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The Daily Dose/April 25, 2011
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! Sunday was a quiet day here at the Writer's Shack, our first in a while with very little to do, and The Woman and I spent part of the morning at the kitchen table, at leisure, with coffee and the Sunday Las Vegas Review-Journal.
This is rare. We like to know what our fellow beings are up to, so we read newspapers all the time here, however we read them online. We hadn't actually read a real newspaper since we were looking for a deal on tires a couple of years back.
But we're subscribers now. A couple of weeks ago we were at the grocery store and the local rag had a booth set up, manned with someone offering a subscription deal, three months for $20, though if you throw in the $5 grocery store gift card they gave us the net cost to us was a mere $15 for three months of home newspaper delivery, a veritable steal at $1.33 a week, less than the cost of the Sunday paper itself!
For The Record: We're in the habit of reading three newspapers a day: the paper we grew up with (the Los Angeles Times), our local paper (The Las Vegas Review-Journal) and a paper we used to write for (the Imperial Valley Press).
For The Record II: We certainly don't have an exclusive on no longer reading the daily, hard-copy newspaper, as newspaper circulation has been taking a dive for a generation.
Dry, Technical Matter: As an example, the Los Angeles Times has seen its circulation drop from 1.2 million in 1990 to roughly 600,000 today, and but everyone else's circulation has been sinking like a stone, too, and despite the drop the Times still has the fourth largest circulation of any paper in the country.
Holding Serve: Newspapers, which replaced the town crier as the primary source of news in the 1700's, held on to that position until the 1950's, when they were replaced by radio and television. They held on valiantly during the advent of cable news outlets, managing to keep circulation more or less the same through the 1990's, as people like us came of age and still held on to the newspaper habit. Its wholesale demise, of course, began with emergence of the Internet.
Back On Message: The Times' influence on a young reader was profound. One, we still read the Times every day. It's also where we were introduced to Doonesbury, a comic strip we also still read everyday, and provided the inspiration, rather direct, for the Bottom Ten columns you enjoy here every Fall. Back then it was written by a funny writer named Steve Harvey.
Warm, Personal Remembrance: Like a lot of you, we grew up reading the paper. We can still remember reading it over breakfast with our dad, and the habit continued well into adulthood, subscribing to the local paper up until the time we dropped newspapers for their Internet counterparts years ago.
Leading Off: Continuing a lifelong habit, we started with the sports page. Las Vegas doesn't have a major league sports team, but six major league baseball teams claim Las Vegas as their territory for television purposes, and there was a big story on the baseball's tee vee blackout policy, which nobody really understands, and why some games are shown and why some games aren't.
Then we moved to what grandpa liked to call the headlines, also known as the front page. One of US senators, John Ensign, resigned this week, so that's big news, though my letter to Governor Sandoval seeking appointment to Ensign's seat wasn't mentioned.
See You In The Funny Pages…Or Not: We scanned the comics, but couldn't find Doonesbury, so we ended up reading that online.
PLAY BALL: In 1901, one day after the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Blues played the first game in American League history, the Detroit Tigers get ten runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat the Milwaukee Brewers in the first American League game for each team, 14-13.
Get Out Your History Books…Or Not: Maddeningly, neither of our major league record books - one published by The Sporting News and the other by the Elias Sport Bureau - provide a record for Most Runs Scored In Bottom Of The Ninth To Win Game. The Sporting News one does offer a record for the Largest Deficit Overcome To Win Game, but that's it. Some cursory research on our part didn't turn up any examples of a team scoring more than ten runs in the bottom of the ninth, but we have deadlines and were not able to do the definitive research on the matter.
Still though, if it is a record, it is the oldest record in the American League record book.
On The Scoreboard: In other American League action, Chicago beats Cleveland again, this time by a 7-3 score. The other four American League teams, the Boston Americans, Washington Senators, Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Athletics, will start their seasons the following day.
Well There Goes Today's Trivia Question: This incarnation of big league baseball in Milwaukee - they had been in the National League in 1878 - also lasted one season. The Brewers became the St. Louis Browns the following year and are now the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles that were charter members of the American League are now the New York Yankees.
Run Silent, Run Deep, But Mainly Run: The USS Triton (SSRN 586), commanded by Captain Edward Beach, completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the globe on this date in 1960.
Commissioned the previous November, Triton pulled out of Groton, Connecticut on February 16, 1960 on her shakedown cruise. The circumnavigation was begun on February 24 at St. Peter and Paul Rock, an archipelago claimed by Brazil, about 60 miles north of the equator and about a third of the way from Brazil to Africa. From there they headed south down the east coast of South America, then turned right at Cape Horn, transited the Pacific Ocean through the Philippines.
Fly In The Ointment: Their secret was compromised in the Philippines when their periscope was spotted by a Filipino citizen out paddling his canoe. Heroically, and probably to avoid blowing their cover, Trito refrained from blowing the canoe out of the water.
From there Triton transited the Indian Ocean, passing the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa on April 17 before returning to St. Peter and Paul Rock on April 25. Triton returned to Groton on May 11.
Need To Know: The mission was classified Top Secret and only Beech's officers and chief quartermaster knew the details of their cruise until they were underway. Crew members had been advised to file their taxes before shipping out and to generally prepare to be away from home for a couple of months.
Dry, Technical Matter: In the navy, a quartermaster is the term for enlisted men responsible for navigating the ship. In other branches of the service, for reasons we're sure they think are good, quartermaster refers to the those working in the supply department.
A Short But Useful Life: For a variety of reasons, including cuts in defense spending and the costs of maintaining her two nuclear reactors, Triton was decommissioned in 1969.
Hey Batter, Batter…Don't Swing: Rickey Henderson of the San Diego Padres breaks Babe Ruth's all-time walks record on this date in 2001, collecting walk number 2,063. His record would be broken by Barry Bonds in 2004.
Thought For The Day: He was not so unreasonable - usually - as to demand both freedom and the fruits of popular slavery. - Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Boston Latin School has been playing football against English High School of Boston continuously since 1878, the oldest continuous high school rivalry in the country.
Today's Stumper: The USS Triton was the first submarine outside of what country's navy to have two nuclear reactors? - Answer next time!
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