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There Goes The Boom

Bobby Jenks, the man standing on the pitcher’s mound when the White Sox got the final out of the 2005 World Series, passed away yesterday in Portugal, near his wife’s family, after battling a form of stomach cancer.  Jenks, who turned 44 in March, was diagnosed with Stage 4 adenocarcinoma in January, just weeks after losing his home to the Palisades wildfires.

Jenks joined the White Sox organization following the 2004 season, after being selected off waivers from the Angels.  He started 2005 in Double A and was called up to the big-league club on July 5, making his major league debut the following day.  When Shingo Takatsu proved ineffective and Dustin Hermanson went down with a back injury, Jenks became the closer in September, finishing the regular season with six saves.  In the ALDS against the Red Sox, he threw three scoreless innings and picked up two saves in the three-game sweep.  Thanks to four consecutive complete games to finish the ALCS against the Angels, Jenks was well rested for the World Series.  He appeared in all four games against the Astros, throwing five innings and earning the save in Games 1 and 4.

He spent the next five seasons with the White Sox, making two All-Star teams and continuing to endear himself to White Sox fans.  In 2007, he tied a major league record by retiring 41 consecutive batters, becoming the first reliever to achieve the feat.  After the 2010 season, he left as a free agent, but injuries and a botched surgery ended his career.  He returned to Chicago in 2024, serving as the manager of the Windy City Thunderbolts independent team.

Next weekend, the White Sox are celebrating the 20th anniversary of that World Series team.  Jenks had been planning to attend, reportedly telling his doctors not to schedule any appointments for him in early July, but unfortunately it was not to be.

Jenks’ numbers in a White Sox uniform, both for games I attended and overall, were:

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Historic Games

With Vinny Capra and the White Sox falling victim to Clayton Kershaw on Wednesday night, giving him his 3000th career strikeout, I decided to take a look back at the historic games I’ve attended over the years.  Here is part one, featuring six games where an individual hit a career plateau or a team clinched a division title.

June 30, 1998 – Diamondbacks 4, Cubs 3

Sammy Sosa had broken the June record for home runs nine days earlier, surpassing the fifteen previously reached by Babe Ruth, Bob Johnson, Roger Maris, and Pedro Guerrero.  In the 8th inning of the final game of the month, Sosa connected against Alan Embree for his 20th home run of the month, setting the record not just for June, but for any month of the season.

September 27, 2003 – Cubs 7, Pirates 2

After winning the first game of a double header against the Pirates, the Cubs were in position to clinch at least a portion of their first Central Division title heading into the nightcap.  After the second-place Astros lost their game, a victory would give the Cubs the championship.  They jumped on Pirates starter Ryan Vogelsong early, scoring six runs in his 1 1/3 innings of work.  Dave Veres induced former Cub José Hernández to ground into a double play to wrap up the victory.

July 26, 2005 – Giants 3, Cubs 2

Following a nearly three-hour rain delay, Greg Maddux took the mound against the Giants sitting on 2998 strikeouts for his career.  In the third inning, Giants shortstop Omar Vizquel stepped up to the plate. With a 2-2 count, Maddux unleashed a sinker that Vizquel flinched away from, taking a third strike as the ball drifted back over the plate.  Maddux, who finished the game with three strikeouts, became just the 13th pitcher to reach 3000 strikeouts and the ninth to also have surpassed 300 victories.

August 5, 2007 – Mets 8, Cubs 3

On a warm Sunday night in Chicago, Tom Glavine took the mound for the Mets, sitting at 299 career victories.  The 41-year-old lefty tossed 6 1/3 innings, giving up just two runs to secure the win and his place in history.  Glavine became only the 23rd pitcher, and just the fifth southpaw, to reach the 300-win plateau.

September 16, 2007 – White Sox 9, Angels 3

Sitting at 499 home runs, Jim Thome entered the Sunday series finale, which just so happened to be Jim Thome bobblehead day, looking to reach 500 in Chicago.  With the score tied at seven in the bottom of the ninth, Thome came to the plate with a runner on first.  Having gone 0-4 to that point, Thome took Dustin Moseley to a 3-2 count before launching the walk-off milestone home run.  He became the 23rd major leaguer to reach the 500 home run mark and the third to do so in 2007.  He was the first slugger to reach the milestone with a walk-off.

September 30, 2008 – White Sox 1, Twins 0

After winning a makeup game against the Tigers to force a tie in the AL Central after 162 games, the White Sox took the field against the Twins in a tiebreaker to determine who would move on to the playoffs.  The Twins looked to strike first following a double by Michael Cuddyer to lead off the fifth inning, but a throw home by Ken Griffey Jr. nailed Cuddyer trying to score on a fly out to center field, ending the threat.  The game remained scoreless until the seventh, when Jim Thome blasted a home run to straight away centerfield.  Bobby Jenks came in to close down the game and the White Sox won their second division title in four years.

 

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Book 33 (of 52) – The Ministry Of Time

The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley

In the near future, Britain has gained the power of time travel and brings a number of people close to their deaths in the past to the present, hoping to use them to study the effects of time travel and to see how well they can assimilate to their new time period.  Each one is assigned a bridge, a Ministry employee who lives with them and helps them adjust to the 21st century, answering questions along the way.  Things go sideways when a duo from the future try to kill one of the bridges and her charge.  Can they save themselves without disrupting the timeline?

Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel, The Ministry of Time, was the winner of the 2024 Goodreads Choice award for favorite science fiction while being nominated for favorite debut novel.  It poses some interesting moral questions should time travel ever become a reasonable concern wrapped around a convincing romance between the main character and her charge, the real-life Commander Graham Gore.  I look forward to reading more from her in the future.  Or the past.

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Fitbit XI – Week 23

Yet another good week, as I managed to extend my 30,000-step weeks streak to seven. The week got off to a slow start on Sunday, garnering just 3300 steps. Monday saw a nice increase, needing just 18 additional steps to reach 3900.  An autograph session with Bo Jackson followed by an exciting White Sox baseball game on Tuesday pushed me up to 6300 steps.  A single step is all that stood between me and 3800 steps on Wednesday.  A nice bounce back on Thursday left me with 4100 steps.  Another increase on Friday pushed me up to 4400 steps.  A trip to the ballpark on Saturday ended the week on a high note with 6800 steps.

Total steps: 32,784

Daily average: 4683.4

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iTunes Top 200: #5

Music. It is a powerful thing that brings people together, creates memories, and evokes emotions. It is the universal language that speaks to the soul. It forms the soundtrack of our lives.

It has now been five years since we last counted down the Top 200 songs in my iTunes library, featuring he songs I have listened to the most since 2007. It is time to do so again, seeing which older songs still resonate and if any newer ones have joined the fray. So, without further ado, here are my most listened to songs, based on number of plays as of January 1, 2025.

Today, we move up to the fifth most listened to song in my library, with 182 plays since my stats began in late 2007. It is the top ranked instrumental and also the top ranked soundtrack entry.

#5: Klaus Badelt – He’s A Pirate
iTunes stats: 182 plays, most recently on 9/27/2024
Previous ranking: #4

Klaus Badelt was a relatively new composer when Hans Zimmer recommended him for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.  That score earned him the ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Film.  He’s A Pirate is the final track of the score, played at the beginning of the end credits.

Starting with the 2005 season, the White Sox incorporated the song into their game presentation, using it along with a string of highlights on the video board at the beginning of each game, leading into Thunderstruck as the team takes the field.  The song remained in use through the 2012 season, when it was replaced with a generic sound-a-like that never really caught on.  The song had a long run on my White Sox victory play lists, but has been removed in recent versions, which accounts for the drop seen here, from 4th place down to 5th.

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Finishing A Challenge

Every quarter, Kindle releases a reading challenge as a way to gamify reading on their platform.  The Spring 2025 challenge, which wraps up tomorrow, was the first one I’ve ever completed, finishing all fifteen achievements.  Those achievements were:

Days Read

  • Bronze Reader: read on any 15 days during the challenge
  • Silver Reader: read on any 40 days during the challenge
  • Gold Reader: read on any 75 days during the challenge

The Gold Reader is the one I usually have an issue with.  Either due to other commitments or reading actual physical books, I’ve always fell short of the 75 days out of the 90 or so within the quarter.

Books Completed

  • Bookish: read one book
  • Bookworm: read two books
  • Bibliophile: read three books

This one is always easy.  For reference, I wrapped this one up less than two weeks into April.

Streaks

  • Head Start: read one day during the month
  • Perfect Week: read 7 days in a row (Sunday through Saturday)
  • Perfect Month: read every day for a calendar month (ex. every day in February)

Again, the Perfect Month is where I usually fall short.  This time I was able to complete that particular achievement in April.

Mystery

  • Case Closed: complete a Kindle book.
  • Afterglow: read at least three days between April 29 and May 2
  • Smart Start: read on a Monday in May. Can level up with each additional Monday you read in May
  • Parasol: complete one of the Amazon editor’s Summer Reading picks
  • Weekend Warrior: read on both Saturday and Sunday during a weekend in June
  • Insider: Follow an author on Amazon

The mystery selections are usually rolled out throughout the quarter, leaving little opportunity to plan ahead for them.  I ended up following an author simply to complete the goal here, but the Parasol one I finished by accident, as Alex Finlay’s Parents Weekend happened to be on the list.

Having finally completed one of these challenges, I hope I won’t be as hooked to their games, as it has certainly seen me focus on Kindle books to try and finish a challenge rather than reading an actual book.

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Book 32 (of 52) – Pretend We’re Dead

Pretend We’re Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ’90s – Tanya Pearson

In Pretend We’re Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ’90s, Tanya Pearson dives into the evolution of women in the alternative rock music scenes of the 1990s, the commercialization and mainstream absorption of alternative rock, which led to the marginalization of many of these artists, and the resurgence of these female artists in the 2010s and ’20s, both for their own careers and as catalysts for the young artists emerging today.

The book chronicles the significant impact that female musicians and rock bands had in the ’90s, including Courtney Love of Hole, Shirley Manson of Garbage, Nina Gordon and Louise Post of Veruca Salt, and Tanya Donelly of Belly, alongside solo acts like Liz Phair and Tracy Bonham. These women not only dominated the airwaves but also challenged the traditional, often misogynistic, norms of the music industry, being outspoken, unapologetic, and helping to redefine the notion of femininity in rock.  At least until the shifting landscape of the music and radio industries left them behind, starting with the rise of nu-metal in 1997 and the inherent misogyny that entailed and, finally, in the backlash against non-conformity following the 9/11 attacks.

This era and these artists covered by Pearson were the soundtrack to my college experience.  There are the groups I listened to, the concerts I went to, and, in many cases, still do today.  I’ll need to do some homework to catch up on the newer releases and to see how their influence has spread amongst the artists of today.

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It Has Indeed Been A While

As we hit the halfway point of the 2025 season, I’ve seen fourteen teams already this year, just under half of the league.  Stretching back to the start of 2024, that number jumps to 25, which leaves a quarter of the teams I’ve not seen in quite some time.

Of the remaining five, the Nationals hold the top stop, as it has been over four years now since I have seen them live and in person.  The Twins are the biggest surprise, since going two plus seasons without seeing a division rival is pretty rare. I do have the opportunity to add each of these five teams to this season’s slate in the second half.  Anyway, here’s a look at each team and the last time I saw them play.

Most Recent Game By Team

Team Date
Washington Nationals 5/19/2021
New York Yankees 5/15/2022
Minnesota Twins 10/5/2022
Philadelphia Phillies 6/29/2023
San Francisco Giants 9/5/2023
Cincinnati Reds 4/13/2024
Tampa Bay Rays 4/28/2024
Cleveland Guardians 5/12/2024
Atlanta Braves 5/21/2024
Baltimore Orioles 5/25/2024
Toronto Blue Jays 5/28/2024
Los Angeles Dodgers 6/24/2024
Pittsburgh Pirates 7/14/2024
Detroit Tigers 8/25/2024
New York Mets 8/31/2024
Oakland Athletics 9/15/2024
Los Angeles Angels 3/27/2025
San Diego Padres 4/5/2025
Boston Red Sox 4/13/2025
Milwaukee Brewers 5/1/2025
Houston Astros 5/3/2025
Miami Marlins 5/10/2025
Seattle Mariners 5/20/2025
Texas Rangers 5/24/2025
Colorado Rockies 5/26/2025
Chicago Cubs 5/26/2025
Kansas City Royals 6/8/2025
St. Louis Cardinals 6/19/2025
Chicago White Sox 6/24/2025
Arizona Diamondbacks 6/24/2025
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Fitbit XI – Week 22

Another good week, as I extended my 30,000-step weeks streak to six and surpassed my daily step goal for the third time over that period.  The week got off to a good start on Sunday, garnering 5100 steps.  Monday saw a slight decrease, needing just 3 additional steps to reach 4700.  Another 28 steps on Tuesday would have gotten me to 4400.  My work week ended on Wednesday with 4200 steps.  Off for the Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, I took in a double header at Rate Field, leading to 7700 steps.  A big fall on Friday dropped me to 4100 steps.  A lazy Saturday wrapped up the week with 2700 steps.

Total steps: 32,971

Daily average: 4710.1