Patrick Corbin is 1-3! He got a Win, and Not too Many Losses So Far... 2024 May Be Different

    Corbin helped the Nats win it all in 2019. We will always have that. Washington baseball, the former Expos won it all with him contributing in the regular season, 14-7, and doing some good stuff against the Astros in the final series, even game 7, to clinch the title.

    However, since that amazing season when he came in as the new guy, going along with the other clutch National pitchers and a season 33 games and 3.25 ERA. Since then, pandemic and 2020 was 2-7 (4.66), 2021 was monstrous, 9-16 (5.82), 2022 worse! 6-19 (6.31) OUCH, and last year 2023 10-15 (5.20). He has led the National League in losses the last three years. Granted, the Nats lost a lot of talent, not scoring as much as they did in the 2010s, but this has been bad.

    Even though his ERA is in the high 5.90s so far this season, 2024, he has not accrued as many losses. He got a good win against Boston, and the Nationals overall might be all right this season. Like, .500 even. Who knows? Patrick might get a winning year a this rate!

    As a long-suffering Expos and Nats fan, and perhaps not seeing the best pitchers for these teams, like Pedro Martinez and the Big Unit Randy Johnson leaving to higher pay, and more recently Max Scherzer leaving for more money and Stephen Strasburg retiring! The body would not work anymore...

    Anyway, maybe the Nats and Corbin can win this year?

    Go, Nationals.

 Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawai'i

    

    Delaware

    The First State, if you will

    I have spent at least two Thanksgivings there

    Back in the 1990s I drove through some of it just to say I did

    We went to a very ghetto gas station

    What a trip, with kids in tow

    Finding restrooms in the recesses of Wilmington

    

    The beaches have been nice, overall

    But the bugs can be too much at times

    Florida

    Been there many a time, went back last Christmas season

    A new part of the state I had not known before

    Met some Spanish speakers, Haitian Creole

    Saw a gator, saw some birds, and an armadillo

    Times past, we did some cruises

    Stayed at some hotels and condos

    My aunt and uncle's winter home

    The trailer of my mom's friend's parents

    Ahh, the glories of Florida

    Stayed in an RV trailer, too

    Georgia

    Drove through, flew through, studied there, vacation

    The gamut, as it were

    I was there with the military when Mr. Bin Laden died

    An honor and lucky coincidence, it seems

    

    The South is rising again

    In a different form from what some short-term rebels 

    Had hoped

    Industry and commerce

    Technical savvy and technological know how

    Past the pecans and the peaches

    One New Year's in Sparta

    Camping outside an old government center

    

    Old can be one hundred years in the New World

    We went by Cartersville, town of an old college roomie

    Saw the vape store and the new drugs

    Questionable smokes in a fallen land of the poor

    Where I see it

    

    Hawai'i

    Fall 2002 was a good time for me and my wife

    Who planned and prompted the trip

    Five days, listen to a spiel, 

    Some leis and maybe a table with poi

    We saw some beaches, went snorkeling a little

    Saw the North Shore, our temple

    The Cultural Center of the Islands

    I saw the mountains 

    Lush and green

    Muscular and remote

    We did the luau and did not drink

    The bus ride had its host making jokes

    Roll Tide fans were there for their early 

    Cancelled bowl dreams dashed

    Alabama in the ocean 

    But grass skirts and bare chests

    Rule the day over those college football zealots

    The island of Oahu is a jewel

    

More of the Ode to States: Arkansas through the C-States

    Arkansas: It was my 48th! 

    So pretty, tan lindo

    "The Land of Bill Clinton", 

    or something like that

    This was 1998.

    I saw chicken hatcheries, light bulbs in the rural dark reaches

    A few lakes and houses on them, as I approached

    the Ouchitas and later the Ozarks

    I did not do much, but learned that sleeping in a car

    Can make it uncomfortable due to heat or bugs

    California

    Where to start? Where to finish?

    Friends and friends of friends, and

    All kinds of locations and locales

    Mountains, deserts, ocean boats and beaches

    My temples to celebrate, my faith is great there

    The palms and the theaters and colleges

    Later Army time and family

    Babies in hospitals

    Even me a few times

    Made it after years, the Golden Places

    

    Colorado

    I went there by car a bit, didn't stay long

    Flew in for short layovers

    Lost a hub cap in the mountains the last time

    And someone ripped our credit card somewhere...

    Was it far west or east of Denver? East of Denver, the schmucks

    I saw the snowy wintry peaks in 1997, maybe 1998

    Just seeing into the back wastes a little bit

    Have not seen too much, or done too much

    Slept one night, I guess

    1995

    Connecticut 

    I may have driven through a little bit as tike

    Back when I rode a trike

    Later as an adult I would do little more

    Stay at a hotel in Stamford

    No pool time for us Gentiles that holiday 

    Close to New York City

    Another time, closer to Rhode Island, 

    We bought Popeye's while the older son slept

    

    And that other time, when we met the brother-in-law's sister

    At the pizza places, near Yale

    Yeah, quite the Yankee state

    I liked the bucolic scenes and pastures

    Where maybe Martin Luther King, Junior

    Picked fruit and apples as a youth

 Ode to the States of the U.S.; or at least a few

    Alabama

    I have not done much there, some driving-- a little sleeping

    I attended a church with some faithful

    I looked off the road to stately 

    Birmingham

    City of history and civil rights battles 

    and triumphs

    I could imagine speeches and churches and jail cells

    A tremendous place to be

    Alaska

    Saw some parts of the southeast

    Wet and coastal, trees and mountains, lakes and harbors

    We alighted on Anchorage

    Hot day

    My friend from years past was 

    Banned from law enforcement

    Online searches in the modern age

    The moose from the tour bus, close to the airport

    Had a calf, maybe?

    I took a picture or two

    Alaska, exotic far off place

    Arizona

    I visited it before I lived and left there

    Many long vistas and distant mountains

    Great valleys, or huge gulches,

    For what it may be most famous

    

    We go there for work and play

    I went there a few times

    In uniform, to get things done

    Some sleep deprivation

    Some hot times, nothing too violent

    A bit of intensity, training, living

    Some jokes and classes

    In the higher desert

    I enjoyed myself as a civilian, before

    This is a nice, overall, accommodating region

    

    

 Beauty in the Ugly

    I was in a part of my town the other day,

    My town where I largely raise my kids

    Not my home town

    Nor towns in South America that I roamed as 

    A young man, walking and talking

    This was 2024 when I observed my current town

    The other places were in decades past

    Different time zones, different times

    

    Not a town or base in Afghanistan

    Nor the sand and berms of Kuwait

    Or California, or Arizona

    The dirt streets and fences and junky sidings

    The poor trailers,

    Not pretty to many eyes

    But somehow beautiful

    To me

And then there were Five? Five Baseball franchises with no rings as of 2024---

    Thanks to the mighty Texas Rangers winning the World Series last year, there are only five MLB teams that never to win it all. Many teams have done it for the first time these last times: Houston (twice), Washington, and now Texas, formerly the Senators. Amirite? DC has brought home some bling, considering George Bush, the younger, the U.S. president and former governor of Texas, owned the Rangers once upon a time... Texas is loving their baseball right now.

    Not so much Florida, even though the Rays have been playing really well. The Marlins have been stinky for a long time, and the neither of them get much attendance. (That was Bushian colloquial English, by the way.) Gonna get 'er done.

    As in, of the five remaining, from worst chances to best, they are now:

    The Colorado Rockies. Ouch. Now 7-22 heading into May.

    The... Tampa Bay Rays, aforementioned. 14-18.

    The San Diego Padres. A loser at the corner, as previously blogged about. 15-18. They lost Juan Soto to the Yankees. Hard to lose the Truth.

    But we harbor some hopes for the last two:

    The Seattle Mariners, at 17-14 have flirted with success recently, another country corner loser. Let's go! As they say.

    And last, but above the least, are the Milwaukee Brewers at a promising 19-11. Who knows? Perhaps 2024 can be another banner year for a Never-Have. Never have done it.

    I wish the Padres would play the Mariners in the Fall Classic. But New York and the East Coast, not to mention the Midwest and Texas, would never get over it...

    Get over it.

    Play ball.

    And, sorry again, Angels of L.A. Very sad.

    

    

    

 I was shocked, nonplussed, chagrined, disgusted, well-- heavy words for this, but the price of the Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich had me not so amused

    I was out about town, so-to-speak, getting some gas, which looked cheaper (3.52 or so per gallon) than many places I had seen it. I went inside the gas mart, either Wawa or Sheetz, or like a 7-11, maybe, and looked at newspapers. I think I was jones'n for some ice cream.

    Yeah. Ice cream. It was about 90 today, in April. No complaints. But here comes this one:

    3.83 for a measly Oreo sandwich?!!! 

    Almost four dollars for this paltry amount of ounces and calories? Not even as good and luscious as a Big Ed ice cream sandwich, which packs more punch and flavor...

    Almost four bucks. I remember as a kid we would buy a half gallon of Breyer's ice cream for two or so bucks. A half-gallon. We could find, I learned later in college on my own dime, a whole gallon of cheaper ice cream for a dollar. Plain white vanilla, or chocolate, or even mint chip, or sherbert of all varieties, for one buck. And maybe some state tax, round it up to seven cents. A whole flippin' gallon. Gallons are meant to flipped, right?

    Today, in late April 2024, this hand held chunk of little barely cold creme was 3.83. Or was it 4.83? No! It cannot be. Not almost a complete Abe Lincoln bill for an Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich!!

    That will be the day. 2030? Sooner?

    $ 3.83 is too much for this now, I can tell you that simply and forcefully.

    Where has the market gone? Are ice cream makers this rich now?

    I don't know. I was testing the product blind, thinking maybe in the high twos...

    I will not be robbed senseless like this again. At least not this year.

    A four-dollar Oreo sandwich...

There are worse things going on in the world right now, including hunger and other violence and awfulness. But I had my brush with terrible tonight.

    Not again, little gas mart. Not again. For now.