Firehose #205: Trevor Hoffman FTW
Also: At least Kmele worked this week
Wanna hear a nice story?
So, we’ve been going to Cooperstown every year since 2022 to watch the induction ceremony at the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s a fun four-day weekend, with museum visits, lake swimming, VFW bar drinking, and the world’s most wholesome lil’ parade, in which four or five dozen Hall of Famers put-putt in the back of pickup trucks down the tiny Main Street, waving to crowds that are maybe three deep on each side. This year for the first time I brought along the youngest offspring, who’d long wanted to go.
Upon her first visit to the museum, and therefore the new (and newly refurbished/expanded) museum store, Coco wanted one thing: A San Diego Padres cap. Not because she’s a traitor to her ancestral responsibilities of being an Angels fan (no matter how passive), but because it’s her way to honor and remember her late Uncle Larry, who died six years ago. Larry, a baseball player, fanatic, and coach (whose ashes may be illegally scattered on a certain college ballfield), had lived in San Diego for two decades-plus, and converted to the local Padre faith.
So the next day, after the aforementioned lake-swimming and VFW-drinking, we turtled up to Main Street for the parade. Now it’s true that most of the time Coco toggled between boredom and mortification at Uncle Bill Schulz’s curious behavior there, like when he attempted to hurl a baseball card at Harold Baines:
But, one of the charms of the exercise is when a half-dozen or so players, always led by Cal Ripken, dismount from their trucks and work their way back up the parade lines, signing autographs. This year among that handful was a guy who pitched 16 years for the San Diego Padres, Trevor Hoffman. Coco was obviously wearing her SD cap….
We are not a family much interested in autographs, but c’mon, man. Two sweet girls in pole position generously parted ways and invited Coco in. Uncle Bill leaped into action, shouting elaborate lies at the fantastically-haired Hoffman (“I’m her father! She’s the biggest Padres fan ever!”, etc.). Slowly, he worked his way to my daughter, and then did a remarkable thing—just stood there with her for 90 seconds plus amid the clamor, engaging in conversation, busting her chops about her Mike Trout shirt, and writing a whole damned novella on the inside brim of her cap. Then he made sure to wave us over to take the pic you see at the top. It was really, really nice. Later, I learned from my sister-in-law that my niece went to pre-K with Trevor’s son.
At the ceremony the next day, with Coco earlier having been ported to summer camp, we did our usual bluff-top canopy/grilling/observing of the inductees, including roll-call intros for the returning HoFers. Besides the usual lusty booing of Commissioner Rob Manfred, the loudest noise from our camp was cheers for Trevor Hoffman.
The only drawback to the whole chill weekend? We didn’t run into any of you people! I mean, except for the ones inside the tent. Come out next year! You’ll be glad you did.
* OK, enough National Pastiming. Here’s a cupla CNN clips of Kmele last week:
* And here he is on Tangle talking about Donald Trump’s election claims:
* Glad y’all enjoyed Moynihan’s interview with the great historian of China, Frank Dikötter. Here’s a free clip of the two of them discussing the Sinophilia of Hasan Piker:
* Nice reviews also for my Maggie Haberman interview. Here’s the New York Times reporter and Regime Change co-author explaining, re: Trump, that “he’s been calling me ‘Maggot’ since February of 2022.”
We talked a bit at the end about Haberman’s famous journalist father Clyde. Here he is, explaining why his 1966 firing by the Times was the correct decision.
* Brian Huber swears this is his “last request until Autumn,” so let’s have it:
I know this is HoF weekend, so I’m sending this to you early. I now have a link for booking the hotel at a group rate. So here’s a poster image and the link if you want to put it in the Firehose.
Emphasis on “Unofficial”!
* Comment of the Week from Spencer Burnstead:
That’s a man who is certaintymaxxing.
Sendoff: Frederick Anthony Picariello Jr., a name you never heard of, died Friday of bladder cancer at age 89. If you know his work at all, it’s under the name Freddy Cannon, which his record company slapped on a recording of the singer/songwriter’s first rock & roll single, 1958’s “Tallahassee Lassie.” That top-10 hit was, according to the New York Times obit, “his favorite song, in part because it began with a poem, ‘She’s My Rock and Roll Baby,’ written by his mother, Antoinette (Rosetti) Picariello.” The Chuck Barris-penned number “Palisades Park” was a bigger hit at #3, and definitely influenced the Beach Boys, but “Lassie” was one of those things that just hit certain people a certain way at a certain moment, which is why there would eventually be covers by the Stones, Tommy Steele, Fleetwood Mac, and the Flamin’ Groovies. Also: “Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine in 1995 that the song had partly inspired his writing of ‘Brown Sugar.’” Cannon was a goofy dancer and nobody’s matinee idol, and his career soon petered out, but he was able to eke out a living on the oldies circuit, and was releasing new music as recently as this year. In this clip, one of so very many Cannon appearances on American Bandstand, our Italian rockabilly stallion unwittingly demonstrates that certain audiences cannot, under any circumstances, keep a beat.