Sal Maglie was almost homeless. The Barber without a shop? Incomprehensible. But last week I was showing the Redhead one of my favorite Web sites, www.baseball-reference.com, and found out that whoever it was who sponsored Sal's page on the thing had dropped out.
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I don't think I'm overstating when I say that every right-thinking person in the world should go to this Web site. Every guy who ever played in the Majors has his own page, with complete stats, going back more than a century. Your dad tells you Bob Lemon was a better pitcher than Rapid Robert Feller, because he saw them both pitch one year? Look it up. It'll take you two seconds, and Pops will go, "Aw, maybe that's right."
Type in any player's name and you'll be gifted with lifetime stats and in-depth analysis.
The guy who runs the site, Sean Forman his name is, makes a living on fans sponsoring the pages of individual players. The prices vary. To sponsor Babe Ruth might cost you a grand, if you could get it. On the other hand, sponsoring the "Medina Mauler," southpaw Carl Fischer, for a year is a bargain-basement five bucks.
I called Bruce and began to explain the indignity of Maglie being without a sponsor. Of course, I didn't have to. He knew Sal, and told me to write the check.
So, the next time you want to look up the Barber's lifetime record, see how he did with the Giants, Brooklyn or the Yankees, or read about his brief but interesting stints with Cleveland and St. Louis, just click on Sean Forman's Web site.
We've got it covered.
Was funny last week. We posted Staba's story about the AquaFalls sale on our Web site before noon on Monday, Dec. 13, and the Buffalo News and Niagara Gazette both led with it in their Tuesday editions.
A strange coincidence, don't you think?
It is a sad state of affairs when major metropolitan daily newspapers get scooped, regularly, by an upstart weekly that goes to press two days before it hits the streets. It happens here all the time, though, and methinks people are beginning to notice.
So here's a little present for our highly paid friends at the News and the Gazette. Just do your jobs, OK?
Congratulations are in order for Schools Superintendent Carmen Granto following the lopsided 1,547-282 vote that will allow the school district to float a $50 million bond issue that will finance a new Niagara Street School as well as improvements to the city's other 13 schools.
The best part of the plan, of course, is that it will cost Niagara Falls taxpayers exactly zero.
It will put our friends in the building trades to work for the next decade and benefit a generation of children here.
How Granto is able to conjure such magic when his counterparts at City Hall and the county Legislature seem like so many stumblebums is hard to guess. Are they stupid, or just high?
In any event, Carmen's Christmas present came directly from you, the Niagara Falls voters.
Our City Administrator Danny Bristol argued last week that we couldn't hire an engineer here because the pay was too low. He missed the chance to explain why we have a highly paid engineering assistant, related to Mayor Vince Anello, when we don't even have an engineer.
Every other city administration managed to find an engineer. That this one cannot is to their shame.
Earlier this year, Bristol argued that he, too, was entitled to a lot more money, a proposal wisely shot down by the City Council.
A property tax hike of 6 percent, the closing of the public library system next June and the criminal giveaway at the Hyde Park Golf Course are the things Bristol and his boss have to brag about during the first year of their administration.
For them, a lump of coal.
Finally, to all our readers -- here on the Niagara Frontier and points east, west, north and south -- I'd like to say happy Christmas, merry Hanukkah and glad tidings for Kwanzaa. I'm not much for the holidays myself, but the Redhead's going through her machinations and I understand that even some of my more jaded colleagues will be playing a role in various celebrations.
Be safe and be well.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 21 2004 |