Top Current Hit Leaders. 2026. Will any make it to 3,000? 

  # 88 all time: Freddie Freeman. Age 36. 2586 hits. 17 seasons. Can he have three more productive years? I think so. He is hitting really well currently. 

  #103 all time: Jose Altuve. Age 36. 2496 hits. 16 seasons. Not too far behind Freeman. Career .300. Freeman? Also .300, but this season hitting 60 points better than Altuve.

  # 163 all time: Andrew McCutcheon. Age 39. 2280 hits. 18 seasons. Does not look likely.

  # 167 all time. Paul Goldschmidt. Age 38. 2272 hits. 16 seasons. Great hitter. Probably too old.

  #198 all time. Manny Machado. Age 33. 2182 hits. 15 seasons. .275 career average but hitting .221 this season. I think he has chances. Has to stay healthy.

  #280 all time. Nolan Arenado. Age 35. 2029 hits. 14 seasons. No. Needs another 900 hits in this time of his career?

  #328 all time. Bryce Harper. Age 33. 1938 hits. 15 seasons. Possibly. Like Manny. Career .279. Walks a lot.

    

Quiet Quitting, Not Trying, Being Mediocre, Not Stressing, Pacing Oneself. Apathy, Survival

    I remember giving up on some mathematical assignments in middle school. The word problems at Binford in 6th or 7th grade became untenable for me. Perhaps I needed better coaching, better critical organizing. I needed Artificial Intelligence, perhaps. I needed to care more. Be sharper at nailing those skills. But it was not intuitive to me, and I did not drive myself enough. I did not care, and I would quietly quit.

    Same with the stupid cooking class with all the Weight Loss formulas. Too much. I gave up.

    Was it 6th grade, too, where I gave up on War and Peace because a teacher told me to stop it?. I should have followed on. I failed.

    Parents had their problems, and perhaps apathy set in based on my own mental neurapathies. Perhaps not the right word for that.

    Patterns of quiet quitting, I might call it. You, too.

    I quit football, for some good reasons. I would give up on other homeworks, other classes. Sometimes in Scouting. Quiet quitting and giving up interest.

    Even Spanish, sometimes.

    It would happen. Throughout life.

    Too much, poor patterns.

    Maybe surviving, coping. Existing. Moving along. 

    Quietly quitting. Not living up to potential.

    Pacing, but being medicre.

    Too much apathy. Not enough passion.

    All those things.

    There are other words for it.

    Settling. Laziness.

    Sure. Fear of trying too much. Getting along with okay.

    So many examples.

    This is who we are, or who we can be.

    

    

The Mid-American Conference was Struggling, Falling Down in Games. Then Michigan!

    I feel bad for Western Michigan. Kind of disgusted. My son and I watched it live. The Cowboys beat the Wolverines in the Big House. We all saw it. Look at the tapes, the videos. The clock hit zero. No one touched it. Not even the ground. The ball. As in, "football". Pigskin. The oblong object that Rutgers claims to have played the longest, like over 140 years or so. 150? We know this game, and the rules are clear.

    The official review got it wrong, and then the QB Underwood made the perfect throw, and all the Michigan fanatics yelling to fire Wittingham. The former BYU player who routinely beat up the Cougars as a tremendous head coach at the U of U now-come Ann Arbor-- Savior? Will he be a Schemblechler or anything of the like? I hope not.

    Go IU, go Cignetti. We do more with less, hopefully. I really can get used to seeing Michigan lose to us. And others.

    Like the poor Cowboys. Speaking of...

    I observed Week 0 and Week one, which is finishing up as I write. Washington State (the new PAC 12 with only 8 teams) losing to a superior new Big Ten Washington Huskies. And then, a little later, we got unranked Wisconsin (down of late) versus #4 Notre Dame. Thr Irish picked by multiple magazines and television pundits to win it all. My wive mentions to me about the BYU match up in October...

    And finally tomorrow, Monday, Labor Day, ranked teams Louisville and Ole Miss play somewhere. Oh, Nissan Stadium. Sure, Nashville, or some cool neutral spot to culminate the first real weak of this auspicious, tantalizingly crazy and crazy fun 2026 season. Thus it is. Michigan lives on, and the Cowbboys, and the rest of the MAC, is stewing.

    I noticed that the Mid-American Conference was taking its lumps. San Jose State took it to Eastern Michigan, Tarlton State (of somewhereabouts in Texas), an FCS team taking down another MAC squad. All of them have lost by now, or no? Sorry my little conference that lost Northern Illinois to the new PAC 12. Is that right? How is the new PAC 12 slash 8? I wanted Boise State to down the Mighty Fightin' Ducks, but that came up short. UCLA handled Cal Berkley, true? Oh, the Big Ten is mighty, and the PAC 12 and the ACC are down. We are now locked in on the the three biggies: the Big Ten, the SEC, and the BIG 12. Good job, idiot PAC 12 who slighted BYU in 2010 and then to compound their stupidity never signed a contract for TV with Hulu or other people who pay a lot of money to watch them play on the tube. 

    Eight teams and counting. Who are the next four going to be? Independent Connecticut?

    Let me chek my stats, end of week one.

    MAC? 2-11.  Buffalo beat a measly opponent, Massachusetts (good on them), humbled poor bumbling Rutgers. The rest were eviscerated, or at least topped in points. Especially, if we may say, Western Michigan.

    Alas, aye, and oh my word. 

    The officials have eggs and awful dung on their faces and their uniforms.

    Michigan won, with an unsightly asterisk. I told my son about Kordell Stewart of Colorado, who stuck the knife-- what? two decades or more ago? Never to be forgotten.

    Kordell: a name, a legend. He was the victor Hail Mary in the Big House, truly.

    Not Underwood. He is an imposter, and it is not his fault. You take what you are given.

    You accept what was stolen, in this case.

    Hard to turn down, refuse, what the AUTHORITAYS have gifted you.

    It should not crush the spirit of the Cowboys. Only fuel them to success.

    Why? Because we all know. 

    They beat the Wolves last night.

    Way to go, MAC. You have a giant killer in a 0-1 body.

    Go Cougs, go Hoosiers. Long live the fighting spirit of all the teams, fair or not fair.

    Moving on. Blog on.

The Lord is Working on It. But He Needs our Help

    I spoke to the father of an apostle today. His number was onine; he was friendly. And informative. He is not a member of my faith, but is an 89 year-old committed believer as a break off church that owns some key land that they famously claim. Part of the new Jerusalem. Their church is small, but apparently growing well in parts of Africa, the Phillipines, and the Yucatan of Mexico.

    They currently have nince apostles instead of twelve. Things happen patiently, Bob explained. Maybe we spoke about 20 minutus? He is the secretary of their church, which seems to be part of the leadership. They have their main membership in Missouri, but some members in Tennessee, Florida, New York. And those places listed above.

    Apostles travel and evangelize, as per the definition of being such.

    I spoke to one of their back in 1997; according to Bob Oldham it had to be Bill Sheldon. Before him a great one was Maynard Canes.

    They are not big in number, but devoted and committed to the Lord.

    Meanwhile, most of humanity disagrees on who is serving the Lord, and if He exists. How is He, what does He want? Is it a He. Why not a She? Why not both? Why not many? And very often, none at all.

    The "nones" may have it. My old supervisor boss Goldberg wondered if I was saying "nuns". No, those who ascribe to no belief system or nothing. Perhaps science and humanitarianism, at best.

    But there are a few billion believers, too.

    Although we cannot all agree on who has the authority and the truth.

    So be it. Jesus, the Lord, will have His day.

    We believe.

    As it says in the Third book of Nephi.

Can There Only Be One with None? No, the Lesser Bowls Could Get One. 10 Games at Noon

    Last year Indiana went 16-0. Majestic, triumphant, amazing. Some years there is not an undefeated college champion. Before and since the inception of the College Football Playoff. Occasionally there is a smaller Division I school that goes undefeated bu their record did not merit enough respect or gravitas to command the top bowl contenders at the end. That could happen, but with the current 12 team tournament should not. Weaker, smaller programs that are without blemish in the loss column should get their chance.

    Hawai'i is done, despite one magazine's prognostications of the Rainbow Warriors being there at the end. Newly ensconced Stanford ended that pipe dream. And Stanford upended by cross coastal power Miami last night. Teams are going down left and right. (Did I mention Colorado in my BYU opponents travails? Must check.)

    Of the final twelve, perhaps one can make it through unscathed like last year's Hoosiers. Could be Ohio State. Oregon. Indiana. Notre Dame. Oklahoma. Who else? What other team can catch fire? Miami? Ole Miss? Texas? Could be six or seven others. Brigham Young? Hello! HELLO! Or Texas Tech, but they are not as good as last year. Michigan or Penn State with surprises? Georgia, or even Alabama rises again? Yech...

    Who knows. I may have already named them. I should have. But, will one of the above be undefeated at the end? We shall see.

    Lots of small opponents at noon. Bryant verus Army. Maybe half are small timers. Could be an upset somewhere...

The Identity of Shakespeare and Marlowe Puts Everything into Question

        According to Rodney Bolt, a well-researched scholar who claims that the Bard was the son of a cobbler, not the son of whatever William Shakespeare's father was, Marlowe, the real writer and genius perpetuated ad nausem through Harold Bloom of Yale and thousands and millions of others, was a spy for an English boss named Walsingham.

    Walsingham had spies collecting intelligence about the Catholics, of which they were accused of overtaking good Protestant lifestyles and religious systems of the British Isles. This in the late 1500s. France and Spain of the Roman Catholic ilk were at war on different levels with the Brits. Take for example, Ireland. Why so Catholic?

    Meanwhile, apparently, Copernicus and ever-present scientists were shaking up beliefs across the Western world, ever expanding, colonial as they were. Doubt and knoweldge through empirical means brought ruin upon all religions, traditional or otherwise. Hindus, Muslims, local religions practiced across the continents, Buddhists. What of the Eastern Orthodox of the eastern climes?

    Maybe this Kit, Christopher Marlowe of Cambridge University, the one who wrote all the sonnets, was not of religion and belieft at all, as he was paid by Walsingham to do, but perhaps he was a pure, secular, atheistic writer who espoused no traditional belief whatsoever. His characters and causes were merely questioning everything, like Hamlet or any other character of the plays that he composed. Comedies, dramas, histories. Wars and intrigues, power plays and conspiracies. Murders and mysteries.

    Of this stuff we are made. Shakespeare or Marlowe, the Pope of Rome or the secular scientist of Wurms or Hamburg.

    Questions, doubts, wrestling and quelling tides of concerns and answers to the true meanings.

    Meanwhile, power and money were wrested forth across the lands and upon the waters. Languages shaped the movements: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German. Dutch, too. Do not underestimate the Dutch. The Scandinavians less. But they existed.

    Yet the tribes across the earth and islands, not to mention the ground Siamese and Vietnamese and Japanese and on throughout Asia. Some less influenced by Christianity, even less by Islam and Judaism.

    Shintos of Japan and whateve the native religions of the Korean peninsula.

    The Western Hemisphere had thousands, or at least hundreds, from the Cree and Ojibwa to the Inuit to the California tribe and on throughout the southern-most places. Across the oceans to other archipelagoes and Africa and Australia. Each way you went, more and more peoples and diversity and their own belief systems and pracices.

    While the plays and words of Shakespeare or Marlow kept growing, using slavery, too.

    Money and power, art and ideas. What was Pope's name? William? Henry? Alexander! Scholars like him, such as he promulgated the ideas and words that flowed into us.

    2026.

    Based now on Internet data storage and Artifical Intelligence and rocket science and fuels and satellite links, nuclear, solar, and all types of modern energy and power.

    Knowledge is power.

    So is truth.

 Arabic Fluency, Testing, Comprehension

    It feels like it has been many years since I alighted on the studies. I was learning the letters, the words, (some of the words). But there are always more, and many times they seem incomprehensible. They get manipulated and the brain does not compute, like math story problems or scientific formulas or chemistty or physics. Sometimes concepts of signal technology or computer code.

    Rocket science and Arabic. Can be mutually frustrating.

    I learned a few words in 1992, wanting to be conversant or fluent. Learning the letters did not come easy the first few months. But by the following year, a region beyond my native midwest, into the intermountains of North America, I was showing them to others. Their names transliterated, they could see how to spell Brian or Chris or Karen of Jill.

    I was doing the homework for the end of semester in 1993, my second Arabic class, and things seemed doable.

    A year later I was writing, or trying to write, words, phrases, sentences. But my poor teachers slogged through my scribbings and would question what is was I was composing.

    I had words in my brain, but many of them were misspelled and wrong. In 1994. I had some limited conversations in Arabic, even with a Palestinian, which excited me.

    Understanding could always be a problem.

    Years and years pass. Some things are forgotten, others confused and seemingly maligned.

    That is not the right word.

    I listend and sometimes talk, but the comprehension can be missing.

    In songs, for sure, but that happens in my native English and my better Spanish.

    Arabic gets hard, to test in like I have done over the years. Frustrating, like math formulas, word problems, chemistry concepts or chemical compositions. Formulas? Combinations?

    Arabic can be difficult and formulaic, and then hard to recognize. 

    With the sods and seens, the ayns and the aliphs. Plurals or measures of a verb, or even the prepositions get all tangle up and mangled.

    The brain of one does not compute as some do.

    The math gets twisted.

    We mess up in English, too. It gets pidgin and creole, I guess. But we push on.

    So Modern Standard Arabic is clearer, and then all the dialects make it more confusing. All the countries and the local expressions.

    Permutations of the same things, or sometimes completely different. Happens in Spanish, too.

    There we are.