Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 8, 2022

  • Every April 15, MLB players wear the number 42 to honor Jackie Robinson’s debut to Major League Baseball. We all know that Commissioner Bud Selig retired the number from all of baseball in 1997, but I forgot Ken Griffey Jr.’s role in starting the tradition.
    • Griffey was the first player to come up with the idea of wearing No. 42 on April 15. Interestingly, he implemented it twice.To trace the first time he broached the idea, we have to go all the way back to April 15, 1997, the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s Major League debut, and the day Selig retired his number. Griffey, who was playing for the Mariners at the time, asked that his uniform number be flip-flopped, switching from No. 24 to 42.Fast forward 10 years, and Griffey again wanted to wear No. 42 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Robinson’s debut. But this time, since the number was retired, he had to ask permission.So he called Selig at home.“I said, ‘Would it be possible if I wore 42 on Jackie Robinson Day?'” Griffey recalled during a recent interview with Harold Reynolds on MLB Network. “We had a 10-minute conversation. [Selig] said, ‘Is it OK if I call Rachel [Robinson, Jackie’s wife] and ask if it’s OK?'”

      Selig called Griffey back the next day and granted the request, but added he would like to extend the offer to wear No. 42 to anyone who wanted to.

      “I said, ‘The more, the merrier,'” Griffey said.

  • Rachel Robinson is still alive. She will turn 100 on July 19 unless she pulls a Betty White.
  • I watched an episode of America in Color on the Smithsonian Channel. Jackie Kennedy’s first public appearance since her miscarriage was the infamous Dallas trip. I also noticed JFK flew from the White House on a helicopter that had “ARMY” on the side. That got me wondering when did the Marines take over for the Army, because we’re all familiar seeing Marine One transport the president. Well, according to Wikipedia, the Army and Marines shared that responsibility until 1976.
  • An under-reported story is happening near New Orleans. Unidentified snipers are shooting motorists on I10 since 2020. For comparison sake, the DC sniper happened during 22 days in October of 2002 with ten people killed and three critically wounded.

    • On Valentine’s Day, The New Orleans Police Department found a man shot multiple times in a vehicle on the Pontchartrain Expressway near the I-10 Slidell exit. Wednesday, Feb. 2, around 11 p.m., an unidentified sniper shot 24-year-old Christian Honore as he drove westbound on Interstate 10, causing him to crash his vehicle near Louisa Street.

      WDSU, Channel 6 in New Orleans, said after the Valentine’s Day shooting, officers told a reporter they had responded to dozens of interstate shootings so far in 2022.

      Shootings which Police Superintendent Shaun D. Ferguson initially called unrelated gang-on-gang and road-rage activity today count police officers, honeymoon couples and school children among the victims.

      In 2020, New Orleans saw an average of two interstate shootings per month, and on January 12, a news release from the New Orleans Police Department detailed more than 30 interstate shootings in the Crescent City in 2021.

      Six days later, they added four more victims to their list.

  • I started doing my taxes yesterday, another big reminder that my marriage was a failure. Unfortunately, I can’t claim either child as a dependant, which I think is ridiculous considering I have to pay child support.
  • My daughter told me it really bothered her when her mother cut me out of one of the family pictures and displayed the photo. I just told her everybody has their way of dealing with certain things.
  • Some folks probably don’t understand why I’m opening up so much. I ran across this Maya Angelou quote yesterday which might shed a little light, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
  • Ukrainian couple fighting against Russian invasion marry on the front line

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