading Braves, their largest deficit in the division in April since 1997.
This broke kind of late on Saturday (plus there were other things going on Saturday night), and I was tied up all day yesterday.
So for the record: Alex Cora out as manager of the Red Sox. I’m pretty sure this is the first firing of the baseball season.
The Red Sox are 11-17 so far this season. Also noted:
The Red Sox initially hired Cora, a 14-year major league veteran, in 2018 after he spent one year as bench coach for the Houston Astros. The Puerto Rico native guided Boston to a 108-win season and the World Series title in his first year.
Boston failed to reach the postseason in 2019 before Cora resigned as fallout for his involvement in the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal in 2017. Commissioner Rob Manfred later suspended Cora for the 2020 season. The Red Sox rehired Cora upon his reinstatement, signing him to a two-year deal with club options for 2023 and 2024.
For the record, I did ask Ken White if he had any comment, but he had not responded by the time I posted. If he does respond, I will update here.
Tom Fitzgerald out as general manager of the New Jersey Devils.
The way I read the ESPN article, they actually started out okay this season. But they lost a key player (Jack Hughes) to a “freak hand injury in mid-November that kept him out for 18 games”.