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Top 200 Albums: #188 – 196

itunes_imageWe last counted down the Top 200 albums in my iTunes library four years ago. Since that time, the world has literally changed, and my commute has decreased from 1+ hours each way to 25 steps. So, despite the decrease in potential listening time, I figured it was time to take another look, based on number of plays from late 2007 through the morning of January 1, 2022.

We kick things off with the first batch of ten albums that I have listened to the most over the last 15 years, including six released in the 1990s, one comedy albums, and two greatest hits collections.

#196: Ice Cube – The Predator
iTunes stats: 66 plays
Previous Ranking: NR

Ice Cube makes his chart debut thanks to two tracks from his third studio album, released in 1992, which added 37 new listens.

#196: The Presidents of the United States of America – The Presidents of the United States of America
iTunes stats: 66 plays
Previous Ranking: 192

The band’s debut album, released in 1995, drops 4 spots despite a nearly 61% increase in listens over the past 4 years.

#196: Patton Oswalt – Annihilation
iTunes stats: 66 plays
Previous Ranking: NR

The comic’s 2017 special, dealing with the tragic death of his wife, Michelle McNamara, debuts with a strong showing, thanks to the 20 tracks from the album.

#196: Tegan and Sara – If It Was You
iTunes stats: 66 plays
Previous Ranking: 171

The album that introduced me to Tegan and Sara, thanks to radio play for I Hear Noises, drops 25 spots thanks to a small 40% increase in its number of plays in the past four years.

#196: Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill
iTunes stats: 66 plays
Previous Ranking: NR

The group’s 1986 debut album makes its first appearance on the charts after nearly doubling its listens to four of the album’s thirteen tracks.

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By The Numbers – 25

In 1929, uniform numbers appeared on the back of baseball jerseys for the first time, thanks to the Indians and the Yankees.  By 1937, numbers finally appeared across all uniforms, both home and away, across both major leagues.  Since that time, 81 distinct numbers have been worn by members of the White Sox, while the Cubs boast 76.

Today, we continue our look at those players, picking our favorite, if not the best, player to wear each uniform number for both Chicago teams with #25.  87 different players have donned #25 while playing in Chicago, 51 for the White Sox and 36 for the Cubs.

Acquired by the Cubs following the 2003 season for Hee Seop Choi, Derrek Lee, wearing #25, quickly became a mainstay of the Cubs lineup.  He hit .278 with 32 home runs and 98 RBIs in his first year on the north side.  2005 was a career year for Lee, and that was just in the first half.  He led the majors with a .376 average and 72 RBIs while tying for the lead with 27 home runs.  For the full season, he hit 46 home runs and a .335 average, the highest for a Cub since Bill Madlock in 1976 and he notched the first batting title for a Cub since Bill Buckner in 1980.  When it was all said and done, he had won the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and finished third in MVP voting.

A broken wrist limited Lee to 50 games in 2006, but he rebounded in 2007 to hit .317 with 22 home runs as the Cubs won their first NL Central title since 2003.  Lee went 4 for 12 as the Cubs were swept in 3 games by the Diamondbacks.  Another strong season in 2008, with a .291 average, 20 home runs, and 90 RBIs helped push the Cubs back to the post-season.  Lee did all he could, hitting .545 in the NLDS against the Dodgers, but the Cubs were once again swept.  Lee overcame a slow start in 2009 thanks to a 21 game hitting streak and finished with a .306 batting average, 35 home runs and 111 RBIs, which earned him enough votes to finish ninth in MVP voting.

2010 was a strange year for Lee and the Cubs.  On June 9th, he hit his 300th career home run.  Later that month, however, he would get in to a fight in the dugout with Carlos Zambrano, which led to a suspension for Zambrano.  In the last year of his contract and with the team going nowhere fast, Lee was traded to the Braves on August 18th, ending his Cub tenure.

Looking to reload after winning their first World Series championship in 88 years, the White Sox acquired Jim Thome from the Phillies for Aaron Rowand, Gio Gonzalez, and Daniel Haigwood.  Thome, wearing his familiar #25, made an immediate impact, setting a major league record by scoring in each of Chicago’s first 17 games and setting the team record with 10 home runs in April.  By season’s end, Thome had put up a .288 average with 42 home runs, 102 RBIs, and an OPS of 1.014.  One of the few bright spots for the 2007 White Sox came in mid-September, when Thome, on his bobblehead day, launched his 500th career home run, the first player to do so on a walk-off.  For the year, Thome hit .275, with 35 home runs and 96 RBIs.  2008 was a bit of a down year for Thome, as his average and OPS both fell, but he still managed 34 home runs and 90 RBIs.  The most important of each came in the 163rd game of the year, as he hit a solo home run to give the White Sox a 1-0 victory over the Twins and the Central Division title.  With the White Sox going nowhere in 2009, Thome was traded to the Dodgers on August 31 for a warm body.

 

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2021: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2021, my first full year remote working, I managed to read a whopping 54 books, an increase of 31 books over last year and my first year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total in mid-June, passed my best years, 2015 and 2016, in late August, and completed book 52 with two weeks left in the year.  I read (or listened) to 18,670 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the second time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, 16 were non-fiction and, of the 36 novels, 10 were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 43 e-books and 4 audiobooks.  For the first time since I was a kid, I got myself a library card, which helped me procure 14 of the books.

Just less than half of the books I read this year were by authors I have read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

  • Tegan Quin
  • Sara Quin
  • Lucy Foley
  • Jenna Fischer
  • Matt Haig
  • Eric Nusbaum
  • Jon Taffer
  • Charlotte Douglas
  • Susan Kearney
  • Fredrik Backman
  • Jeff Pearlman
  • Minka Kent
  • Alan Cumming
  • Megan Goldin
  • Molly Bloom
  • Barack Obama
  • Ali Wong
  • Timothy Ferriss
  • Issa Rae
  • Walter Tevis
  • Tess Gerritson
  • Gary Braver
  • Andy Weir
  • Matthew Walker
  • James Clear
  • Grady Hendrix
  • Simon Sinek
  • Jason Fung
  • Julia Spiro
  • Jon Pessah
  • Ruth Ware

Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Kubica, Jeffery Deaver, Andy Weir and Karin Slaughter were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2021.

6 of the books I read were released this year, while 5 of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1933.

Finally, the breakdown by month, which was fairly consistent across the entire year.

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Book 54 (of 52) – The Turn Of The Key

The Turn of the Key – Ruth Ware

A nanny leaves London behind and moves to Scotland for an unbelievable new job with a staggeringly high salary.  But, things are not as great as they appear to be.  The children see her as an enemy and strange noises and occurrences in the house start to drive her crazy.  Can she get to the bottom of things before losing her mind?  The framing device, that she’s telling the story to a solicitor from her jail cell, indicates the answer is no.

The Turn of the Key was my first experience with the work of Ruth Ware.  I’m not quite sure how I acquired it, but, as the third-place finisher for Best Mystery & Thriller in the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards, it was a solid read.  The Scottish setting was a nice surprise and helped the spooky feel come to life.  I’m not sure what else Ware has done, but I’ll be on the lookout for her work in the future.

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Fitbit VII – Week 48

Another disappointing week, though I did manage to sneak past 30,000 steps for the second time in the last 3 weeks.  The week got off to a decent-enough start on Sunday as I finished with 4600 steps thanks to a trip to the local grocery store.  Monday was down slightly, coming just 15 steps shy of 4200.  Tuesday saw a nice increase, jumping back up to 4700 steps.  Wednesday, as usual, was the worst day of the week, coming in 25 steps from 3200.  Last minute errands before the Christmas holiday put me up over 6800 steps on Thursday.  Friday was back down to 4500 steps, thanks to a Christmas Eve dinner out.  A trip to the movies on Christmas Day and not much else left me with 3500 steps on Saturday.

Total steps: 31,616

Daily average: 4516.6

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2022 Calendar

After a year of old pictures thanks to the corona virus murdering 2020, we are back in the game with next year’s calendar and, now that Christmas has come and gone, we can unveil the cover to this year’s calendar gift, given annually to my mom and sister, and made up of pictures I have taken throughout the year.  Lack of travel made getting pictures of Angelina difficult, but between last Christmas and this Thanksgiving, we were able to make it work.   As in year’s past. the calendar was produced by the good folks at Shutterfly and we will unveil each month’s photo(s) on the first day of the month throughout 2022.

This year’s cover features Angelina, Danny, and Michael masked up as we visited the primates from South America at Brookfield Zoo.

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By The Numbers – 26

In 1929, uniform numbers appeared on the back of baseball jerseys for the first time, thanks to the Indians and the Yankees.  By 1937, numbers finally appeared across all uniforms, both home and away, across both major leagues.  Since that time, 81 distinct numbers have been worn by members of the White Sox, while the Cubs boast 76.

Today, we continue our look at those players, picking our favorite, if not the best, player to wear each uniform number for both Chicago teams with #26.  71 different players have donned #26 while playing in Chicago, 58 for the White Sox and 13 for the Cubs, who have retired it for a Hall of Fame outfielder.

Sweet-Swinging Billy Williams first wore his familiar #26 in 1961, his first full season with the Cubs, where he played in 146 games, hitting 25 home runs with 86 RBIs, while earning Rookie of the Year honors.  Williams hit at least 20 home runs and drove in 84 or more runs in every season from 1961 to 1973, earning 6 All-Star team nods along the way, in 1962, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1972, and 1973.  In 1963, he started a consecutive game streak that would last into 1970, setting the National League record with 1,117.

In 1970, Williams batted .322 with 42 homers and 129 RBI and finished second in MVP voting.  He replicated that finish in 1972, winning the batting title with a .333 average, along with a .606 slugging percentage, 37 home runs, and 122 RBIs.  That gave him his 3rd top ten finish in 5 seasons.  Following the 1974 season, Williams was traded to the A’s for, amongst others, Manny Trillo.  Williams was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1987 and his number 26 was retired by the Cubs later that summer.

On the South Side of town, nobody has really made their mark wearing #26, though one of the greatest “what ifs” in team history did don the number in 1986.  Acquired in the Rule 5 draft from the Pirates in December of 1985, Bobby Bonilla made his major league debut with the White Sox on April 9, going 0-1 as a pinch hitter in the Sox loss to the Brewers.  Bonilla was putting together a pretty decent rookie campaign, especially since he was making the jump from A ball, hitting .269 with 2 home runs in 75 games when GM Ken Harrelson decided send Bonilla back to the Pirates, in exchange for pitcher Jose DeLeon.  DeLeon went 23-22 across parts of 5 seasons in 2 stints with the White Sox, while Bonilla made 6 All Star teams, earned three Silver Slugger awards, and two top ten MVP finishes over the next 10 seasons.

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Book 53 (of 52) – A Slow Fire Burning

A Slow Fire Burning – Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins returns with her third novel, A Slow Fire Burning.  In this go around, the death of a young man on a houseboat is the latest connection between a group of locals, the nosy neighbor who found him, his aunt and uncle, his mom’s neighbor, and the young woman he had just slept with.  As the police focus in on one suspect, the others intersect until the truth is finally revealed.

Hawkins hit the scene in 2015 with her smash debut, The Girl on the Train, which was one of many releases to be dubbed “the next Gone Girl.”  While I have enjoyed all three of Hawkins’ efforts, there does seem to be some diminishing returns, as I liked each one less than its predecessor.  I may check out what comes next, since I’ll probably forget my growing apprehension four years from now when she puts out a new book, but, for now, I’m ready to give her work a rest for a bit.