Stan Musial: An Appreciation of the Man

I have no memories of Stan Musial smashing baseballs across the National League, having arrived on this Earth more than sixteen years after he collected hit number 3,630 in the final at bat of his career, September 29th, 1963. While I would love to have seen him play, the record books are emphatic about his greatness as a player. The stories told of him also make clear he was quite a man. The news that Musial passed away yesterday has saddened many, but we should also reflect on the knowledge that at 92 years of age and surrounded by family, he went about as well as anyone can hope to.

2012: The Year in Movies

The award traditionally given to the best film
of the year is a green guy in a garbage can.

I tend to see what most people would consider to be a lot of movies. This began about as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to go to a theater with friends, by the time I was 15 I was going to a movie almost every week. In 1997 I saw 50 movies, and while I don't make it to the theater quite as often as I used to, but innovations like Netflix and Red Box have allowed me to keep up with new releases from home, and every year I've managed to see at least 50 new releases. Every year until 2012 that is. I've seen only 47 movies from last year. Shameful. No one is more disappointed in me than me. I thought about a marathon of whatever the Red Box had last weekend, but decided against it.

My 2013 Hall of Fame Ballot

Wednesday afternoon the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame voting results will be released. It is one of the deepest ballots in history, with over a dozen qualified candidates, including two of the very best players in baseball history. It may come as a surprise then (to those of you who normally pay little to no attention to this sort of things) that there will probably be zero candidates actually elected for induction. Why? Performance enhancing drugs (steroids, etc.), unsubstantiated rumors, intellectual dishonesty, and a voting body that is significantly out-to-lunch on modern baseball and advanced statistics. I'd like to briefly address some of those issues, and then present my own (obviously hypothetical) Hall of Fame ballot (which you can scroll to the bottom for, if that's what you're interested in).

My Age 32 Season

It's January 5th, my birthday. It took only a few minutes to know this will be a great year for me, because as soon as I was awake, my girlfriend insisted on giving me presents, which included the incredible sleeping bag you see to the right. It may smell bad, but it'll keep me warm until she gets the shelter up (The sleeping bag is a tauntaun, which Rebel troops rode to get around on the ice planet Hoth in "The Empire Strikes Back." Han Solo cut his open to keep Luke Skywalker from freezing to death. But you already knew that, right? ...RIGHT?!). I'm happy to be 33 (Yes, I still enjoy Star Wars' themed gifts at that age, what of it?), especially because studies show it's the happiest age there is. But before I move fully into this new age, I thought it would be good to pause and take a look back at my age 32 season, among the most memorable and significant I've had.