Sunday Potpourri No. 45

Playoff Baseball

Even though my beloved Kansas City Royals aren't involved this season, I have found the baseball playoffs so far to be pretty entertaining. Both leagues' Championship Series are now under way...

"Halfway to a pennant, baby!"

In Game Two of the ALCS at Progressive Field in Cleveland, the Indians stifled the potent Toronto offense for the second straight game, winning 2-1 to take a 2-0 lead in the series.

The ALCS now shifts to the Rogers Centre in Toronto starting Monday.

"BOOM!"

In Game One of the NLCS at Wrigley Field last night, the Dodgers rallied to tie the score at 3-3 in the top of the 8th inning, but Miguel Montero's pinch-hit grand slam in the bottom of the inning removed all doubt about the game's outcome. Cubs win 8-4.



Game Two will be tonight, and I imagine I'll be watching it rather than the tedious
Colts (2-3) vs Texans (3-2) game on Sunday Night Football.

"The Indians are certainly doing well, aren't they?"

They are, but they can't count on winning games when they only score two runs...

Saturday Scoreboard

College football Saturday was mostly bad news for my rooting interests, unfortunately, but there was definitely one highlight...

My Army Black Knights rebounded from two straight close losses on the road with an utterly dominant 62-7 home win over Louisiana Lafayette. Army is now 4-2 and having their best season in quite some time.



No. 25 Navy was supposed to play at East Carolina on Thursday, but bad weather forced the game to be postponed. Yesterday it was announced that the game would be made up on November 19, which was supposed to be an off week for the Midshipmen.

My best friend Skip's Penn State Nittany Lions were off yesterday, as were the Eagles of Boston College. Iowa State lost 27-6 at Texas, Notre Dame lost at home to Stanford 17-10, and Air Force was upset at home by New Mexico 45-40. On top of that, both Nebraska and Iowa won on the road, so their fans in my area will be insufferable for the next week.

At least the hated Kansas Jayhawks lost again, getting crushed 49-7 by Baylor.

"That certainly explains all the cursing yesterday afternoon."

If it bothers you so much, you should just go outside until the games are over...

It's a Seasonal Thing

From the droll comic strip FoxTrot, by Bill Amend, which you should read every Sunday.

Until Next Time...

One of the unfortunate aspects of being a music fan in the '60s and early '70s was the untimely deaths of so many wonderful artists due to drug and/or alcohol abuse.

None of those deaths hit me harder than the passing of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix at just age 27. My senior year of high school had barely begun when Hendrix, whose playing was entirely unique and unforgettable, died in London from an overdose of sleeping pills on September 18, 1970.

Fans like me processed our grief by listening to his relatively meager recorded output obsessively. I spent quite a bit of time listening to his last recording in particular, and thinking about what might have been...

On October 16, 1968 Hendrix released Electric Ladyland, his final studio effort before his death, and his most commercially successful recording.

Unusually for a double-album it made it to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart just a month after its release, spending two weeks in the top spot. It was Jimi's only No. 1 album.




It also produced his only Top 40 single, a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower." As I mentioned the other day appropos Dylan's Nobel Prize, other artists are often the best interpreters of Dylan songs, and Jimi's "Watchtower" is considered the definitive version by a lot of rock music fans. It was Jimi's version, not Dylan's, that was selected for Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

Today's send-off is Jimi's original album track of the song, from his VEVO channel. Enjoy...