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Ballpark Tour: A’s

With just under a month to go before pitchers and catchers start reporting to spring training camps, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we head to the Bay Area to look at the former Oakland A’s. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my history with the Oakland Coliseum.

Stadium Name: McAfee/Network Associates Coliseum

Years in Service: 1968 – Present

Visits: 2

The Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum opened in 1966 as the home of the Oakland Raiders.  Two years later, Charlie Finley moved his A’s from Kansas City to Oakland and became the baseball tenant of the stadium.  In 1998, the stadium became known as Network Associates Coliseum.  In mid-2004, Network Associates was renamed McAfee and the stadium was renamed McAfee Coliseum accordingly.  Following the 2008 season, the name reverted back to Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum until April 27, 2011, when it was renamed Overstock.com Coliseum. Just over a month later, the Coliseum was renamed O.co Coliseum, after Overstock.com’s marketing name.

Both times I’ve traveled to the Bay area, I’ve taken in both Giants and A’s games.  My first trip to what at the time was called Network Associates Coliseum was on September 6, 1999 while I was out west visiting my friend Scott.  The Tigers triumphed over the A’s that day, and my one memory of the stadium is that the seats were not necessarily positioned in such a way as to face the field for baseball purposes.

My second trip to the Bay area, for the JavaOne conference in 2008, actually started out with a BART trip out to Oakland for a 2-1 A’s victory over the Orioles on May 5th.  The A’s had opened up three sections of the third deck as designated All-You-Can-Eat seats, where, for the price of the ticket, free ballpark fare was included.  While I enjoyed the novelty of the free foodstuffs, the seats, while directly behind home plate, were horrible.  Leaving early in order to catch the train back to San Francisco led to the problem of trying to get out of the stadium, since none of the gates were open.

The A’s bid this stadium, and the city of Oakland, farewell following the 2024 season.  They plan to play their home games in Sacramento while a new stadium is being built in Las Vegas.  The funding for said stadium isn’t as secure as MLB and the A’s would lead you to believe, so the future home of this franchise is anyone’s guess.

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Book 3 (of 52) – Mr. Monk and The Blue Flu

Mr. Monk and The Blue Flu – Lee Goldberg

When negotiations with the police union go south leading to an unofficial strike, the mayor offers Monk his badge back and promotes him to captain, leading a rag-tag group of detectives who have also been rehired despite some issues that led to them losing their jobs in the first place.  His task: find the  Golden Gate Strangler and deal with other murders that come up along the way.  While Monk and his team crack the Golden Gate Strangler case and track down another murderer, the real police return when one of their own is gunned down.  Working again with Stottlemeyer and Disher, Monk helps to solve that case, but once again loses his job in the process.

Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu is the third of 18 novels based on the USA Network dramedy that ran from 2002 to 2009 from series writer Lee Goldberg. Once again told from the perspective of Natalie, the story shares the bones of the plot with an episode from Monk‘s final season, aired two years later.  With the remaining fifteen books waiting for me, hopefully things start to gel more as the series goes forward.

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2024: The Year In Live Performances

2024 was an exceptionally slow year for live performances, as I managed to get out just a single time to see a play.

At the end of February, Michael cashed in his Christmas present, and we headed into the city to see Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, my first trip to the theater since seeing Clue in 2022.  It was, unbeknownst to me when I bought the tickets, a drag show, with gay men taking the parts of all of the characters.  It ended up being a tad bit raunchier than the source material and it gave Michael and I a chance to hang together, something we haven’t been able to do much of since he got sick.

Here’s hoping 2025 has more opportunities for me to experience the live arts.

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FB10: Week 51

My streak of decent results came to an end as I headed back to work for the first time in 2025.  Sunday got the week off to a bad start, finishing with just 24100 steps.  Things picked up on Monday, as I came 14 steps away from 4200.  Things were slightly better on Tuesday, finishing with 4200 steps.  A slight drop-off on Wednesday put me at 3900 steps.  A slight improvement on Thursday left me 30 steps shy of 4200.  Friday dropped back down again, needing 18 additional steps to get to 3800.  Taking down the Christmas tree and putting it away on Saturday helped me surpass the 4000-step plateau.

Total steps: 26,756

Daily average: 3822.3

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2024: The Year In Television

With less and less good productions airing on network and cable networks and instead moving to the various streaming platforms, that seems to have taken over as my main form of non-game show television watching. Now that I work from home full time, I have plenty of time to take in whatever they have to offer. Since we cover the network and cable shows that I watch elsewhere, let’s take a look at the 22 seasons of shows I streamed on six different platforms this year.

9-1-1 Seasons 1-7 (Disney+)
I was introduced to this show when I was in Amsterdam and decided to watch from the beginning once I got home.

Based on a True Story Season 1 (Peacock)
Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina start a podcast with a serial killer.

The Blacklist Season 10 (Netflix)
One final go-around for the former NBC hit, which wrapped up its run in the summer of 2023.

Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 17 (Paramount+)
The BAU returns once again, following up on plot threads from the previous season.

Derry Girls Seasons 1-3 (Netflix)
A group of friends in Northern Ireland grow up amidst a changing political climate.

Doctor Who Season 1 (Disney+)
Ncuti Gatwa ushers in a new era for Doctor Who.

Grey’s Anatomy Season 19 (Netflix)
A new set of interns start at Grey Sloan.

Nobody Wants This Season 1 (Netflix)
A gentile sex/relationship podcaster falls in love with a rabbi.

Only Murders in the Building Season 4 (Hulu)
Yet another murder in the building brings Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez back together for another investigation.

Remington Steele Season 2-5 (Amazon Prime)
The 80s hit, starring Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist, has become a weekend morning staple.

This is the Zodiac Speaking (Netflix)
The latest attempt to identify the notorious Zodiac killer.

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iTunes Top 200: #183

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.

We kick things off today with the first ten songs tied for 183rd place with 36 plays apiece since my stats began in late 2007.

#183: Warrant – Cherry Pie
iTunes stats: 36 plays, most recently on 5/30/2024
Previous ranking: #125

Written in fifteen minutes after the label’s president wanted a “rock anthem”, the lead single from the group’s second studio album added just four new listens over these past five years.

#183: Tom Cochrane – Life is a Highway
iTunes stats: 36 plays, most recently on 4/14/2024
Previous ranking: NR

Cochrane’s sole hit in the US, peaking at #6 on the Hot 100, he first started working on it in the 1970s as a member of Red Rider.

#183: Thomas Newman – Six Feet Under Title Theme
iTunes stats: 36 plays, most recently on 7/29/2024
Previous ranking: NR

An additional 19 listens over the past nine years has pushed this theme from the HBO series that premiered in 2001.

#183: Tegan and Sara – I Bet It Stung
iTunes stats: 36 plays, most recently on 4/22/2024
Previous ranking: NR

This album track from the duo’s fourth studio album re-enters the chart after nine years thanks to 16 new plays.

#183: Tegan and Sara – Hell
iTunes stats: 36 plays, most recently on 11/8/2023
Previous ranking: #112

Featured on the group’s sixth studio album, it picked up only three new listens over the past five years, dropping 81 spots. Continue reading →

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2024: The Year In Movies Part 2

98 different people starred in the 52 movies I saw last year (starring in being the first two named stars, a tradition dating back to the old Chicago Tribune TV guide which populated the early days of my database), and a whole five of them were in more than one film. Those five thespians are:

Films Per Actor Per Year

Actor Name Films
Eva Longoria 2
Glen Powell 2
Paul Rudd 2
Sydney Sweeney 2
Denzel Washington 2

Now let’s take a look at the remaining movies that I saw in 2024, following up on last week’s post.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
The team reunites to keep a mysterious key out of the wrong hands.

Challengers (2024)
Two friends, who met at tennis camp, let a woman, a former tennis champion, come between them.

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Ballpark Tour: Guardians

With the spring training camps opening early next month, we continue our tour of all of the different baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we look at the Cleveland Guardians, the last new stadium I added to my list prior to the lockdown in 2020. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my one game history with Progressive Field.

Stadium Name: Progressive Field

Years in Service: 1994 – Present

Visits: 2

Cleveland moved into Jacobs Field for the 1994 season after calling Cleveland Stadium home since 1932.  In 1997, the park became one of the few in MLB history to host both the All-Star Game and the World Series in the same season.  2008 saw the naming rights sold to a local insurance company and the stadium was renamed Progressive Field.  Since opening, the park has seen twelve Central Division titles and three trips to the World Series.  It hosted its second All Star Game in 2019.

I almost took my first trip to the park in 2016, for Game 7 of the World Series against the Cubs, but I just couldn’t quite pull the trigger.  A Southwest credit this summer led to me booking a 2-day September trip to Cleveland for $3, so there was no second guessing this time.  I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon, in plenty of time for that evening’s tilt between the White Sox and Cleveland.  A tremendous catch on a smash by Eloy Jimenez saved the game for the then-Tribe.  The matinee performance on Thursday afternoon entailed a nice one-hitter by Reynaldo Lopez, giving the White Sox a quick victory before I had to head back to the airport.

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Book 2 (of 52) – Frankenstein

Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

In 1816, Mary Shelley, her future husband Percy Shelley, John Polidori, and Lord Byron spent the summer near Geneva, Switzerland, where they had a competition to see who could write the best horror story.  Mary Shelley’s entry eventually became Frankenstein, published in 1818 when Shelley was just 20.

The Frankenstein story told in Shelley’s novel bears little resemblance to the one that has permeated pop culture over the past 200+ years.  There is no Igor, no sewn-together body parts from various cadavers, no electricity or lightning to bring life to the creature.  Instead, Frankenstein methodically builds his creature over two years and uses an unknown process to bring him to life.

This was not at all what I expected.  I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.  All three main characters, the creature, Frankenstein, and Captain Walton, all seem to speak with the same flourishes so that it is hard to tell them apart if you aren’t paying close attention to who is telling whose story.  I guess I am glad I read it, from a historical perspective, but it has certainly tempered my appetite for future entries in this Amazon Classics line.

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FB10: Week 50

The third and final full week of my year-end vacation helped keep me above the elusive 30,000 step plateau.  Sunday got the week off to a decent start, finishing just 4 steps shy of 4000 steps.  Things improved on Monday as I rose up to 4700 steps.  Things were a little slower on Tuesday as the final day of 2024 ended needing 26 steps to get to 3700.  New Year’s Day on Wednesday finished with 4200 steps.  Some errands on Thursday helped push me back up, finishing just 2 steps shy of 5800.  Friday dropped back down again to 3500 steps.  A trip to the Frankfort Public Library to procure a library card on Saturday helped finish the week on a high note, surpassing 5000 steps.

Total steps: 31,135

Daily average: 4447.9