Greatest Song Evah 7/11/25

Fantasy

Fantasy is not the best Earth, Wind & Fire song. That would be September. But it is the most representative EWF song. It perfectly epitomizes every element that made them what they were. The wonderful vocal interplay between the radically different timbres of Phillip Bailey and Maurice White. The spiritually uplifting lyrics. The broad range of featured instruments in the mix. It’s about as well produced of a record as one could possibly hope for.

There is something unusual about the way the specific instruments are utilized. The horns are sharp and piercing. The strings are subtle. The bass thumps so hard. The drums pull you in as if they were the world’s most powerful magnet. And my gosh, Phillip Bailey. Did he ever sound better than he does here, hitting notes that seem outside the range that a mere mortal could reach? His wordless harmonizing in the song’s fade is a work of art.

Fantasy came out in late 1977 as EWF was in the midst of their creative and commercial peak. They were just as much of a visual feast as they were an aural one. With ~ 75 members in the band (probably a slight exaggeration) decked out in brightly colored garments, they added a great deal of aesthetic value to the proceedings. This song in particular is one that is virtually impossible to listen to without breaking out into a huge smile. It makes you want to gather up your peeps and live love forever as one.

Voting On the Hall - Part 1

If I had access to a DeLorean with a functional flux capacitor I would do all the standard stuff that everywhere claims they would do if they could travel through time. Yes, I would find a way to prevent the JFK assassination, I would invest in Apple stock, I would introduce myself to Sheena Easton, etc. You know, the classic stuff. I would add one other task to my to-do list. I would travel to early in the 20th century and convince the powers that be to create a Baseball Hall Of Fame, because so many of the issues with the induction process originate with the fact that it took way too long to create the institution.

I would not travel alone, either. I would bring Sean Forman with me so that he could use the technology of the time to create a rudimentary version of Baseball Reference. That way voters would have access to the information they would need to make informed decisions. I would also bring Mike Petriello so that he could point out which data points are the most informative, and he would present that information in an entertaining way. Finally I would bring Sarah Langs so that she could dive even deeper into the reams of data while reminding everyone that Baseball Is The Best. Now that I think about it, that is more people than can comfortably fit into a DeLorean. We would need to time travel via a TARDIS instead.

The Hall held its first election in 1936, or a full 60 years following the formation of the National League. The initial 5 inductees - Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, & Honus Wagner - were all indisputable legends, but it’s better to look at this another way. Let’s say that in 2007 MLB had decided that baseball in the segregated era was nothing more than glorified exhibition ball. It wasn’t really major league baseball until the league was integrated, and therefore that should be reflected in the list of inductees. So, they would start all over from scratch.

OK, it’s that same time frame of 60 years later. Who would be the first set of 5 inductees? Willie Mays and Henry Aaron are the 2 most obvious, and Ted Williams had played enough of his career after 1947 that he would be eligible under this new policy. Can’t forget Stan Musial or Mickey Mantle, nor could you forget Frank Robinson or Roberto Clemente. Hold on, what about Mike Schmidt, Joe Morgan, and Johnny Bench? Cal Ripken Jr. & Yogi Berra? Thank goodness Rickey Henderson hadn’t yet been retired for 5 years, otherwise that would’ve been yet another name to add to the list.

Oh crud, I haven’t even thought of any pitchers yet. Surely Tom Seaver and Warren Spahn need to be among the first batch of inductees. So do Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton, not to mention Sandy Koufax. This was a long-winded way of saying that not only is it impossible to take 60 years of great players and narrow it down to only 5, but the backlog is so humongous that Hall selectors would face a Sisyphean task with no hope of ever catching up.

Therefore, if someone had been wise enough to create the Hall decades earlier, then dozens of worthy names would have been inducted well before 1936. I’ll dig into this a little more deeply in future posts; I’ll discuss some of the history of past inductions and how the lack of easy accessibility to the game’s statistical record had resulted in certain players taking much longer to get in than they should have. By the same token there are a number of inductees who got in via the “fame” part of the name. They were well known enough at the time, but closer scrutiny shows that their honors were not warranted. Apologies in advance to Tinker, Evers, and Chance.

NASCAR Check-In

There are only 7 races left to go in the regular season before the points reset at the start of the playoffs. 16 drivers qualify for the playoffs - any full-time driver who wins a race, and the remaining field is filled with the non-winners who had accumulated the most points during the regular season. Every year at some point people wonder what would happen if more than 17 drivers win a race, but inevitably enough drivers go on a run of victories so that there are a sufficient number with multiple wins to make the point moot. This year it is once again starting to get a little dicey; there was a recent stretch of 9 races which included 7 men winning their first race of the season and therefore locking up a playoff spot - theoretically. 12 men have won, that leaves 4 open spots to be filled in these 7 races. If there are 5 or more new winners…

This year NASCAR also joined the bandwagon of adding some midseason gimmickry to generate a little more interest. Much like the NBA & WNBA in-season tournaments, NASCAR has added an in-season bracket. 32 drivers were ranked and essentially faced each other head to head in an elimination tourney held over 5 weeks. Whichever man finishes ahead of the other in each race survives and advances to the next round. There are 2 structural problems. First off, how can one possibly follow 16 separate races within the race in week 1? At least now that it is down to the last 8, there are only 4 mini-competitions to keep track of. Second, the first 3 tracks in the tournament are all non-standard tracks which lend themselves to strange results. Week 1 was Atlanta, a drafting track. That creates pack racing, and the chances for a massive crash which wipes out a large portion of the field are quite high. That’s exactly what happened, so a huge number of favorites lost in week 1. Week 2 was the Chicago street course; not all of the drivers are strong on street or road courses. More upsets, and the highest remaining seed right now is the 6 seed. This weekend is the Sonoma road course, upsets are once again likely. I don’t know if this tournament will really stir up much interest if virtually all of the drivers that the casual fan would know have already been eliminated.

One of the ongoing off-track stories this year has concerned the lawsuit that 2 teams have filed against NASCAR in regards to the charter system. This article explains the basics fairly well, but in brief there have long been complaints that the charter system, which guarantees a starting spot in each race for the 32 cars which have purchased those charters, is monopolistic. Two teams, one of which is the team that Michael Jordan co-owns, had filed a lawsuit. It is still ongoing, but as things stand right now the 6 cars that these 2 teams run could be in danger of losing their charters as early as next week. That means they would no longer have their guaranteed starting spots, but that’s not much of an issue because there are almost never more than the maximum number of drivers attempting to qualify for an individual race. The bigger problem is that the purses are smaller for non-chartered teams. This story bears further watching,

A Lovely Day At Wrigley

Lee Elia was the textbook definition of the term “baseball man.” His major league playing career was brief and uneventful, but he served as a coach for almost 3 decades, coaching for 6 teams in total. He also had brief managerial stints leading the Cubs & Phillies. That makes him no different from dozens of men with similar résumés. There is one key difference which will make him remembered forever. An entire baseball life has been reduced to one 3 minute long outburst.

While managing the Cubs, Elia produced one of the most legendary tirades in history. Following a loss on an April day in 1983, Elia went off on a profanity laden diatribe directed towards the Cubs fans. This was in the days before lights had been installed at Wrigley Field, so all Cubs home games were day games, and Elia let the booing fans have it. “Eighty five percent of the f***ing world is working. The other fifteen come here.” It’s a tale as old as time. If you try to start a fight with your own fan base, you are not going to win. He would be fired before the end of that season. ** Warning: clip is NOT safe for work, but you probably knew that already. **

Is it better to be remembered for something so embarrassing, or is better to fade away into relative obscurity? You decide. Elia died this week at the age of 87. Every obituary that I have seen led with a reference to his rant. Hell, if it wasn’t for the rant I likely would not have bothered to mention his passing. As Oscar Wilde said, there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

50 Years Ago - Good Morning America

Saturday Night Live was not the only long surviving television institution which made its debut in 1975. It was in that same year that ABC fully committed to competing during the weekday morning time slot and took on the mighty Today Show. While doing the research I had completely forgotten that ABC had premiered a morning show earlier in the year which leaned heavily towards serious news. It failed miserably, but now that ABC had established a minor footprint, the network reconsidered their approach to the morning wars.

Taking a page from the “happy talk” that was becoming popular on local stations, Good Morning America was light on hard news, heavy on entertainment and lifestyle. Instead of a set which resembled a newsroom, the set was designed to look like a living room. Instead of importing hosts from the network news division, actor David Hartman served as the primary host. Actress Nancy Dussault was part of the initial team, but she was not billed as a co-host. The earliest women on the show were more sidekicks than equal partners. It wasn’t until Joan Lunden arrived that Hartman’s female colleague was classified as an equal co-host, and even that did not happen until several years into her tenure.

GMA was heavily promoted as an alternative to the comparatively stodgy Today Show. To be clear, it’s not as if Today was exactly a Walter Cronkite level show, after all a chimpanzee was part of the original cast. But at least in this period, the news to fluff ratio was much higher on Today than it was on original recipe GMA. Television shows evolve over time; in the half century since, Today’s tone has gotten lighter, particularly in the later hours, whereas GMA has gradually grown more serious. I can’t say that I watch morning news very closely; if I have it on at all it is Today but it’s more background noise than anything else. Having said that I would strongly suspect that there is little difference between the 2 shows nowadays.

In this case it’s a great example of how competition is a good thing. Keeping in mind that morning news shows are an odd beast, the two programs, which have each taken their turns with prolonged leads in the ratings, have brought out the best in each other.

BTW, in case you’re interested current anchor Robin Roberts is the longest tenured GMA host. Joan Lunden is still second, but George Stephanopolous is close to surpassing her. OG David Hartman ranks 4th.

Closing Laughs

That ties a bow on yet another week. Hope you all made it through intact. Have a great weekend all you good people, and I will see you again on Monday.