Evanston: the weight of money
Evanston: the weight of money
Albert Pujols is being crushed by forty million dollars. We should all have such troubles. (For background see God and Deidre Pujols.)
I saw the last few innings of a Los Angeles Angels game the other night in which Mr. Pujols extended his hitless streak to 19 at bats, the longest such streak in his career. I think it continued to 20 or 21 before he got a hit. But then he had only three hits all last week and currently is batting .216 for the 2012 season, some .109 below the lifetime average that brought him those ruinous forty million dollars.
Prior to this year, Albert Pujols had career statistics that put him in the top three or four players of all time in many categories and placed his name on lists next to Ruth and Gehrig.
There are other variables besides the obscenely big money. He has moved from the National League to the American and is facing pitchers mostly unfamiliar to him; and he is playing games in mostly unfamiliar stadiums. But it is evident that the money and the expectations that go with it from management, team mates and fans is making him tight.
It doesn’t help that the team he left is in first place without him, while the team he joined is in last.
I expect that he will work out of his slump in time. Maybe after such a lousy start he won’t hit .327 this year; but surely he will improve on .219. Still I expect that not a night goes by when Albert doesn’t lie in bed in his Southern California mansion and wish that he had taken the lesser offer, stayed in Saint Louis, and scraped by on a measly $210 million.
What Deidre Pujols thinks about all this these days, and God, can only be imagined.
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Ginny and Steve’s most recent post from Manaus, Brazil, certainly captures my imagination.
They have been places and seen sights few outsiders ever have and are making one of the most remarkable cruises of our time.
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My new sails arrived last week along with a wagon wheel. I have decided to build a Conestoga wagon and buy some mules and haul GANNET west the old-fashioned way.
Actually the wheel is the Tides Marine Strong System mainsail luff track. Part of the extrusion slides up the mast groove, while most is on the outside. Special slides and batten cars ride up and down a slot in the exterior. I have the same system on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, and the fully battened mainsail has never failed to come down easily on any point of sail. I most decidedly do not want to have to luff into the wind to lower the main or to put in a reef.
I haven’t completely unfolded the sails: a fully battened main; a 110% furling jib; and an asymmetrical spinnaker. But I did have to work on the spinnaker to get the thimbles to fit the Facnor furling gear.
For the record, I will never buy Facnor equipment again. I think Facnor products are fine. Some of you may recall that I also have Facnor gennaker furling gear on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. But their U.S. distributor offers not bad customer service; but no customer service at all. And there are competitors.
The Facnor furler for GANNET arrived with three set screws instead of the specified four. Despite repeated efforts over months I have never gotten the fourth. Three is probably enough.
My sailmaker told me that Facnor sent him the wrong size thimbles, so he had to make his own. Well, they didn’t quite fit until I spent an hour and a half with a file and electric drill, so perhaps they sent him the wrong specifications, too.
I have a lot of stuff to take to GANNET on Saturday: sails, ship’s batteries, etc.
There is a chance of rain here every day forever--or so it seems. On the good side, it is also supposed to get warmer, and at the moment the chance of rain on Saturday is only 30%. It would be nice to have a dry day to get the Tides Marine track in place and the sails bent on, before my scheduled surgery the following Tuesday.
Monday, April 30, 2012