April 20, 2020
I missed this one – a much more observant fan reminded me. It happened on April 17, 1955. That was the day that Roberto Clemente, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, made his debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Roberto signed out of the Puerto Rico leagues to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers on February 19, 1954. The Dodgers moved him to their top minor league team in Montreal to play with the Royals, and tried to hide him so no other team would steal him in the off-season draft. For weeks at a time, he would sit on the bench and never play. But a Pittsburgh scout, Clyde Sukeforth, saw him, and that’s how Roberto Clemente became a Pirate.
Even though it’s four days late, Blog # 21 is a good place to mention the Great Roberto.
On September 30, 1972, the day this picture was taken, Clemente hit a double in the 4th inning off Jon Matlack of the New York Mets at Three Rivers Stadium for his 3,000th hit. Only 32 major leaguers have accomplished that feat.
This is not the first time I’ve been a member of a class action lawsuit. The first happened when I bought two 1959 Chevrolet tail lights from eBay.
I was going to mount them in an attractive fashion, put lights behind them and wire them to work off of a battery. The completed display was to have been be mounted in my office – now known as The Lego Room. The completed display was never completed, in fact, I never opened the package, and sold it years later at a family yard sale. Below is the picture of my check from the eBay class action.
The award was for 47 cents. Postage to mail the check to me was 44 cents. You can see how much money I made. The Vizio lawsuit promises an award between $13 and $1 – out of the $17 million. How much did the lawyers get? One call, that’s all.
STAT, April 16, 2020: “A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week ... In a statement, the University of Chicago Medicine said ‘drawing any conclusions at this point is premature and scientifically unsound.’ Asked about the data, Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, described them as ‘encouraging.’”
Yahoo News, April 17, 2020: “Preliminary results from government lab experiments show that the coronavirus does not survive long in high temperatures and high humidity, and is quickly destroyed by sunlight ... A briefing on the preliminary results, marked for official use only and obtained by Yahoo News, offers hope that summertime may offer conditions less hospitable for the virus, though experts caution it will by no means eliminate, or even necessarily decrease, new cases.”
I’ve read more like these, but everyone of them, while offering a glimmer of hope, snatch the optimism away, warning: the studies are preliminary, the results haven’t been duplicated, we really just don’t know.
** National Review reports, “Americans who attend church have turned to televised or online services. They have been praying for an end to the pandemic. And the prayerful include Americans who do not normally pray.”
** Protesters in Texas converged on the steps of the Capitol building in Austin on Saturday to call for the reopening of the state and the country. Other people also defied isolation orders by protesting on Saturday in Indianapolis, Carson City, Nevada, and Annapolis, Maryland. Protests have also appeared in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah.
By merely assembling, the protesters were in violation of the stay-at-home orders replicated across the United States in a bid to save lives.
The photograph below is from the protest in Austin. I counted the number of people wearing masks. I came up with seven. And every expert, every medical person, says keep your distance and wear masks.
After announcing on Thursday, guidelines for how the nation’s governors should carry out an orderly reopening of their communities on their own timetables, President Trump seemed to switch sides on Friday, tweeting, in all caps, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”
A Pew Research Center poll released on Thursday showed that two-thirds of Americans expressed more concern that the economy would reopen too quickly and allow the coronavirus to keep spreading, rather than that it would open too slowly, causing undue strain.
Google's message today: "Stay home. Save lives. Help stop coronavirus."
** No specific relationship to the coronavirus pandemic, but for the first 65 verses of the Old Testament book called Lamentations, 37% of the entire book, the writer describes the calamities which Israel has experienced, and the book certainly earns its name. It is not until the middle of the third chapter that any bright light is seen: “The Lord’s love never ends; his mercies never stop. They are new every morning ... I say to myself, ‘The Lord is mine, I hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who hope in him, to those who seek him. It is good to wait quietly for the Lord to save” (emphasis mine – Lamentations 3:22-26 New Century Version).
Tomorrow, let's talk about it.
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I have about 7 Roberto Clemente baseball cards. Actually, a couple are in good shape. Loved him.
ReplyDeleteIncredible athlete, more remarkable man. I'm glad I was able to see him play.
DeleteI have a complete Pirates team set from 1960. When my brother finally accepts there was no World Series that year due to a strike I may give them to him!!
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