We had such a good time at Yankee Stadium yesterday that I am canceling my pledge never to go there again, the one I violated yesterday. I still hate the stadium. It’s a giant concrete and plastic ogre with no charm or personality, but there’s good baseball to be had there, and that’s something.
After Max Fried dispatched the Gnats in the top of the first, leadoff Yankee Grisham opened with a home run that just barely made it into the stands. Hmmmm. Well, it’s only one run. Soon enough, though, the bases were loaded via a sharp single, Judge getting hit by a pitch, and an infield hit. No outs. Oy. The game was at risk of blowing up early.
On the mound young Cade Cavalli bore down. One strike out. Then another. Finally a line out to third ending the threat. Good work! Nothing happened in the second inning and Max took care of the Gnats in the third too. In fact, Max had quietly pitched three perfect innings.
So it was the bottom of the third, and in the bottom of the third, not only did the wheels fall off the Gnats bus, the whole bus fell apart. I’ll lay it out for you: The Yankees sent fifteen men to the plate. They hit four home runs (Judge started it) and scored a total of nine runs. So it was 10-0 Yanks before the visitors had a baserunner.
Including the homers, the Yanks had eight hits in the inning, drew three walks, and had a batter reach via catcher’s interference. That’s when the batter swings and the catcher’s glove makes contact with the bat. It’s the catcher’s obligation to let the swing proceed unhindered. If the batter does not reach base on his own (e.g., by getting a hit), he is awarded first and the catcher is charged with an error. The batter is not charged with an at-bat. I’ve noticed these are becoming more common.
What was neat in this case is the Gnats’ catcher must have gotten hurt by the bat because he left the game. Now get this: the only other catcher the Gnats had (Riley Adams) was in the lineup already as the DH. So he gave up being the DH and took over as catcher. When a DH becomes a position player, the DH is lost. That is, the pitcher will bat, unless separately pinch hit for. (The pitcher moves into the position in the batting order that was made open by the batter who left the game: in this case, the Gnats’ starting catcher.) So we got to see a pitcher bat! It was Shinnosuke Ogasawara. Max struck him out, of course. He was only the fourth pitcher to bat this season in all of major league baseball.
Max’s perfect game ended with a walk in the fourth inning and his no-hitter ended in the sixth. He pitched seven innings, yielding one run and four hits. Brilliant. Boruch Hashem!
One more little piece of candy for us. With two outs in the ninth, Andrés Chaparro blasted a home run deep into the left field stands for DC. Final score Yankees 11 Washington 2.
Here’s Shinnosuke Ogasawara.
He’s 28 and single, but he may have a little something going with popstar Jurina Matsui, also 28. He’s been drooling over her for years (who wouldn’t?), and she’s admitted she “follows” him.
This poem by G. E. Johnson is from today’s Writer’s Almanac and is called “Basketball.”
Once after dinner a woman and I walked past
An empty basketball court and she says,
“I played on a team my junior year in Belfast,”
And I say “Want to shoot some?” She says “Yes,”
Though she was wearing a long black dinner dress.
She kicked off her high heels and she caught
My pass and with great finesse
Drove to the baseline, jumped and shot
Swish. Two points. We played for awhile,
Man in a black suit, woman in a long black gown,
I loved her quickness and her heads-up style,
Her cool hand as she beat me hands down —
Her jumpiness, like a blackbird in the night—
Her steady eye, her feet about to take flight.
Two items from The Onion.
Cyclist Friend Explains Necessity Of $35 Socks
Area Man Crawling On Ground Like Pig To Plug Macbook Power Cord Behind Desk
Today’s puzzle featured spoonerism’s, which I love. You had to spoonerize the clues for the answers to make sense. E.g., for the clue “Packed lunch” the answer FELL FLAT made no sense. But if you convert the clue to “lacked punch” it works. Similarly, “No guts” for FREAK OUT had to be spoonerized into “go nuts.”
Commenter Lewis wrote: When I was having trouble cracking the NW corner, there was a fleeting moment when I wondered if this puzzle would deal me a blushing crow.
At 9D the clue was “Hebrew name for God,” and the answer was YAHWEH. It took me aback because I vaguely recalled learning in Hebrew school that we weren’t supposed to say that. And Commenter Ellen noted:
“Hard NO to YAHW_H. The word is based on the four Hebrew letters (the tetragrammaton) that is seen — but not said in Hebrew — in the Torah & other ancient texts. In Hebrew & thus in Judaism, the tetragrammaton is considered too holy to be vocalized. Instead, the Hebrew word ADONAI is used. The texts often use ELOHIM to refer to the G-d of the Hebrew people. The Hebrew words HA-SHEM (“the name”) & AV (“father”) are also used. As written, the clue is wrong & displays an ignorance that is both stunning & vaguely insulting.”
Commenter Raymond fell deeper into the rabbit hole (rabbi hole?), as follows:
I [Raymond] am not myself observant, but I think Orthodox Jews would find filling in the Yahveh clue problematic. The problem starts with the Third Commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless he that takes his name in vain.” ( Exodus 20:7 in the KJV)
For this reason, observant Jews when speaking of God, refer to the deity as “ha’Shem” (literally, “the Name”). This usage is also part of modern Hebrew speech even among nonsecular Israelis who often say “todah la’Shem” (“thanks to the Name,” i.e., “thank God”) or “baruch ha’Shem” (“blessed be the Name,” i.e., “blessed be God”) on hearing good tidings. Also liturgically the name of God in the Torah is prononced euphimistically as “Adonai” (literally, “my Lord”).
The custom of not explicitly mentioning God’s name is especially observed in writing, out of concern that a document containing any version of God’s name might one day be torn up or discarded, thereby potentially destroying the name of the deity. Consequently, tattered sacred books and even commercial documents containing God’s name (including versions such as “Adonai” and “Elohim”) which are no longer usable are not discarded, but are either buried ceremonially, or are preserved in a special storage room (“genizah”), the most famous of which is the Cairo Genizah in which were stored unusable religious and commercial documents which mentioned God’s name, covering more than thousand years from the 6th to the 19th centuries CE. The existence of the genizah became known in the West in the late 18th century, but it was only researched methodically following a visit to it in1896 by two Scottish sisters (Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson) who brought fragments to Solomon Schechter (1847–1915), a lecturer in Talmud at Cambridge University. Schechter excavated and researched 100,000 pages of documents found in the genizah, and thus contributed immensely to present-day knowledge of medieval Judaism and commerce.
One other point. The precise pronunciation of the 4-letter Hebrew word denoting God is not known (and therefore the clue is fuzzy). At the time of the 2nd Temple (destroyed by the Romans in 70CE) on Yom Kippur the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple only once a year where he would pronounce this name of God, while the crowds in the Temple courtyard prostrated themselves. The account from the Mishnah in poetic form is part of the Yom Kippur Orthodox liturgy and some congregants and the cantor prostrate themselves when the cantor chants “on hearing the holy and awe-inspiring name uttered explicitly by the High Priest, the people in the Temple courtyard would bow down and prostrate themselves.”
Never having been to Hawaii, I had no idea that the “Maui tourist attraction” at 15A was the HANA Highway. My bro-in-law Mitch was the only person I ever heard complain about Hawaii. My sister and he were there for about a month one summer (Bonnie landed a cushy counseling gig), and Mitch said it was too hot. Here’s that highway.
At 60A, the clue was “Follower of Joel,” and the answer was AMOS. Think books of the Bible. Why that’s cute is the constructor’s name is Joel Woodford.
Owl Chatter sports consultant Sarah Fillier of the New York Sirens of the PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) tells us the league has teamed up with the Mattel people to produce a Barbie doll that will not hesitate to slam Ken into the boards. The original production run sold out fast. More are skating your way.
See you next time, Chatterheads. Thanks for popping in!
The Wellington Files 