The Houston Astros played their last game of the baseball season yesterday.
As you may recall, in 2011, the Astros finished 56-106, for a .346 winning percentage.
This year…it came right down to the wire, but the Astros finished 55-107, losing their last game to the Chicago Cubs, finishing with a .340 winning percentage, and setting a new record for losses in a single season.
Oh, well. There’s always next year; and with the team changing leagues, maybe the 120 loss mark is within reach.
Before we jump into this week’s column, here’s a totally inappropriate 80’s flashback for you.
Man, time flies when you’re having fun. The first of the Austin nightclub trials started yesterday. (Previously.) It doesn’t seem that there’s much to report yet, but I’ll try to keep an eye on the trial for any sensational revelations.
Ah, “Rebecca”. We hardly knew you. Ben Sprecher’s attempt to round up additional financing didn’t pan out, and the musical has been cancelled. (Previously.)
Also in the NYT: yet another story about fishing tournament fraud. I really do not get why people are surprised by this, or why the media finds it newsworthy. Where there’s money, there’s going to be fraud. If you’re talking six figure money, there’s going to be six figure fraud. And if someone defrauds someone else of a six-figure sum of money, why shouldn’t that be a felony, just because fish are involved?
I haven’t read any of the new books mentioned by the NYT, but I did read Mr. Rinella’s previous book, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine
Sorry, but if I’m in Mr. Rinella’s position and someone pulls that <stuff> on me, I’ll take them aside and tell them politely: “This is your one warning. You are a guest in my house. If you continue to badmouth my food and complain about it not being vegan, I will physically throw you out the front door and see how many times you bounce. If you can’t deal with that, walk out now under your own power.”
Anyway, I don’t feel any real compulsion to read Mr. Rinella’s new book, or any of the others mentioned by the paper of record.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
New Orleans
Houston The Houston Astros is are at 53-106, for a .333 winning percentage. With three games left, they’re not going to lose 110, but they have tied last year’s record number of losses, and it looks like they’re on track to break that record.
Edited to add: Since I am editing this post anyway (thanks, Lawrence) I’ll mention this HouChron article pointing out that you can get tickets for tonight’s game against the Cubs for “as low as 75 cents”. I haven’t checked to see what tickets for other MLB teams are going for on StubHub, which is why I hesitated to do a post.
Edited to add 2: And Lawrence sent me a link to that HouChron article as well, so he gets a hattip, even though I didn’t see his email before I added the ETA.
Ben Sprecher is a theatrical producer. Most of his work has been off-Broadway, but he’s trying to put on a Broadway musical version of “Rebecca”. (I know what you’re thinking, but according to the NYT, this was done in Vienna in 2006, and played well.)
Anyway, Mr. Sprecher estimates that he needs $12 million for this. Mr. Sprecher had an investor – a man named Paul Abrams – who was putting up $4.5 million. That’s a lot of money for one person to invest in a Broadway show. But wait, it gets better!
But wait, it gets even better: Mr. Sprecher never met or spoke to Mr. Abrams at all. There are questions as to whether Mr. Abrams ever even existed.
Mr. Sprecher is trying to raise money to fill the gap. But if he fails and the musical doesn’t open, he’s on the hook to his other investors.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, bat cave!
Obit watch: Edwin Wilson. Remember Edwin Wilson? Former CIA guy? Convicted of shipping plastic explosives to Libya? Spent 20 years in prison?
Yeah. That guy.
Debacle? That seems strong. But I didn’t watch the game. “Debacle” may not be strong enough.
Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do? Well, they can register domains. But Donuts, Inc. has close ties to Demand Media…
The current theory on convicted sex offender and fugitive from justice Prakashanand Saraswati seems to be that he’s in India now, having been spirited out of the country by his followers. And the US Marshals don’t have an office in India.
Maybe they could send some BATF guys from Reno to India.
I really hate to say this, but I’m starting to think Cleveland has a good shot at going 0-16 this year. And they lost to the Bills, which makes it even more painful…
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
New Orleans
The Astros are at 50-103, for a .327 winning percentage. This is projecting out to 109 losses. Put another way, they’d have to win three out of the last nine games, or go .333, to avoid 110 losses.
Somewhere, deep within the Bronx, is a horse stable. Back in the old days (some twenty years ago) people went to the stable and rented horses for rides on a trail that runs past Pelham Parkway.
The stable has been condemned by the building department, and the owners of the property haven’t paid taxes since 2007. But just because the stable is condemned doesn’t mean there’s nothing left inside.
What remains? A horse, of course. A horse named Rusty that the residents are trying to “save”.
Noted here for family reasons: Texas Tech men’s basketball coach Billy Gillispie resigned yesterday. Gillispie had coached the team for one year.
This doesn’t sound like a firing: Gillispie states he resigned for “health reasons”. However, the university was investigating “allegations of player mistreatment” (Mike Leach, call your office, please), and Gillispie’s performance last season was disappointing, to put it mildly.
(I apologize for linking to the Statesman, but the Lubbock newspaper’s site isn’t working for me this morning. Here’s the HouChron story, which is a little longer.)
(Edited to add: Slightly different story, also from the HouChron.)
(Edited to add 2: I couldn’t pull it up at work – I kept getting errors from a proxy, and I don’t think it was ours – but now that I’m home, here’s the Lubbock paper’s coverage.)
Randy Adams had a hearing before a panel of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System yesterday. Mr. Adams is appealing the decision by the system not to include his one year as police chief of Bell in calculating his pension. (Previously.) If Mr. Adams wins his appeal, he’ll get a pension of $510,000 a year, “making him the second-highest-paid public pensioner in California” according to the LAT.
So how did the hearing go?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m not sure I understand California law. Does the Fifth Amendment apply in an administrative proceeding? Or is Mr. Adams taking the Fifth because he’s concerned that evidence presented in the administrative proceeding could be used against him in a criminal case? (Remember, Mr. Adams has not been charged with any crimes. Yet.)
There hasn’t been much in the news the past couple of days, and I’ve been depressed and upset for various reasons that the readers of this blog won’t care about.
I don’t have a lot to say about the DOJ report on “Fast and Furious”. I haven’t had time to go through the report myself, and I’m expecting that a lot of people who are smarter than I am will have smarter things to say than I do, once they’ve had a chance to go through it.
The Astros have crossed the 100 loss barrier, and are still on track for 110 losses. Woot.
Today’s NYT has two articles I found kind of interesting. One is about problems with the United Network for Organ Sharing and kidney allocation:
Story number two is about the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota:
And:
And the mayor of Central Falls, Rhode Island, resigned yesterday. He’s also agreed to plead guilty on federal charges that “he took illegal gratuities from a friend and political supporter who received lucrative work from the city boarding up abandoned buildings”.
“Some homes were boarded up even though people were still living there.” In completely unrelated news: gee, I really miss Buddy Cianci.
Mark Kriegel has a new book coming out tomorrow: The Good Son: The Life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini
I’ve never been a huge boxing fan, but the Mancini – Duk-koo Kim fight fascinated me even before the Zevon song was released. I’ll be watching for Kriegel’s book.
In the meantime, the NYT has a long article about the fight, adapted from the book.
And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about when I reference Zevon, or those of you who just want to hear “Boom Boom Mancini” right now:
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
Kansas City
Jacksonville
New Orleans
Tennessee
Oakland
The Astros, believe or not, seem to be on a winning streak (having won their last two games) and are currently 48-99, for a .327 winning percentage. This projects out to 109 losses.
Lawrence sent me a link that seems to imply the Cubs have been mathematically eliminated.
MLB.com seems to confirm this.
So this is to document that I owe Lawrence $5.
Edited to add 9/24: Paid in full, in front of witnesses.
This was covered some on FARK yesterday, but I kind of feel like it is important enough to mention here.
On April 15, 1989, at the Hillsborough Stadium (located in Sheffield), 96 people were crushed to death. The initial inquiry on the deaths basically blamed the fans for what happened; that was a controversial verdict.
The British government agreed to a new inquiry in December of 2009. The results of that inquiry were issued yesterday.
More:
And further:
Additionally, the report suggests that at least some of the people who died may have lived, if they had been given prompt medical treatment:
First TMQ of the new season. What can we say: we’ve got high hopes.
After the jump, oops, there goes another rubber tree plant…
