Missing Chairs

A thing about popular music, sports statistics, art and furniture, including chairs.

[missingchairs]

Happy 60th, Big Guy.

I’m a week late but, trust me, the thought was there. And that’s what matters.

[missingchairs]

Welcome to our office. The floating turntable from Gramovox arrived last week and, amazingly, it sounds as great as it looks. It’s sorcery.

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One of the things for the new office.

70″ x 40″ textile by Sonnenzimmer. How to hang it?

[missingchairs]

A moment in a song. Entry #3. “Getting Older” by The Clean.

2:51 and it’s basically layers of buzz and ringing about getting older and what’s it all worth and it’s a beautiful mess and going nowhere and then, suddenly, David and Hamish Killgour get a second wind. And David counts out “One, two, three four.” And you realize it’s a song about living, not dying.

[missingchairs]

A moment in a song. Entry #2. “Madame George” by Van Morrison.

7:38. This is where the singing turns into a mantra of scat humming and an infinite loop of “goodbyes.” I’m 16 years old, reading by a bed lamp in Bennington, Vermont and the world feels impossibly gigantic and I’m starting this life. And also, it’s 25 years later and I’m 2500 miles away and I feel exactly the same.

[missingchairs]

A moment in a song. Entry #1. “Kangaroo” by Big Star.

2:58. That moment when the cowbell comes in like a patient convulsing on a gurney or a metal heart about to explode. It’s not a rhythm. It’s more like the punctuation to a life or a love affair. Maybe a loud semi-colon.

[missingchairs]

I've failed.

So, how do I go back to 1986 and get this O-Pee-Chee temporary tattoo sheet? With Dewey and Kirby, with one weird eye, and Eddie (is that a smile? Must be a mis-print). The fact that I am just now discovering this feels like a massive failure. 

PS O-Pee-Chee is Canadian.

[missingchairs]

Randy.

I'd guess that a lot of "Would You Rather" games amongst men approaching middle age at some point anchor around the question: "Would you rather stand in the batters' box and face Randy Johnson throwing full heat or..."

Because he wasn't Roger Clemens or Pedro Martinez, it's easy to underrate Randy Johnson.  But there is a very strong argument that he is the greatest left handed pitcher of all time. In fact, it's really not much of a stretch. Warren Spahn is stiff competition but falls short on the basis of advanced stats.

His dominant AL seasons (which I put a lot of stock in), include two (2) that flirted with 200 ERA+ and three (3) wherein he averaged more than twelve (12) strikeouts per nine (9) innings. His prime NL seasons include four (4) Cy Young awards, a season with more than thirteen (13) Ks per nine (9) innings and one seasons where he struck out 300 more batters than he walked. Let's pause on that last stat for a moment.

Oh wait, Did I mention that he was 6'10" and looked like this?

Though truly unkind, I also sometimes wonder if there was ever a player whose face looked more "beat up" than Randy Johnson's. I think it helped his mystique. For left handed hitters, he was something out of a monster movie.

Seriously, though. What a mug. If there was an Tinder that featured every MLB player of all time, who do you think would get more by suitors, Randy Johnson or Willie McGee.

[missingchairs]

To make beautiful things that people really need and really use.

[missingchairs]

I found myself standing on the mountain Beneath my full moon heart John Henry split this heart, split this full moon heart Swing the heaviest hammer you got Hit this one out of the park John Henry split my heart He says, "Boy what you going to do With your heart in two?" If its good enough Only if its good enough Half, I'm going to use To pay this band Half, I'm saving 'Cause I'm going to owe them

Jesus Christ, Jason Molina. This song sounds exactly like John Henry's hammer. And I have no idea what that hammer feels like, thankfully. But I'm certain of it.

[missingchairs]

Leonard Norman.

Should anybody want a master class in how to talk so that people will really listen to and feel the words that you are saying, I'd suggest starting at the beginning of the Leonard Cohen discography and not stopping until you get to Popular Problems.

I know -- you've already heard all his songs. And Leonard Cohen hero worship is practically a national pastime at this point (at least in France). So, maybe I should be more specific. Leonard Cohen speaks words better than the rest of us. Think about what a gift that is.

[missingchairs]

Birds on a wire.

Last time I was in LA, I snuck in a visit to the Amsterdam Modern warehouse/jungle gym/maze and found it really hard to convince myself that I didn't need several (many) Coen de Vries coat racks to hang just about anything that could possibly need hanging.

[missingchairs]

Got it.

Took my a while to figure this out but I finally realized that, in Handsome Furs, Dan Boeckner wasn't doing Joe Strummer covering B.A.D. He was doing the band that Bruce Springsteen and Alan Vega would have, should have, could have formed.

All we want baby, is everything.

[missingchairs]

Shutout.

Jim Palmer won baseball games. And he kept runs to a minimum. There's a fair hypothesis that he was the Ron Burgundy of 70s pitchers - sick hair, disorienting charisma and delivery, light on substance. But I'd make quick work of disproving that claim. Jim Palmer kept you off base. And kept you from circling bases. Jim Palmer shut you out.

Since 1950, only a handful of pitchers have ever recorded ten (10) shutouts in one season. In the 1970s, only one pitcher did so and it was Palmer in 1975. In 1985, John Tudor, who was almost un-hittable for much of that year, duplicated the feat. That season, Tudor started 1 (W) - 7 (L) in April and May and then proceeded to go 20 (W) -1 (L) the rest of the way. To be clear, this is a feat mostly reserved for dead ball era pitchers and high mound pitchers of the later 1960s. It's an incredibly rare accomplishment by modern standards. 

Andy Pettitte, who won 256 games, recorded exactly four (4) career shutouts. Clayton Kershaw has eight (8) career shutouts. There are plenty of good reasons for this. But probably not enough reasons to discount the greatness of ten (10) in a single season. Or the hair.

[missingchairs]

You're always waiting for something to happen.

When I left college forever ago, I befriended an odd and wonderful man who used to be the publisher of the New York Rocker. By the time I met him, he was the staff writer at Sony Music and was a bit of a hipster anachronism. He had a great salt and pepper goatee. He was erudite. Nerdy. Awkward. And entirely interesting.

He and I would go see the occasional James Ulmer show at the old Knitting Factory, or an odd opening at the early days of PS1. Or, I'd have dinner with he and his wife at their apartment on top of the Sigmund Schwartz Funderal Home on Second Avenue. He had a room full of LPs and 45s, including an entire section of Beatles' novelty 45s ("Ringo Bells").

Andy (that was his name) gave me copies of every issue of the New York Rocker he ever published. I've since lost many of them in my various moves. But, I did find an issue from 1980 with an article about The Feelies that confirmed everything I ever suspected about them. An excerpt:

"One starts to wonder about these Feelies after a while. I mean, what are they up to? I tell my friend about these guys: how they never play, don't have any new songs and never practice. "How can you call them a band?" he asks. And I've got to admit the question sort of stumps me. After three hour-long conversations with Bill and an afternoon interview with the band at Bill's house, I still don't have an answer.

The Feelies aren't real talkers. They just don't have alot to say. What they do say is enigmatic and hesitant. As if they really are not sure why they do the things they do."

This is about the band that really labored to release four albums in sixteen years and who wrote songs about waiting, nothing and time passing.

[missingchairs]

I like secretaries. You can write on them (allegedly). You can put books in them (confirmed). You can also put bottles and glasses in them (confirmed). What don't they do?!

From top: George Nelson, Cees Braakman, Borge Mogensen, Paul McCobb.

[missingchairs]

Pacific Coast League.

The Pacific Coast League is a (traditionally) Midwest and westward AAA level minor league. The league has been around since the 1920s and, at its peak, was talent-rich enough that many considered the best PCL teams and players to be on par with sub-average major league teams and above average MLB players. Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and many other hall of famers played in the PCL. 

The league has been historically regarded as a hitter's paradise, for reasons that are not entirely clear, although the data more than validates such claims. The league was the first to introduce the designated hitter and it featured endless seasons, sometimes stretching past 200 games, due to the milder (or, at least dryer) climates. As a result of the longer schedules, the stats sheets overflow with 200 hit and 100 RBI seasons. It was not uncommon for a player to collect nearly 300 hits, in fact. Or to have 60 doubles and 200 hits and not bat over .300. It was not simply the absolute stats that were staggering in the PCL, the percentage stats were as well. In 1935, Joe DiMaggio batted .398 and slugged over .670 during a 172 game season wherein he also collected 270 hits and 456 total bases.

As major league games became increasingly televised, all minor leagues experienced sharp attendance and business declines in the 1950s. The PCL was no exception. Peppered throughout the leagues ebbs and flows of the "modern" baseball era are still the occasional slash lines. Consider, for instance, what a tall, blonde, geeky, Midwestern kid named Ron Kittle (who would soon go on to  both hit mammoth home runs and strike out at then unheard of rates for the Chicago White Sox) did in 1982: .345 (BA), .442 (OBP), .752 (SLG). That year, he hit 50 home runs and drove in 144 runs in less than 130 games for the Edmonton Trappers. 

Today, Ron Kittle is a motivational speaker who makes benches out of baseball bats.