Yankees 40-year old pitcher Mike Mussina is calling it quits after achieving his first 20 win season in 18 years of playing Major League Baseball. Mussina was an Orioles first round draft pick in 1990. He played for the Orioles from 1991 to 2000, and then went on to sign a free agent contract with the rival Yankees.

The big knock on Mussina – if there was one — was that he never registered a 20- win season. He had two back to back 19-win seasons while playing for the Orioles as well as two 18-win seasons. With that said, he was almost always the number one pitcher on his team for much of his entire career.

I happened to be in Camden Yards the night he scored his 100 win. I don’t remember the date, but it was an interleague game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Baltimore Orioles. I remember there being more Philly fans in attendance then Oriole fans. That’s a trend that only worsened as the Orioles worsened. Not just with the Phillies, but with the Yankees and the Red Sox too.

The most exciting sporting event I have ever seen in my life was a game between the Cleveland Indians and the Baltimore Orioles. Mussina was on the mound. He had a perfect game going into the ninth inning. Indians catcher Sandy Alomar then got a one-out single to break up the perfect game.

If Mike Mussina somehow doesn’t end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame, it will be a crime against humanity. He finishes his career with a 270-153 record and 3.68 ERA. He has 2,813 career strikeouts and just won his seventh Gold Glove award. He spent his entire career in the offense happy AL East and 10 years of that pitching in hitter-friendly Camden Yards. He’s also a total class act. That shouldn’t matter much when it comes to Hall of Fame consideration, but it counts a lot in my book.

Not that I even have a book.

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Contrary to what it says, this would not be the perfect Christmas gift for me.  In fact, I can’t think of anything I would want less then a ticket to see Hannity and his band of losers perform at a concert.

I don’t understand people who will only allow themselves to be entertained by performers that share their specific narrow political viewpoint.  Talk about limiting yourself.  People like Charlie Daniels and Billy Ray Cyrus take advantage of people like that.

I’ve never heard of Michael W. Smith, but I’m sure he does this too.

When did Charlie Daniels start to look like Santa?  Maybe he should avoid wearing red.  And what is Oliver North going to do at a concert?  Testify under oath? He should be in prison.

Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same god.  Contrary to what you might learn from reading a Chick tract, Allah in the Islamic faith is the same god found in the Old Testement.  Allah is simply the Aribic word for ‘God’.

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Steelers long haired hippie Troy Polamalu picked the ball up and ran it back for a touchdown, giving the Steelers a 17-10 lead as time expired. Before the Steelers could kick the extra point making the final score 18-10, an official in the booth reviewed the play and announced that one of the lateral passes was not a lateral, but an illegal forward pass. The touchdown was called off and the final score resorted back to a final of 11-10.

Either way, the Steelers would have won the game. The only difference is that in Las Vegas, the bookmakers had the Steelers as five point favorites. This meant that if you placed a wager on the Steelers, they would only win your bet if the Steelers won by more then five points.

From Pregame.com:

An estimated 100 million dollars was wagered worldwide on the Pittsburgh/San Diego game, according to RJ Bell of Pregame.com. Approximately 66% of that money was on the Steelers; with only 34% on the Chargers.

“If the touchdown was properly upheld, Steelers bettors would have won about 32 million dollars instead of losing big. This admittedly incorrect call resulted in a 64 million dollar swing in favor of the bookies,” said RJ Bell of Pregame.com.

There was no valid reason for the official in the booth to reverse the call. There was no flag on the play. There was no whistle blown. When Troy Polamalu picked up the ball, it was a live ball.

Part of me thinks it’s funny that so many gamblers lost money when they really shouldn’t have. Anyone stupid enough to bet their money on something they have no control over deserves to get fleeced.  With that said, I think this makes the NFL look really bad.  It looks like they have a problem with officiating in that game officials have an interest in things such as a gambling points spread.

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The current veteran UAW member at GM today has an average base wage of $28.12 an hour, but the cost of benefits, including pension and future retiree health care costs, nearly triples the cost to GM to $78.21, according to the Center for Automotive Research.

By comparison, new hires will be paid between $14 and $16.23 an hour. And even as they start to accumulate raises tied to seniority, the far less lucrative benefit package will limit GM’s cost for those employees to $25.65 an hour.

So not only do they make a substantial amount of money for doing basically unskilled factory work, they receive a substantial benefits package including a pension. I didn’t even know people still got pensions. I cannot imagine making $28 an hour to work on an assembly line and not have to put one single penny of that money into a 401K for my retirement.

It must be nice.

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On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church.

“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories about members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard,” he said in a telephone interview from Orem, Utah.

In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.

So Alan Ashton, a man who doesn’t live in California, who made a fortune selling word processing software — coincidentally enough, I have to think that at least some of those WordPerfect users were gay — was directed by his tax exempt church to donate a vast sum of money to an organization dedicated to denying a basic civil right to a whole group of people.

I’ve got a huge problem with that.

I have nothing against Mormons. I’ve known quite a few over the years and I’m hard pressed to think of even one Mormon who I didn’t like on a personal level. With that said, I detest the fact that they have used their church to facilitate stripping a basic civil right to so many people with no connection to them whatsoever.

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I then remembered something in the email about the coupon being able to be used online as well as in person in the store.  I decided to go ahead and place the order through the Borders website. My local Borders only had one copy of the book I wanted and I didn’t want to chance them selling that one copy before I could get over there and buy it.

Ordering the book through their website was easy enough. Because my purchase totaled over $25, it was eligible for free shipping. I also had the choice of having the book delivered to my home or having it delivered to my local Borders store. I thought it over and decided to have the book shipped to my local Hagerstown Borders. I figured that if I had it shipped to my house, I most likely wouldn’t be home at the time it was delivered and I would probably have to go either to FedEx or UPS and pick it up. If I had to pick it up, the Hagerstown Borders would have been easier then any of the other possibilities.

I placed my order on October 31. It’s now November 17 and I still have not received my book. I’ve contacted Borders three times now, but I have yet to receive any kind of response. Here is the latest message I sent them:

It’s been 17 days now and I still have not received my book. The email you sent to me states that it should have taken 3-8 business days to have my book delivered to my local Borders, but every time I check the status by clicking the link you provided, it shows the book is still in in a FedEx sorting station in Edison, NJ. It’s shows that it’s been there since Nov. 5.

9102901001212500971691

Please refund the money I spent on this book I never received.

In closing, I have ordered books from Amazon and even Wal-Mart. I have never had a problem with either one of these two companies. The first time I purchase something from Borders, you cannot even ship my purchase to one of your own stores.

If you click on the above link, it takes you to the FedEx website. It shows that my purchase has been sitting in New Jersey since November 5. If they don’t reply to this third request, I’m going to have to contact my credit card company and request a chargeback.

Do yourself a huge favor this holiday season and avoid ordering anything from Borders.com. Not only did they not deliver my book, they are now ignoring me.  Who needs that?

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Just when I thought Paramount Studios was incapable of passing up an opportunity to make a nickle from anything Star Trek related, they turn around and make remastered versions of classic Star Trek episodes available for free on the CBS website.

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