Today in History: July 19

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Because the game of baseball is played differently nowadays at the major league level, it is more difficult for pitchers to accumulate as many opportunities for wins as they once could.

Starting pitchers one hundred years ago pitched once every three games, for instance. Now, they pitch every fifth game or so. The greatest starters in the most recent era each accumulated about 350 or so career victories. Thus, Cy Young’s career baseball achievement of 511 victories looks like a schoolboy’s scribbled fantasy. Walter Johnson’s second place record of 417 also looks superhuman.

On this date in 1910, Cy Young (above) won his third game of the season; it was his 500th career win. There is a reason why the two annual awards for pitcher of the year are named the “Cy Young” awards.
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Hard Times Come Again No More

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

No, it is not your eyes. The photo above is a clear photo of a blurry moment.

The photo above was taken two nights ago while I was taking photos of the sun striking some clouds over a Walmart parking lot and the car door that I was holding myself steady against decided to remind me that it was not all the way open. It is an inadvertent action shot.

When I looked at the photo, at first to delete it, I recognized the scene like I was seeing an old friend that I had not hung out with in a few years: my old, uncorrected vision. From age seven till two years ago, the photo above pretty neatly captures what the world looked like when I took my glasses off, which I did quite frequently, as my eyes were often tired.

For me to tell you that the world was blurry was for you to tell me that rain is wet.
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Today in History: July 18

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

John Glenn (above) is 95 today. The last member of the Mercury Seven, America’s first astronaut corps, he is also the oldest living former U.S. Senator, and—with his October 1998 mission as a payload specialist on Discovery mission STS-95 at age 77—he remains the oldest person to have traveled in space.

* * * *
Douglas Corrigan was supposed to fly from Brooklyn, New York, to California on July 17, 1938. However, he probably always intended to fly in the opposite direction, to Europe, taking his self-built plane on a solo transatlantic flight. (His plane had been rejected for a cross-ocean flight because it was deemed not flight-worthy for such a long trip with no place to land in case of emergency.)
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