Time To Go: Terry Francona And Boston Red Soxs Split Up

Breaking up is hard to do, as the old rock-and-roll song but in this case, it is much easier and was expected. As the Boston Red Soxs had a few nights back their EPIC FAIL, after a month of heartbreaking loses which resulted in the team’s early departure for this year. IMHO, this was a good and needed decision because after two Major League Baseball World Series Championships in 2004 and again in 2007, Terry Francona,who is to be credited for those two championships and in special way, in 2004 after over eighty years of a dry spell.

Since then, the Red Soxs in the last few years either just was able to get into the Wild Card for a time, then was defeated after a brief playoffs run or because of injuries in 2010 and this recent collapse in 2011, its season comes to the end of the line at the end of the regular season. IMHO, it is time that the Boston Red Soxs go through a major house cleaning overhaul so that, preparation for the upcoming one hundred birthday of Fenway, a much better restored team will be the result and in turn, can get back into the playoffs again come in 2012.

“Former Red Sox manager Terry Francona talks about split with team.”

With MANY THANKS To Both WCVBtv And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

“Former Red Sox Manager Terry Francona talks about when it went downhill.”

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With MANY THANKS To Both WCVBtv And YouTube. Watch Both Videos Here:

“Former Red Sox manager Terry Francona reflects on eight years in Boston.”

“Terry Francona talks about knowing it was time to go.”

Breaking……..Yemen Says Al-Qaida-linked Cleric Awlaki Killed

This just came in just after I had gotten up early this morning.

“Yemen’s Defense Ministry says the U.S.-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed. (Sept. 30)”

Rays, Cardinals Win Wild Card Spots

“The Rays rallied from a 7-0 deficit to beat the Yankees 8-7 and won the wild-card spot minutes after Boston lost 4-3 to Baltimore. The Cardinals shut out Houston 8-0 and won the NL wild-card spot, when Atlanta later lost 4-3 to the Phillies. (Sept. 29)”

With MANY THANKS To Both AP And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

Pete’s Picks For NFL Week 4

“Will the Jets go into Baltimore and come out with a win or will the Ravens take care of business at home? Pete Prisco joins Lauren Shehadi to discuss.”

With MANY THANKS To Both CBS And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

“Can Dallas go into New York and keep the game close? Pete Prisco joins Lauren Shehadi with the answer.”

With MANY THANKS To Both CBS And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

Mee Wow Video: 2 Faced Cat Jumps Into Record Book

“Frank and Louie the cat, was born with two faces, two mouths, three eyes, and lots of doubts about his future. Twelve years after Marty Stevens rescued him from being put down because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed rag doll cat is not only thriving but has made it into the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records. He’s the longest surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named for the Roman god of transitions, who has two faces.”

“His name is Frank and Louie, and he’s just entered the record books. He’s now the longest-living cat with two faces, also known as a Janus cat. (Sept. 29)”

With MANY THANKS To Both AP And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

Russia Today On Facebook:\”Russia Today On Facebook\”

Russia Today On Twitter:\”Russia Today On Twitter\”

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An Epic Fail Late Last Night, Early This Morning

Late last night, very early this morning, I have had another lesson in the gift and value of humility. But even so, it is as painful as my arthritic right knee.

My favorite Major League Baseball team, the Boston Red Soxs lost to the Baltimore Orioles in Baltimore, 4 to 3.

This ends the one month-long rapid decline of a team that “least” expected it only well over a month ago. But then again, blowing a well-earned nine games win at the end of summer.

As I had after daily mass in honor of the Blessed Archangels Michael,Gabriel, and Raphael, when I had talked to my parish pastor, who is also a devoted Red Soxs fan himself, he helped me put everything in proper perspective. First, this great loss of the Boston Red Soxs came after that very rapid decline of this month, September. Second, it is much bearable now, because of the two glorious MLB World Series championship wins of both 2004 and 2007. Also to be always fair, give other teams a chance to go for the World Series via the playoffs. Add to that, there have been a number of players on the Red Soxs team who have been hurting because of injuries.

Even so, no epic fail is ever easy to bear.

Before I went to sleep, I had heard the radio broadcasters read the very beloved reflection reading by the late A. Bartlett Giamatti to close out the season called ” The Green Fields Of The Mind”.

“The Green Fields Of The Mind “

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn’t this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game’s deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio–not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television–and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutability never loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day full of bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of the ninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit, only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in New York washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Boston had won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Boston losing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up. Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down the right-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman, former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes for three breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages her agent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.

Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year, erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in his soul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watching the clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the center-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.

New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked up from the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, new to the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative, a big man off-balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It is suddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast, a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved. His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacity to absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.

Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookie from Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straight hits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The count runs two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, the ball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skipping past Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, finding the dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiating the green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, traveling steady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he’d seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game–not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett
Giamatti, © 1998 by A. Bartlett Giamatti.”

With MANY THANKS To Both To Mr. Giamatti And To Mason GMU. Read More Here:\”From A Great Glorious Game: Baseball Writings Of A. Bartlett Giamatti By A. Bartlett Giamatti, Et Al\”

To my beloved Boston Red Soxs, this is NEEDED time to rest, recover, and rebuild over the course of the fall and winter. Take good advantage of that time. See you next spring, the spring of 2012.

Is She Kidding?!

No wonder the Democrats ARE IN BIGTIME TROUBLE!

The Governor of North Carolina, USA, Bev. Perdue said with all serious tone about “suspending congressional elections” in 2012 although she said it was a “joke or hyperbole.”

Well what she has said has made the rounds in the talk-radio and the internet websites and blogs. From The Daily Caller website:

“If it was a joke, North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue needs to polish her delivery.

Newly released audio contradicts the claims of Perdue’s press team that her call Tuesday for suspending Congressional election was a joke or hyperbole. In the recording, her tone is matter-of-fact and her comments are part of a serious speech.

“Listen to the Governor’s words: She wasn’t joking at all,” North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood told The Daily Caller. “The congressional Democrats are wildly unpopular in North Carolina, so she may have been trying to invent a solution to save their jobs from public accountability.”

“If it was a joke, what was the set-up?,” Lockwood adds. “What was the punch-line? Where was the pause for laughter? It took them three hours to say it was a ‘joke,’ but when that flopped it became ‘hyperbole.’ We’ll just call it an unconstitutionally bad idea.”

With MANY THANKS To Both Mathew Boyle And The Daily Caller. Read More Here:\”New Audio: NC Governor Struck Serious Tone On Suspending Congressional Elections\”

Mr. September Wildcard: Herman Cain: UPDATE

Last weekend, during the Florida Republican Straw Poll gathering, coming after the debate in Orlando,Florida,USA came a very stunning surprise: the person who won the straw poll vote was successful business man, a computer engineer, and trained mathematician by the name of Herman Cain. Because of his stunning win which is now taking place during the end of the regular Major League Baseball season for not only division titles but for the “wild card” title, I call him “Mr. September Wildcard”.

During most of this year, I have been not decided who I would be supporting as far as GOP or Republican candidate. I wanted to see who would present the strongest message for the need for the Washington D.C. beltway to begin to be CLEANED OUT of the overkill in spending, taxing, and overregulations.

Right now, I am starting to study Mr. Cain with interest his positions on a number of issues, and most important, economic.

What interests me is what Mr. Cain proposes, in what is called the “9-9-9″ plan. What it is all about is that there is A: 9 percent income tax B: 9 percent national sales tax and C: 9 percent corporate income tax.  What little there is, which does not surprise me, since there has been little said about Mr. Cain himself, or worse not in a good way saying he does not have a chance at becoming the GOP or Republican nominee shows what IMHO is a very BRIGHT IDEA for what could be a needed tax reform effort that could help to restore the American economy.

With MANY THANKS Both Aaron Sharockman And TampaBay.com. Read More Here:\”The Facts On Herman Cain\’s 9-9-9 Tax Reform Plan\”

Here is Mr. Cain at the recent Faith And Freedom Event, By John D. Villarreal of Conservative New Media. With MANY THANKS To Mr. Villarreal, Conservative New Media, And YouTube.Watch Video Here:

Mr. Cain to HIS CREDIT bats this out-of-ballpark, just like the very best players on the MLB teams that are getting ready to go into playoff mode by winning the division title or by going for the wildcard title by citing a large numbers of “crisis” or difficulties that the United States of America is NOW FACING BIGTIME.

In the above speech, Mr. Cain also explains the 9-9-9 plan in full.

IMHO, I am not surprised WHY Mr. Cain won the Florida straw poll vote. He goes into detail with a game plan that can be a possible answer to restoring the American economy. Could this be the winning home run for team United States of America.

This is why I call Mr. Cain “Mr. September Wildcard.”

Also as a bonus, I have added a write-up from the Human Events online edition. It is a poll from Zogby poll. With MANY THANKS To Both John Hayward And Human Events. Read More Here:\”Herman Cain Leads Republican Field In Zogby Poll\”

UPDATE:

“Erica Hill and Chris Wragge talk to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain about Pres. Obama, the economy and his GOP competitors.”

With MANY THANKS To Both CBSNewsOnline And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

BET Tv Founder Robert L. Johnson Tells It Just Like It Is

In an interview on CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, the founder of BET,(Black Entertainment Television) Robert L. Johnson, a successful businessman in his own right, who founded BET in 1980, then sold it to Viacom, for three billion dollars.Mr. Johnson, now at the present time chairman of RLJ took the time to  be seated for an interview with Mr. Pelley in this brief interview. When I took the time to watch this interview, even though Mr. Johnson himself is not running for any public office; as a businessman he should be given CREDIT for telling it just like it is.

Mr. Pelley gives in the beginning of the interview a brief description on the story of how Mr. Johnson began the BET channel and is asked about the very troubled American economy, the politico in-fighting in Washington D.C., and the damage this troubled economy has caused to minorities in the United States and in a special way to young minorities.

Mr. Johnson says why business people either in this country are doing one of two things either they sit on the sidelines and let the politicos in Washington D.C. have at it OR, opt to do business with countries that despite the reality that in the political arena, the governments are by American standards are nothing more than dictatorships such as China or Vietnam as given examples. Even the nation of Brazil, which for years has been regarded as a third world nation is NOW working hard to attract American businesses as the Washington D.C. beltway politicos go at each other on the federal debt that has grown larger in the past three years without controls comparing it to a group of people who go out to eat at a restaurant, “not having enough money to pay for the bill, not wanting to make the sacrifice that is needed, but instead call upon the waiter who comes with the bill and they keep on ordering.” 

As Mr. Johnson adds, “we just keep on piling on debt, and we keep piling on costs because we don’t want to make the hard choices.”

I give Mr. Johnson CREDIT that for once, he is TELLING WHAT SO MANY AMERICAN BUSINESS PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS, BY THEIR SITTING ON THE SAME SIDELINES OR DOING BUSINESS IN OTHER COUNTRIES that under the President Barack Hussein Obama White House not only the American people, but also American business has been suffering from the out-of-control spending, taxing, and over-regulations. Mr. Johnson IS NOT SPEAKING AS AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN BUT AS AN AMERICAN with these very blunt words.

What even made my day was his call for even TERM LIMITS! THAT IS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR! 

What has been talked about for years by only conservative talk-radio show hosts and much more recent of members of the tea party movement now has even been said by this patriotic American business man the need to end the practice of the “career politicians”.

Translation: Washington D.C. Beltway, GET THE HECK OUT OF THE WAY!

With MANY THANKS To Both CBSNewsOnline And YouTube. Watch Video Here:

“Scott Pelley spoke with Robert L. Johnson, founder of BET and chairman of RLJ, to ask his take on America’s growing debt problem.”

Pictures Of Dead Michael Jackson

“Sensation On Opening Day Of Conrad Murray’s Manslaughter Trial.”

With MANY THANKS To Both Skynews And YouTube. Watch Video Here: