Ralph Kiner, Slugger Who Became a Voice of the Mets, Dies at 91 - NYTimes.com

Ralph Kiner with Willie Mays as a Met

Ralph Kiner was one of the three people who taught me the most about baseball: my Grandmother Mae Curtis Trautfield - my mother's mother - a Brooklyn Dodger fan who taught me the rules and the love of the game from her wheelchair in front of a postage stamp black and white TV.  The cameras couldn't follow a fly ball - but we could see Willie Mays making his famous basket catches, and Pee Wee Reese shuffling the ball to Junior Gilliam for the 5-4-3 double plays that ended with Gil Hodges at first base.


The next was Ralph Kiner, who was the gravelly voice of the Mets for fifty years after he retired from a brilliant career in Pittsburgh.  He knew the players, the managers, and the strategies they pursued.  The third was Tim McCarver who joined McCarver in the booth and taught another generation how the game works. - GWC

Ralph Kiner, Slugger Who Became a Voice of the Mets, Dies at 91 - NYTimes.com: 

by Bruce Weber

"Ralph Kiner, baseball’s vastly undersung slugger, who belted more home runs than anyone else over his 10-year career but whose achievements in the batter’s box were obscured by his decades in the broadcast booth, where he was one of the game’s most recognizable personalities, died on Thursday at home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 91....

369 career home runs, 1,015 RBIs - 1946-1955

During his first seven seasons, all with Pittsburgh, Kiner led the National League in home runs every year, still a record streak for either league. (Twice he tied with Johnny Mize, once with Hank Sauer.)From 1947 to 1951, he had home run totals of 51, 40, 54, 47 and 42, becoming only the second player in history — Babe Ruth was the first — to hit at least 40 home runs in five consecutive seasons, and the third (after Ruth and Jimmie Foxx) to hit 100 over two consecutive seasons.From 1932, when Hack Wilson hit 56 homers for the Chicago Cubs, to baseball’s steroid era in the 1990s, Kiner’s 54 homers in 1949 was the highest single-season total for a National Leaguer; Henry Aaron never matched him, nor did Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Mike Schmidt or Willie McCovey, all Hall of Famers with more than 500 career homers.Kiner never made it to the World Series; the Pirates of his era were perpetually mediocre (or worse), and so were the Cubs. In 1955, traded to the American League for his last season, he got closest: the Indians finished second to the Yankees."

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Still winter in New York

Late January afternoon - Hudson River Palisades

The Left Coast Lifter Arrives in NY

A six thousand mile tow via the Panama Canal brought the giant crane from the SF Bay Bridge to the Verrazano Narrows.  It will be a key tool in building the new Tappan Zee (Pete Seeger?) Bridge.  Photo by Will VanDorp/Tugster.  - GWC

Due in New York - The Left Coast Lifter

The Left Coast Lifter - a Shanghai-built giant crane - fresh from finishing up the new San Francisco Bay Bridge is due in New York on Thursday where it will help to dismantle the old Tappan Zee and build the new span across the North (Hudson) River.  It displaces 6,750-tons and can lift 1,900 tons according to the Times report on its voyage through the Panama Canal.

A successful winter

I knew it would be a good winter when the northwest passage froze over in September, three months before it had the past couple of years.  The high temperature in the past three days is 19 F.  It is expected to touch 37 for a couple hours on Monday. Then it heads back down to the temperatures that fill the North (Hudson) River with ice - as in this view from the window of our apartment just above the George Washington Bridge. - gwc

Freighter Palisades Evening Light

A big bulk carrier passes southbound on the North River passing  Castle Village. = Ben Berry photo

Starling murmuration

Starling murmuration over the River Shannon, Ireland.  The issues are discussed in this Wired article

Aurora Australis Icebreaker Reaches Australia with 52 Rescued Passengers | gCaptain Maritime & Offshore News

Aurora Australis Icebreaker Reaches Australia with 52 Rescued Passengers | gCaptain Maritime & Offshore News: "The 52 passengers rescued from a Russian expedition vessel that became stuck in an Antarctic ice floe over the holidays have reached Australia safe and sound.

The passengers began disembarking the Aurora Australis icebreaker Wednesday morning in Hobart, Tasmania three weeks after their dramatic Southern Ocean rescue.

The 52 people, mostly scientists and tourists from Australia, were passengers onboard the Russian ship M/V Akademik Shokalskiy, which left New Zealand on November 28 on a private expedition and became trapped by ice on December 24 just off the coast of Antarctica.

The Aurora Australis, along with the Chinese icebreaker Zue Long, were diverted to assist and spent almost two weeks trying to reach the vessel. The passengers were eventually airlifted from the ice floe January 3 by the Zue Long’s helicopter and transferred to the Aurora Australis for transport back to Australia."



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Climate change - if you see something, say something

Observing melt water on a Greenland glacier

If You See Something, Say Something - NYTimes.com:

by Prof. Michael E. Mann // Penn State University 

 "If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short-term self-interest. There is a great cost to society if scientists fail to participate in the larger conversation — if we do not do all we can to ensure that the policy debate is informed by an honest assessment of the risks. In fact, it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to society if we remained quiet in the face of such a grave threat.

This is hardly a radical position. Our Department of Homeland Security has urged citizens to report anything dangerous they witness: “If you see something, say something.” We scientists are citizens, too, and, in climate change, we see a clear and present danger. The public is beginning to see the danger, too — Midwestern farmers struggling with drought, more damaging wildfires out West, and withering record summer heat across the country — while wondering about possible linkages between rapid Arctic warming and strange weather patterns, like the recent outbreak of Arctic air across much of the United States."

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