ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

DAILY BLOG

  • Big Papi

    On September 2, 1997, David Ortiz played in his first Major League game. Big Papi hit 541 homers in his Hall of Fame career. How many did he hit for the Minnesota Twins, the team that he debuted for that day? 48. In one of the dumbest moves in the history of the world, in… Read more

  • How the Hell Did We Get Here?

    On September 1st, 1989, Eight days after banning Pete Rose from baseball for life, Commissioner Bart Giamatti dies suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 51 This summer Major League Baseball announced that Pete Rose was back on the eligible list for Hall of Fame voting even though he broke the cardinal rule of the… Read more

  • John Wayne

    It is not something I am necessarily proud of but, I am a big fan of John Wayne movies. I suppose you could call them a “guilty pleasure.” Today I am highlighting some of the best quotes from John Wayne movies. Beginning with my all-time favorite Duke quote from his last film, The Shootist. If I… Read more

  • ChatGPT Answers My Question

    Call me capricious, but now that I have started using ChatGPT I like to ask it random questions. Here is the question/prompt I posed this morning to ChatGPT and the answer: I am trying to get a feel for how much the billionaire backers of AI are complicit in using the tools at their disposal… Read more

  • Old Guys Rule

    On August 30th, 1986, Tommy John, 43, and Joe Niekro, 41, pitched a doubleheader for the New York Yankees against Seattle to become the first 40-plus teammate combo to start a doubleheader since Sept. 13, 1933, when the Chicago Cubs’ Sam Jones, 41, and Red Faber, 44, pitched against the Philadelphia Athletics. John lost the opener and Niekro won the second game,… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: Poetry Review: “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on March 13, 2011. For the most part, I do not have much interest in urban poets or urban poetry. There is so little variety in the urban landscape and milieu that there is really only… Read more

  • Wade Boggs & Feeling Old

    On August 27th, 1999, Hall of Famer Wade Boggs played his final game in the Major Leagues. In my mid-sixties now, there are times when I feel completely discombobulated by the passing of Time. If you would have asked me just yesterday, I would have said that Wade Boggs probably played his last game 10… Read more

  • Oops!

    Since I work so far ahead here at ClimbingSky, I keep a calendar that highlights the days that already have a posting scheduled for them. August 26th was highlighted on that calendar. But it turns out that I did NOT have anything written or scheduled for today. Let me rectify that now, at least for… Read more

  • Literary Coffee Morning

    He put on a pot of coffee, started the Great Fugue on the phonograph, and took a shower. He was very quick about it, for he was dressed in clean clothes and was having his cup of coffee before the music was completed. He looked out through the window at the lot and up at… Read more

  • The Baptism of an Opinion

    Faith without reason is not Faith (capital “F”). It is merely the baptism of an opinion. The ruined abbeys you find seemingly everywhere around Ireland are testimony to the excesses of Protestantism, which unfortunately tried to fix a church in desperate need of fixing by divorcing  Reason and Faith. Luther and Calvin believed that Faith and Reason… Read more