• I found that image of the Baker Hotel from this Twitter account.
• Here’s a great article for those who are fond of Texas Country Reporter.
• Meat Loaf Was My Softball Coach –  I remember seeing a movie about himself which he starred in and him coaching softball.
• I’m reminded of the movie Contact. Let’s just hope we don’t end up seeing a swastika. – Unknown space object beaming out radio signals every 18 minutes remains a mystery
• This made me laugh.

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1486356927894495232

• Since there’s Supreme Court justice news, here’s a little history of LBJ and Thurgood Marshall from Michael Beschloss’s Twitter account.
  • LBJ deliberately created a Supreme Court vacancy so he could appoint Thurgood Marshall as first Black Justice, 1967. Did so by asking Ramsey Clark to be his AG and telling Ramsey that his father, Tom, would have to thus quit SCOTUS in order to avoid conflicts of interest:
  • LBJ no doubt also enjoyed manipulating Ramsey Clark to reveal an aspect of his character by forcing his own father, Tom, to resign from SCOTUS, a job Tom loved, in order for Ramsey to achieve his ambition of becoming Attorney General.
  • Once Ramsey Clark became LBJ’s Attorney General in 1967, the President grew disenchanted with Clark and largely stopped speaking to him. He thenceforth communicated with Ramsey through Clark’s embarrassed deputy, Warren Christopher, so I was told by the latter.
  • Long after his adventures with Ramsey Clark and LBJ, Warren Christopher would become Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State.
• Yesterday I read about racist Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds. He was so disliked by the other justices that none of them attended his funeral and he died alone in the hospital in 1946. In contrast, as the clerk noted, when McReynolds’s aged African-American messenger, Harry Parker, died in 1953, his funeral was attended by five or six Justices, including the Chief Justice. He is also one of five justices who never married.
• The baseball Twitter accounts I follow seem to mention Tony Gwynn quite a bit as of late, and I don’t mind it one bit. The man was greatness. A few of the things I’ve read:
  • Tony Gwynn faced 885 different pitchers over the course of his career. Five of them struck him out more than 5 times and none of them struck him out more than 10 times.
  • Tony Gwynn averaged 21 K’s per year for his career. Last year, 152 players struck out at least 21 times before April was over. Legend among legends.
  • Tony Gwynn struck out just 19 times in 110 games in 1994, the year he hit .394 and led the league with a .454 OBP. Next year, in 135 games, he struck out 15 times.
  • 148 major league batters struck out 100+ times this year. Tony Gwynn struck out 434 times in 20 years.
  • Tony Gwynn batted .338 for his career. No other Padre has hit .338 during any one single season.
  • In a 731-game span of regular season games, Tony Gwynn had 1,002 hits and 99 strikeouts.
  • Tony Gwynn hit .302 with two strikes on him. In the 30-plus years that stat has been tracked, the next-best batting average with two strikes is .260 by Wade Boggs, more than 40 points below Gwynn’s mark.
  • Tony Gwynn hit .400 for a stretch as long as a season… from July 3, 1993 to May 9, 1995, he batted .403 over a 179-game stretch.
  • Tony Gwynn faced Hall of Famers Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez a combined total of 143 times during his career. He batted .388 against the pair and never struck out.
    
  • Tony Gwynn was a freak athlete. This man got drafted by the Padres and the Clippers on the same day.
    

Babe Ruth demonstrates how to throw a fastball, curveball and knuckleball. You’ll want to watch this pic.twitter.com/toNYe2Th2F

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) January 27, 2022

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