We here at FishOn, like all good pandemic doobies, are trying to do our part with a campaign of buying all meals, groceries and beverages locally. We’re using the Ed Muskie template from the 1972 New Hampshire primary. Anybody got a flatbed truck we can borrow?
Beyond gasoline and the usual flotsam, vittles and victuals are about all we’ve purchased in the last two months. We’re starting to look like Cousin It and there are sundry ju-ju that needs tending. It just seems the way to roll as we stroll through the gardens of shared sacrifice. Though, we must admit, it doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice when we get so much good stuff in return.
Take last Thursday. Nice warm and sunny day. The harbor glittering. The Siberian winds of the early spring were gone and it felt normal. Better than normal. It felt like a fissure of hope opened in the sky to ready us for the stretch run.
At lunchtime, we walked up to Jeff’s Variety on Eastern Avenue and treated ourselves to a couple of lobster rolls. As you might expect, they were top-shelf yummy, eaten at home with vinegar and sea salt potato chips, a pickle and something cold out of what appeared to be a red and white can.
A walk with the boys on the state fish pier. Then an extended after-work perambulation, sans those oldtime puppies, along the waterfront and past Good Harbor Beach before the turn for home.
A libation with our pal Ozie. For dinner, we bake-stuffed some fresh haddock from the G-men at Fisherman’s Wharf to complete the daily-double of deliciousness.
And when we were done, we thought what we always think on days like that: Given the choice, why on earth would you live anywhere else? We once lived in Waterloo, Iowa. Just sayin’. Go Hawkeyes.
We miss baseball quiz questions
This being Memorial Day, when the ball lads of the golden age always played doubleheaders along with July 4 and Labor Day, we will celebrate with a double-dip of the We Miss Baseball Quiz.
Question #1 — On this date in 1981, Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski played in his 3,000th game in an 8-7 win over the Cleveland Indians in which Yaz also scored the winning run in the ninth on a single by Carney — Cahnnie! — Lansford. Only three other players beat Yaz to 3,000 games. Who are they?
Question #2 — On this date in 1935, Babe Ruth hit his 714th career home run. What ballpark was the site of his final round-tripper?
Both answers safely social distancing down below.
McKiernan takes reins at DMF
The Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game sounds more like a menagerie than a governmental agency, but we assure you it is staffed only with homo sapiens. Maybe a couple of shapeshifters. Still, good folk.
On Thursday, the department, which oversees the Division of Marine Fisheries, elevated longtime DMF staffer Dan McKiernan to succeed David E. Pierce as DMF executive director.
To us and many others, McKiernan seemed the natural choice for the job when Pierce retired last fall. No idea why it took Fish & Game so long to fill the gig. That’s the problem with homosapiens. Highly inscrutable. And don’t get us started on the shapeshifters. But, in the end, we think they got it right.
McKiernan has worked at DMF for 35 years, beginning as a field biologist in 1985. He has represented DMF on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and is chairman of the Massachusetts Shellfish Initiative. He has wide experience with the management of both commercial and recreational fisheries and served as interim executive director since Pierce’s retirement.
Huzzah for him.
Lobsters at Carnival?
This is something interesting that came over the transom last week, which is where we get 80% of our news. Get yourself a transom. Better than that internet thing. Way cheaper. According to the Seafood Export USA – Northeast agency, our region’s lobstermen and wholesalers may have a new international market for their live American lobsters.
The agency, which promotes the expansion of international markets for American seafood and agricultural products, said that as of May 4, U.S. seafood wholesalers now can ship their live American lobsters to Brazil. That’s Homarus americanus, if you’re scoring at home in Latin or, like us, a former altar boy.
The wholesalers must be approved by the USDC NOAA Seafood Inspection Program and hit a host of other export requirements, which can be found at www.fisheries.noaa.gov.
With Europe still largely closed off because of tariffs and China just now reopening, a new international market is just what the doctor — believed, under the cloak of immunity, to be F/V Dog & I skipper Doc Herrick — ordered to help mitigate market damage elsewhere.
We miss baseball quiz answers
Answer #1 — The first three players to 3,000 games were Ty Cobb (3,034), Stan Musial (3,026) and Hammerin’ Hank Aaron (3,298) Yaz, with 3,308 games, remains second in all-time games played to leader Pete Rose, who has 3,562. Play that number.
Answer #2 — Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Bambino, then 40, was in his last season and closing out his mythic career with the Boston Braves. He played in only 28 games that year. But on this date, he shook down the thunder, going 4-for-4, with three home runs and a single in an 11-7 loss to the Pirates.
Ruth’s final homer, off right-handed reliever Guy Bush, was, well, Ruthian.
“I said the next time I face him I’m going to blow three straight fastballs right by him,” Bush said in reference to facing Ruth after surrendering No. 713 earlier in the game. “And that’s what I started out to do. I got the first one by him all right. But the second one … well, he got ahold of that and hit it clear over the triple deck, clear out of the ballpark in right-center. I’m telling you, it was the longest cockeyed ball I ever saw hit in my life.”
You just didn’t mess with George Herman. Even if he wasn’t really a sultan.
As always, no fish were harmed in the making of this column.
Contact Sean Horgan at 978-675-2714, or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanGDT.
