Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Anybody notice that, all of a sudden, the S*per Bowl is gonna be played at Sun Life Stadium?
Seems that Dolphin Stadium got a NEW name last week. I say “NEW”, because this 23-year old stadium is on its SEVENTH name.
Joe Robbie Stadium, became Pro Player Park. Then, Pro Player Stadium. Then, Dolphins Stadium. Then, Dolphin (singular) Stadium. (How much did it cost to drop that “s” on all that signage?). Then, Land Shark Stadium, on a deal that lasted a whopping 8 months. Then THAT deal ended — earlier this MONTH — and the name reverted BACK to Dolphin Stadium.
For a few days.
Then, last week, the stadium got its new name — Sun Life Stadium.
Let’s recap. In the last NINE months, the stadium has had FOUR NAMES!!!
I would guess that there are Super Bowl tickets out there that still say Dolphin Stadium. I wonder if that will make them more valuable, from a collector’s standpoint.
After all, the stadium is bound to have a BUNCH more names over the next quarter-century.
Identity crisis much??
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Monday, January 11th, 2010
Okay, so Mark McGwire owns-up, and admits to steroid use at times during his playing career.
This move by the 2010 St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach, made me think of the 1998 St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach.
For that one year — the year, by the way, when McGwire hit 70 home runs — the Cardinals’ hitting coach was one Dave Parker. Like McGwire, Dave Parker was a guy who could just savage a baseball. Legend has it that he had one time hit a ball so hard, the seems ruptured, and the cover partially came off of the baseball. While in the minors, he had hit a ball out of a ballpark, and into a passing train’s coal car.
And the former Pittsburgh and Cincinnati star had pretty good career stats: 2700-plus hits in his career, and a total of 339 home runs.
But, like McGwire, Parker was involved in a bit of a baseball scandal of his own. In the early 1980’s, Parker had been one of the central figures in a cocaine scandal that popped-up in the majors.
Parker’s first year of eligibility for Hall of Fame voting was 1997. He didn’t fare so well. In fact, in 14 years of Hall of Fame voting, Parker has never received more than 25% of votes for admission to the Hall.
Parker took the job as Cardinals hitting coach in 1998, by his own admission, to elevate his profile with Hall of Fame voters.
Note the parallel. In his four years of eligibility for baseball’s Hall of Fame, McGwire has never gotten more than 24% of votes cast.
And, now…McGwire is the Cardinals hitting coach.
Like Parker, hoping to put scandal further behind him in the rear view mirror.
And, maybe — just maybe, somehow TRIPLE the number of votes he gets for the Hall of Fame.
It didn’t work out so well for Dave Parker. Let’s see if Big Mac fares any better.
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Monday, December 7th, 2009
Burger Wrapper 4 and I got out on the roads early this morning, just to research the New I-64 for you. Here’s what you need to know:
For eastbound 64/40 drivers:
+ The Brentwood exit is NO LONGER a left-side exit. You have to be over on the right-hand side to exit eastbound 64/40 at Brentwood.
+ The Hanley exit off of eastbound 64/40 is NO LONGER a stand-alone exit. It’s a combined exit for Brentwood AND Hanley. So, if you don’t exit eastbound 64/40 at Brentwood/Hanley, the NEXT available exit is Big Bend.
+ And, hey…how ’bout that? There IS an eastbound exit now for Big Bend.
+ And, at Hampton, there is only one exit ramp, for both north and southbound Hampton access.
For westbound 64/40 drivers:
+ Again, just one exit for Hampton.
+ Same story at McCausland — just one exit to get onto either north or southbound McCausland.
+ That theme repeats at Big Bend…one exit ramp, for both north and southbound access to Big Bend.
+ Westbound 40/64 drivers also get a combined exit for Hanley AND Brentwood.
One other note — this for southbound 170 drivers. If you’re southbound on 170, and you’re going to go eastbound on 64/40, your first available exit will be Big Bend. If you want to access Hanley Road from southbound 170, you’ll have to exit at Eager Road, and take Eager Road eastbound to Hanley.
And, overall, lots more gray. Enjoy “The Gray Lady” — the completed I-64 !!!
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Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
With the King Bridge off-line till next Friday, the 23rd, one of the alternate routes across the Mississippi is the Eads Bridge. If you’re not familiar with how to get to the Eads Bridge from Illinois, check out this link to a map.
http://www.mapquest.com/mq/9-WNAWnSAOZivQXCST
Tags: Eads Bridge, King bridge
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
Been getting a lot of calls and e-mails about what’s going-on with the King Bridge next week (the week of October 12th). This is the project that was talked about a bunch on the news a couple of weeks ago. (Oddly, there hasn’t been much mention of it since. And now, it’s time!) Ok, here’s the deal:
The King Bridge is scheduled to be completely closed for two weeks, starting October 12. That’s so a median wall can be put-in on the bridge, to make it safer. When the 2-week project is done, the King Bridge will re-open with 2 lanes open eastbound, and only one lane open westbound.
During this project, Illinois drivers will see signs, directing them to use 55-70 to cross the Poplar Street Bridge into downtown. AND, to help, the Highway 70 express (reversible) lanes WILL BE open to WESTbound traffic during morning drive.
Of course, if you’re just trying to get into downtown during this period, don’t forget about the Eads Bridge. If you’re not familiar with how to get to it, from westbound 55-70, exit at 3rd Street, and follow the signs. (If you know how to get to the Casino Queen from westbound 55-70, just head for the Queen, and veer left before the Queen, to get onto the Eads.)
Here’s the press release: http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:WTOWEVhMUVkJ:www.dot.state.il.us/press/MLK%2520Bridge%2520Closure%2520Press%2520Release%2520092909%2520(2).doc+king+bridge+idot&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&ie=UTF-8
Tags: closure, King bridge
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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” — Abraham Lincoln
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
So, the news today (Friday, July 31) is that the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” auto trade-in program is out of money. After 4 days.
Okay, let’s review the details. The program goes into effect on July 27th, and is scheduled to run till November 1st, or till the money runs out. The government set aside $1 billion for the program.
I’m kinda surprised that no one put a calculator on these numbers ahead of time. $1 billion, divided by $4500 per trade (the maximum amount of rebate in the program), yields enough “Cash for Clunkers” money to fund 222,222 trades.
Here’s the problem. In June of 2009, there were almost 860,000 new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. That was in a month that DIDN’T have these big cash-back incentives.
So, in a NORMAL month — one that doesn’t have big trade-in incentives — the “Cash for Clunkers” money would run out in…a week’s time. Not a big surprise that the money actually ran out in 4 days. And remember, this program was designed to last 96 days, till November 1.
That means, the program was underfunded by $23 billion. Or, underfunded by 95.9%.
Go figure. Someone should have, ahead of time.
Tags: $1 billion, Cash for clunkers, trade-in's, underfunded
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Friday, July 24th, 2009
Congrats to Francis Howell North alum Mark Buehrle, on his perfect game no-hitter. Thursday, Buehrle and his Chicago White Sox faced the minimum against the Tampa Bay Rays. It was only the 18th perfect game thrown in the history of the Major Leagues.
FUN FACT: More people have orbited the moon, than the number of people who have pitched a Major League perfect game.
FUN FACT, DOUBLE DIP: Mark Buehrle has now thrown 2 no-hitters in his big-league career (the previous one was in 2007). And the home plate umpire has been the same guy for both of ‘em — the umpire’s name is Eric Cooper.
FUN FACT, OH MY GOSH, THEY KEEP ON COMING: Mark Buehrle’s jersey number is 56. Home plate umpire Eric Cooper ALSO wears number 56.
Tags: Chicago White Sox, Eric Coooper, Mark Buehrle, perfect game
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Monday, July 13th, 2009
Tuesday, it’s gonna be interesting downtown, with the traffic impacts due to the All-Star Game.
The closure of Highway 40 is grabbing most of the headlines. If you haven’t heard, Highway 40 will CLOSE from 14th Street to the Mississippi River, starting at 5pm on Tuesday. So, if you do use eastbound 40 to get downtown on Tuesday, the last open exit will be at 14th Street.
But keep in mind, that closure of 40 also means that if you’re coming into downtown from Illinois via the Poplar Street Bridge, you WON’T be able to go straight, out onto westbound 40. You will HAVE to either go westbound on 70, or southbound on 55, or northbound on Memorial Drive.
But, wait…there’s more. President Obama, who will be throwing-out the first pitch at Tuesday night’s All-Star Game, will probably impact Tuesday afternoon’s rush hour, too.
President Obama is not even expected in town till the 5 o’clock hour on Tuesday, from what I hear. And that means, more than likely, the Presidential motorcade will cause closures heading from the Airport into downtown, probably along Highway 70.
That is, if the President uses a motorcade to get downtown. I’m assuming that will be the case. But, Monday morning on-air, Guy Phillips brought up a good point.
What if — or even could they — FLY the President to Busch Stadium, in a helicopter? Makes sense. Would look cool, too. We’ll have to wait and see.
So, what’s the takeaway from all this? A few things:
From Missouri, eastbound 44 will probably be your most grief-free path toward the stadium.
From Illinois, on westbound 55-70, across the Poplar Street Bridge, I think your best plan may be to go southbound on 55. From there, you could try exiting at 7th Street, or stay on southbound 55 to westbound 44, to Jefferson, then go north on Jefferson, and head toward the All-Star Game that way.
There’s no doubt that, if feasible, getting downtown, and into the stadium as early as possible, is the best possible game plan. It’s probably gonna be a long time till the All-Star Game comes back to St. Louis, so you may as well get in the stadium early, and soak it all up.
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Monday, July 13th, 2009
Tuesday, it’s gonna be interesting downtown, with the traffic impacts due to the All-Star Game.
The closure of Highway 40 is grabbing most of the headlines. If you haven’t heard, Highway 40 will CLOSE from 14th Street to the Mississippi River, starting at 5pm on Tuesday. So, if you do use eastbound 40 to get downtown on Tuesday, the last open exit will be at 14th Street.
But keep in mind, that closure of 40 also means that if you’re coming into downtown from Illinois via the Poplar Street Bridge, you WON’T be able to go straight, out onto westbound 40. You will HAVE to either go westbound on 70, or southbound on 55, or northbound on Memorial Drive.
But, wait…there’s more. President Obama, who will be throwing-out the first pitch at Tuesday night’s All-Star Game, will impact Tuesday afternoon’s rush hour, too.
President Obama is not even expected in town till the 5 o’clock hour on Tuesday. And that means, the Presidential motorcade will cause closures heading from the Airport into downtown, more than likely along Highway 70.
So, what’s the takeaway from all this? A few things:
From Missouri, eastbound 44 will probably be your most grief-free path toward the stadium.
From Illinois, on westbound 55-70, across the Poplar Street Bridge, I think your best plan may be to go southbound on 55. From there, you could try exiting at 7th Street, or stay on southbound 55 to westbound 44, to Jefferson, then go north on Jefferson, and head toward the All-Star Game that way.
There’s no doubt that, if feasible, getting downtown, and into the stadium as early as possible, is the best possible game plan. It’s probably gonna be a long time till the All-Star Game comes back to St. Louis, so you may as well get in the stadium early, and soak it all up.
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