After highlighting Hot Stove #300 as a milestone, I got some clever responses in the form of baseball statistic comparisons. This sent me down a series of rabbit holes on the internet, and I kept running into George Brett connections. With a newsletter mostly read by Royals fans, I feel compelled to share. And if you tire of the numbers talk, you will still have Morganna and Lonnie’s Jukebox.
“Happy 300th, Lonnie. An Iron Horse!”: From Kansas City Star sportswriter Vahe Gregorian.
The reference to Iron Horse is of course to Lou Gehrig who from 1925 to 1939 played in 2,130 straight games for the Yankees. My 300 Hot Stove posts are nowhere near that number unless…Hot Stove is counted in dog years. That would make #300 equivalent to 2,100 games. And when I get to Hot Stove #305, I will pass Lou Gehrig. In my dreams.
Gehrig’s record was broken by Cal Ripken Jr. who from 1982 to 1998 played in 2,632 straight games for the Orioles and earned his nickname “Iron Man.” To match Ripken in dog years, Hot Stove will need to reach #376. I’ll soon be 85. We’ll see.
Ripken was often linked to George Brett in superstar comparisons. Each played 21 seasons, and they overlapped for 13 seasons (1981-1993). Brett played his whole career with the Royals (1973-1993), and Ripken did the same with the Orioles (1981-2001).
In his career, Brett had 3,154 hits. Ripken, 3,148. Brett had 1,583 runs, Ripken, 1,695. George was MVP in 1980 and led the Royals to the AL pennant. Cal was MVP in 1983 and led the Orioles to the AL pennant. Fleer issued a set of cards for “Dueling Duos” in 2002, and this one paired Ripken and Brett.
Brett was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1999 with the fourth-highest voting percentage in history (98.2), trailing Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan and Ty Cobb. In 2007, Ripken passed Brett with 98.5%.
And now the pinnacle of shared experience. Morganna (“The Kissing Bandit”) was known for jumping out of the stands and running to kiss players. Two of her most famous “victims” were George Brett and Cal Ripken.
George was twice on the receiving end, both in the Kingdome in Seattle. The first time was in a regular season game in 1977. Two years later, Morganna kissed George before a national TV audience at the 1979 All-Star game (video here; only a glimpse of George at the plate before she starts her getaway).
Cal Ripken got his smooch in 1988 (video here).
One more Morganna story. On Opening Day at the Houston Astrodome in 1985, she jumped onto the field and headed toward pitcher Nolan Ryan who knelt on one knee to receive his kiss. Morganna was arrested and charged with trespass. Her attorney, the famous Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, said Morganna was an innocent victim of gravity. The buxom Morganna was just leaning over the rail, and the laws of gravity took over, causing her to topple onto the field. When police started chasing her, she instinctively ran to the safety of the pitcher. I doubt the district attorney bought this, but the charges were dropped. Video here (includes courthouse clips and a sample of Morganna’s real job, exotic dancing, which got a ton of publicity from her on-field antics).
Remember the listing above of the top five Hall of Fame vote percentages as of 2007? Cobb, Seaver, Brett, Ripken and Ryan. Morganna kissed three of them.
“Lonnie and Rita, Congratulation on achieving #300. I’d give it a WAR of 10.0.” From my Sigma Nu fraternity brother Bob Graham (and younger brother of my lifelong friend – since kindergarten – Jim Graham).
There are two ways to look at Bob’s WAR of 10.0. If it’s career WAR, the ten years of Hot Stove would average out at 1.0 – a major leaguer, but not a star. If it’s a season WAR, it’s quite the compliment when you consider the levels of WAR for a season:
For example, let’s look at the top three WAR players from 2024: Aaron Judge, 10.9; Bobby Witt Jr., 9.6; and Shohei Ohtani, 9.0. Judge (AL) and Ohtani (NL) were the MVPs that year.
The top 100 WAR seasons for position players (non-pitchers) range from 9.4 to 14.1. Here are the top ten:
Six of these were in the 1920s, the first decade of the live ball era. Two were by Barry Bonds, still not in the HOF for steroid use. Kudos to Yaz and Cal for making the top ten.
Tied for 999th on that all-time list is George Brett’s 1980 MVP season with a WAR of 9.4. The amazing thing about that 9.4 was that George only played in 117 games because of injuries. WAR is a cumulative number that grows during the season as the batting, fielding and running stats accumulate. If George had played an injury-free season at the same pace, his WAR would have been 13.0, Babe Ruth territory. Below are the Royals top ten. Go Bobby!
“One of your best. You’re hitting way over .400, let alone .300, and your WAR is infinity.”: From Red Sox fan Norman Shacat.
For a WAR of infinity, I’d have to play all nine positions and win the World Series. So, let’s instead look at the .400 comment. It would naturally come from a Red Sox fan since Ted Williams was the last player to bat .400 in a season (.406 in 1941). It was quite the year. Williams was beat out for MVP by Joe DiMaggio who had a 56-game hitting streak. Both players would later miss three seasons (1942-1944) to serve in WWII.
In 1980, George Brett famously pursued Williams, finishing at .390, the highest MLB average since 1941. Royals fans were enthralled with the team working toward its first pennant and witnessing Brett’s MVP season, maybe best shown by this photo from August 17 when he went 4-for-4 to raise his average to .401. George peaked at .407 on August 26 and stayed above .400 until September 19.
Shout-Out to Tony Gwynn: In 1994, Tony Gwynn hit .394 for the San Diego Padres. But his chase for .400 was cut short when a players’ strike ended the season on August 11.
“Hot Stove 302. Now batting over 300. Well above the Mendoza line!!!!”: From Bill Wakefield, raised in KC (now in CA) and a major league pitcher with the Mets in 1964.
Bill was responding to Hot Stove #302 but with a carryover thought from #300. As for the “Mendoza Line,” we again find a major George Brett presence.
Mario Mendoza played nine MLB seasons as a “good field/no hit” shortstop. In 1979, he was with the Seattle Mariners, and his early season was typical with his average hovering around .200. Mario’s Seattle teammates Tom Paciorek and Bruch Botche kidded with George Brett (also off to a slow start), “Hey, man, you’re going to sink down below the Mendoza Line if you’re not careful.”
Brett than became responsible for popularizing the term when he talked about it an interview picked up by ESPN’s Chris Berman who started using it on SportsCenter (the equivalent of going viral in those days). Although the term is usually thought to mean an average of .200, the original “line” was whatever Mendoza’s average was at the time. George is quoted as saying, “First thing I look for in the Sunday papers is who is hitting below the Mendoza Line.”
Although batting average has faded in importance compared to WAR, the Mendoza Line has endured as a measure of batting futility. And its use has grown to describe other metrics or performances below a minimum standard of expectation. A 10-year U.S. note below 2%. A film with less than $2,000 per-theater average upon release. Reaching a “political Mendoza Line,” like when a president falls below 40% approval. A GPA below a certain level. The “Vicky Mendoza Line” from How I Met Your Mother (video here).
All thanks to George Brett. In the Topps MLB series for 2024, the 310-card collection included ten “legendary” players. One of them was George Brett, and on the reverse side of his card, check out his “Fun Box” where you might have expected the Pine Tar Game.
George and Lonnie (Sort of): Two months after Morganna kissed George Brett in the Kingdome at the All-Star Game, he entered into a contract with four guys to open a bar/restaurant in Brookside (on 63rd, the location for the former Pink Poodle). One of the guys was a good friend of George, and he brought the rest of us in as potential organizers/investors. The bar was to be called GB5 (as in George’s uniform number). I remember George joking that we should not name it E5 (the scoreboard symbol for an error by a third baseman). I still have the contract, signature page below.
The deal fell through, but it was still a win-win-win-win: (i) I have a unique George Brett autograph; (ii) none of us lost any money, the normal result when amateurs get in the bar business; (iii) the old Pink Poodle became Charlie Hooper’s, a decades-long success with good operators; and (iv) George hit .390 the next season.
March Madness: The Michigan Wolverines won the 2026 NCAA Basketball Championship, beating Connecticut 69-63. The last time Michigan won was in 1989 when the Final Four was played in the Kingdome (ten years after Morganna kissed George in the building). Rita and I were in the Kingdome for that Final Four with our friends Rich and Mary (Molly) Ellison. Close game, won by Michigan over Seton Hall, 80-79.
Lonnie’s Jukebox – John Shipp, Poster Man: The idea for this edition of Lonnie’s Jukebox began with an article sent to me by John Shipp. But before getting to the music selections, I have a new story about John. He was featured in Lonnie’s Jukebox in Hot Stove #246 where I covered his colorful career in the movie business: Film distributor/booker, theater owner (Bijou), filmmaker, cofounder (with Butch Rigby) of the KC Film Society and Thank You Walt Disney (leading to the current restoration of the building where Walt Disney worked in the 1920s). There is cool documentary about him (The Film Peddler) available on Amazon ($1). My favorite line from John, “I made around $22 million distributing independent films in the ‘70s. Unfortunately, I spent $23 million.
During that long career, John collected some 3,000 movie posters. The octogenarian has decided to devote a good amount of his retirement time (and money) to preserving the collection. He has started by mounting about 300 of the posters on backing boards for display, and last Thursday at the Waldo Café, he exhibited his work to date. Those of us in attendance were awed by the depth of the collection.
I’ll let John explain his long-term plan:
We first will save these priceless movie images by mounting them on museum quality/totally reversible backing. This will allow us to easily exhibit them like we did recently at the Waldo Cafe. Naomi and I have spent the last four decades assembling this grouping. It’s mostly posters from the last 75 years, and it includes every genre and many different sizes.
Our partner in this project, by name the Shipp & Rigby Collection, is the inestimable V.H. “Butch” Rigby, who will add his unique collection into the mix after we make the journey through the Shipp posters. This collection will remain right here in Kansas City where it is being assembled. What incredible fun is this!
Thank you, John!
And now to John’s jukebox idea. He sent me a Substack article by Eric Spitznagel titled “The Women in Famous Songs Respond.” The article imagines how women in songs might respond to guys with guitars who usually get the final word. He got the idea while discussing the song “Brandy”: “The sailor in the song tells Brandy she’d make a fine wife, that she’s wonderful, that any man would be lucky to have her, and then explains he won’t be that man, because he belongs to the sea. He sails away and somehow ends up the romantic hero…Brandy, as far as the song is concerned, just has to stand there and take it.”
“Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass. I’ve always liked this song (and the line “she works laying whiskey down”). But maybe Brandy deserved more consideration. Here is how she might have responded according to Spitznagel’s article:
He told me I’d make a fine wife, said it right to my face, and then got on a boat, and I kept his name on a locket around my neck for ten years like an idiot while he was out there being romantic and free and married to the sea, which is not a thing you can be married to, which is not a real marriage, which means he was just a man who didn’t want to commit to anything with a pulse and had the nerve to make that sound poetic, and I closed the bar every night and walked home alone through a silent town wearing his name on a chain, and the song about this situation became a number one hit, and everyone who heard it felt sorry for him. F**k that guy. Seriously, f**k him.
“Maggie May” by Rod Stewart (now 81, he will be performing at Morton Amphitheater in Riverside on August 15). This is a great song, but it deserves some scrutiny. Listen to Rod Stewart’s lyrics after reading Maggie May’s side as imagined by Eric Spitznagel:
He describes it like it was an Amber Alert. I gave him a lift from a party, we ended up back at my place, and then the cheap little bastard simply never left. That’s the whole story. I didn’t lure him into my car…I offered him a lift in the rain and somehow that became a federal kidnapping case set to acoustic guitar…You want to know how much he contributed to the utility bills in all the months he lived in my house? Zero…The “using” accusation is the one that genuinely makes me want to overturn a table. I paid the mortgage. I bought the groceries…He contributed to this household exactly nothing except himself, which, I’m sorry, is not the transaction he seems to think it is…He wants to write a song about being the innocent party, corrupted by an older woman, dragged into something he never chose… But some of us don’t get to write the song. Some of us just get to be in it.
Spitznagel’s article covers other songs (click here), but I’m going to switch over now to some of the women’s names I heard in my younger days.
“Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen. This is the rare song where the subject gave a very specific response. Cohen was clearly a fan of Suzanne…”And you want to travel with her/and you want to travel blind…for you’ve touched her perfect body/with your mind.” But it was only the mind. Suzanne Verdal’s take years later, “I was the one that put the boundaries on that. Somehow, I didn’t want to spoil that preciousness, that infinite respect that I have for him…I felt that a sexual encounter might demean it somehow.” The two moved on with their lives, but the song remains a treasure. As one pundit noted about the song, “Unlike people, great songs do not age.”
“Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The song was in reference to Peggy Sue Gerron, the girlfriend (and future wife) of Jerry Allison, the drummer in the Crickets. In Gerron’s memoir (Whatever happened to Peggy Sue?), she said she first heard the song in a live performance in 1957 and was “so embarrassed, I could have died.”
“Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond. Neil has said the lyrics are about his then-wife Marcia Murphey, but “Caroline” filled his need for a three-syllable name to fit the melody (and was also the name of 11-year-old Caroline Kennedy). I hope that the Caroline in the song appreciates her name being belted out in the 8th inning of every Red Sox game at Fenway Park.
“Barbara Ann” by the Regents. My main memory of this song is Ray Webb (RIP) often greeting our friend Barbara Ann Reres with the song’s hook, “Bar, Bar, Bar, Bar, Barbara Ann.” Barbara was not amused. As for the Barbara Ann of the song title, she was the younger sister of one of the Regents. The Beach Boys did a popular cover.
[In 1980, during the Iran hostage crises, there were parodies of the song with the hook changed to “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” Déjà vu.]
“Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers. I’ll bet Cathy has a whole different take than Don and Phil.
“Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac. I never really understood this song, but I like it. Also never knew a girl named Rhiannon. But who would want to be named after a mythological goddess who Stevie Nicks called “an old Welsh witch.” The goddess was unable to be reached for a response.
“Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” by John Fred and his Playboy Band. A #1 hit that was a spoof of the Beatles “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which John Fred misheard as “Lucy in disguise.” The song has nonsensical lyrics (“cross your heart with your living bra”) inspired by a woman wearing large sunglasses (her disguise). There is no Judy for a response – the name was just a play on Lucy.
“Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel (Paul Simon, now 84, will be at Starlight Theater on June 16). The song is full of laments. “…you’re breaking my heart…shaking my confidence daily.” Don’t know Cecilia’s side of this, but time for the boys to let her go.
“Lovely Rita” by the Beatles. Saved the best for last. Not necessarily the best song, but the best name in my life. Paul McCartney says he based the song on a meter maid he saw working in London. He was not complimentary about her fashion, “In a cap she looked much older/And the bag across her shoulder/Made her look like a military man.”
My wife (and Hot Stove managing editor) Rita has a response to Paul. No matter the age, just be sure to wear your cap “with Hattitude.”
Walk-Off Photos – Jo Adell: On April 4, in one of the top fielding displays of all time, Jo Adell of the Los Angeles Angels robbed the Seattle Mariners of three home runs (video here).
On the third one, he fell into the stands and stood up to show the umpire he had the ball. This cell phone photo was taken by an Angels fan and went viral.
The Angels fan was Kayleigh Kraus, mother of five, who can be seen below in the blue top between Adell’s tumbling legs and the foul pole. By the time Adell got back up, Kayleigh was ready to snap her photo.
I love the reaction of the Angels fans. Reminds me of the opposite reaction of Mets fans who watched in horror when Eric Hosmer made his mad dash for home plate in the 2015 World Series.
And this again brings us to George Brett. There are two people in the stands not reacting in horror. In the upper right corner of the photo, Leslie Brett is leaning out to watch the play, and her husband George is cheering on Hosmer (closeup below).
