Tag Archives: warm thoughts for a cold winter

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter: Charlie Brown’s Stats

For other Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter, click here.

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Earlier this week, the Nerd/Baseball Venn intersection was all a-buzz with an amazing project done over at Wezen-Ball.com. Larry Granillo had gone through all the Peanuts comic strips from 1950 through 1970 and, based on the documentary evidence, calculated a whole slew of stats for Charlie Brown’s legendarily awful team.

By this point, I am the twelve billionth person to blog about this, but I’m posting about it anyway, on the slim chance that some of you may not have heard of it yet. And also, its awesomeness warrants as much exposure as possible. Charlie Brown and baseball are my two earliest obsessions, so this insane project is right in my wheelhouse. It also includes tons of scans of and quotes from classic Peanuts strips.

Now if someone would track down all the stats for Joe Shlabotnik, including his managerial stint with the Waffletown Syrups, I’d be a truly happy man.

Tuneage, Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter: El Gran Combo

Pitchers and catchers are a mere five weeks away, and it can’t come soon enough for me (even after last night’s hideous Carlos Beltran news). I am done with winter this year, at a record pace, and I’m normally a cold-weather guy. Or at least more of a cold-weather guy than a hot-weather guy. The sun is not my friend.

grancombo.JPGSo from now until players report, I will have a daily bit of baseball-iana to get you through the rest of the winter. The inaugural submission comes to me courtesy of WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, via Give the Drummer Some. Yesterday, he put up his weekly post of mp3s, and it included a beisbol-centric jam by Puerto Rican musical legends El Gran Combo.

They’ve been around for almost 50 years and are probably the most famous salsa group in the world. This tune, entitled “El Caballero Pelotero”, is about exactly what its title states: a horse who plays baseball.

My Spanish isn’t good enough to translate all the lyrics to this song. Or even most of them. In fact, all I can really catch are the lines “jugaba a beisbol” and “los Yanquis”. But apparently, this horse was quite the hitter.

Still, it puts me in the baseballing mood, and I hope it does the same for you. In addition to the original audio below, you can also see/hear El Gran Combo playing the song with another salsa legend, Hector Lavoe, on YouTube (which I would have included here, except the sound is sub-bootleg quality).

Download here.