The Anaheim Angels’ World Series championship season of 2002 marked the franchise’s first postseason appearance since the California Angels’ 1986 season, and only their fourth playoff berth in the then-41-year history of the franchise. The Angels also earned their first three playoff series victories on their road to the championship.
In that 2002 World Series, the San Francisco Giants outscored the Angels 44-41 but lost the series 4-3.
Every Giants fan remembers the knife-in-the-heart pain of game 6 beginning in the 7th inning when, leading 5-0 and just 8 outs from winning the series, Giants manager Dusty Baker pulled starter Russ Ortiz. As Ortiz left the mound, in Anaheim and in front of the Angels fans, and clearly seen on national TV, Baker hands Ortiz the “game ball” as Ortiz is leaving the mound! That move pissed off the baseball Gods. It pissed me off. It all came crumbling down for the Giants after that. The Angels staged an incredible come back to tie the series.
Every Giants fan knew it was over right then. Game 7’s loss was a foregone conclusion.
Thanks for the painful, 10-year old memories!
There was once a story arc in the comic strip Peanuts in which a baseball game was rained out, but Charlie Brown refused to leave his pitcher’s mound. At one point, the rest of his team joined him on the mound while the waters rose around them.
Although the comic strip Peanuts was already well-known when the Coasters recorded a song called “Charlie Brown”, there is no connection between the characters created, respectively, by Charles Schulz and the Leiber-Stoller songwriting tandem.
Charlie Brown’s inability to kick the football held by Lucy (who would always pull it away at the last moment) was legendary. There was once even a TV special in which the kids played on a football team together, with Lucy as the holder and Charlie Brown as the kicker. Every time a field goal was attempted (and keep in mind, this was in an actual game), Lucy would pull the ball away from Charlie Brown.
The kids lost the game, and guess who they blamed for it. Hint: It wasn’t Lucy.
Hall of Fame baseball pittcher Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown got his nickname because he had lost most of his index finger and part of his middle finger in a farm machinery accident when he was a child. The loss forced him to develop a grip on the ball that gave it a lot of topspin, making it hard to hit.
Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, was just reelected to a second term in the United States Senate, defeating the Republican candidate, State Treasurer Josh Mandel, in a hard-fought race. President Obama also narrowly carried the state in his reelection campaign.
George Brown, a Father of Confederation, is one of the few Canadian politicians who has died by violence. In his case, the motive was not political - he was shot by a disgruntled worker over an employment dispute. The wound itself was not serious, a graze to the leg, but it became infected and Brown eventually died of complications.
The detective-priest Father Brown first appeared in G.K. Chesterton’s short story “The Blue Cross.” So did Brown’s nemesis (later his fast friend), the jewel thief Flambeau.
The Red Cross was founded in 1863 in Geneva by Jean Henri Dunant, aka Henry Dunant, and Gustave Moynier. It’s symbol was taken from the Swiss flag, with the colors reversed. (I have a vague notion this may have been played before, but I’m not about to dig through and look.) The Bangkok office is on the corner of Henri Dunant and Rama IV roads.
Bangkok currently holds the Guinness record for having the longest name of a place. Apparently “Bangkok” is just the short version because the city’s ceremonial name is “Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit”.
And every schoolchild has to memorize it. The wife had to, but like all the rest, she has since forgotten it. (The city is called simply “Krung Thep” by all Thais, never Bangkok.)
80% of all cars in Thailand are owned by Bangkok residents.
Thailand is the second-largest market for pickup trucks in the world, trailing only the USA.
Pickup trucks are rare in Europe, while in Australia and New Zealand they’re called utes, and in South Africa they’re called bakkies.
The 2004 Utah Utes football team under Urban Meyer went undefeated and became the first team from a “non-AQ” conference to qualify for a BCS Bowl game. That is, the conference they played in, the Mountain West Conference, is not guaranteed a spot in a BCS bowl.
Utah now plays in the Pac-12, which is a BCS conference.
(Nevermind: Double-post by mistake.)
Beaver, Utah was the birthplace of two famous Americans – Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, and Butch Cassidy, the Western outlaw.
The beaver is the unofficial mascot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, because “The beaver is the engineer of the animal world, while the MIT student is …”
Dilbert is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989. Dilbert is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character. The strip has spawned several books, an animated television series, a video game, and hundreds of Dilbert-themed merchandise items. Adams has also received the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award and Newspaper Comic Strip Award in 1997 for his work on the strip. Dilbert appears in 2000 newspapers worldwide in 65 countries and 25 languages. The character Dilbert got his Engineering degree from MIT.
Scott Adams’ original name for Dilbert’s dog was not Dogbert, but Dildog.