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Not a challenge, but certainly trivia. Just in case there's one person out there who ever wondered about this. (I mean, I wondered about it, and I'm not that weird.)


You know the song, "Please Come to Boston", by Dave Loggins? Covered by Kenny Chesney? Song's about a guy who moves around a lot; seems to be some kind of musician. Every place he goes he tries to get this girl from back home to join him, now that he's become so successful, but she disdains his hollow celebrity life and says that he should come back to her instead. The song has three stanzas, one for Boston, one for Denver, and one for L.A.

So I was wondering if maybe there was a ballplayer that song could be about. You know, if you ignore the musician thing. The perfect ballplayer to fit the description of the song would be a guy who played for, in order, the Red Sox, the Rockies, and the Dodgers (or the Angels), and who was from Tennessee (like the guy in the song).

I checked on bb-ref. There isn't really such a guy.

There are a few players who played for all three of those teams, but they're not really satisfactory.

Dennys Reyes started off with the Dodgers, then spent a few years with the Reds before a relatively brief stop in Colorado, after which he pitched for a whole lot of teams before winding up with the Red Sox this year. He's from Mexico.

Pedro Astacio also gets the teams backwards: Dodgers for a few years, Colorado for a few years, then a bunch of teams at the end of his career, including five pretty bad games with the Red Sox. Astacio is from the Dominican Republic.

Kent Mercker was mostly known for being a Brave, but after that he moved around quite a bit, and at one point had stints with, consecutively, the Red Sox, Angels, and Rockies. Of course, he also went back to Atlanta, and seems to have been a Red three or four different times, among other things, plus he's from Ohio.

Dante Bichette at least had lengthy terms of service with all three teams, even if he did get them in the wrong order: three seasons as an Angel, two as a Brewer, seven with Colorado, part of a season with Cincinnati, then a season and change with the Red Sox. Bichette is from Florida.

Darren Oliver is the only guy to get the teams in the right order. His CV has these franchises on it: Tex-StL-Tex-Bos-Col-Fla-Hou-NYM-LAA-Tex. A three-time Ranger; think of that. Oliver is from Missouri by way of California.

Now you know. I hope this article satisfies all of your Dave-Loggins-related baseball needs.
Rambling Boy | 11 comments | Create New Account
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Magpie - Tuesday, June 28 2011 @ 01:45 PM EDT (#237657) #
My first thought was - didn't Chuck Berry write the perfect song for this sort of travelogue? Our hero, born in Norfolk Virginia, starts out riding the buses in the Carolina League - Raleigh, Charlotte. (He gets a glimpse of Atlanta, but his next stop is actually Birmingham.) Then it's off to New Orleans - with a brief stopover in Houston - en route to Albuquerque, before arriving in Los Angeles. The promised land calling!

And the poor boy is on the line.

Major leaguers born in Norfolk? David Wright, Michael Cuddyer, Justin and B.J. Upton - but, alas. No one with this story!
Mick Doherty - Tuesday, June 28 2011 @ 01:50 PM EDT (#237658) #

by Dave Loggins? Covered by Kenny Chesney

Does this unofficially and by proxy make it a Kenny/Loggins song?

Matthew E - Tuesday, June 28 2011 @ 01:56 PM EDT (#237660) #
If you need it to be, Mick, we can call it that.
JohnL - Tuesday, June 28 2011 @ 02:37 PM EDT (#237667) #
Well, Chuck never landed in one of those towns. He woke up "high over Albequerque", while "working on a t-bone steak a la carty". One of my favourite Berry lines (which is saying something)
Magpie - Tuesday, June 28 2011 @ 07:14 PM EDT (#237695) #
Albuquerque.

Details, details. (As always, far too much of my mental attention was focused on spelling it correctly.)

Oh, it's always been a magical kind of place to me, from the moment I first heard of it. From Bugs Bunny speculating that he "shoulda toined left at Alba-Kirky", to Neil Young figuring that he had time to roll a number and rent a car...
Matthew E - Tuesday, June 28 2011 @ 10:24 PM EDT (#237708) #
Magpie, are you familiar with the comic book Blue Beetle? It's about a superhero, real name Jaime Reyes, who lives in El Paso. At one point during the comic a new artist, Rafael Albuquerque, took over the drawing. At the time Jaime and some of his friends were on a road trip, and writer John Rogers commemorated the new artist by entitling the issue where he took over by titling it "Left Turn at Albuquerque". (Good comic, too; comes with my highest recommendation.)
Magpie - Wednesday, June 29 2011 @ 03:13 AM EDT (#237716) #
Nah - I am comically illiterate? Ignorant of all things comical? There must be a good way to phrase that...

I'm familiar with John Rogers, though - the old Kung Fu monkey, of Leverage fame (I'll always watch a heist show), and - of course - the incisive mind behind the "27 percent factor."
Matthew E - Wednesday, June 29 2011 @ 09:11 AM EDT (#237718) #
That's the guy. How do you go about keeping up with Leverage? I haven't been able to come up with a better solution than waiting until the season ends and buying the DVDs. It's very frustrating.
Mick Doherty - Wednesday, June 29 2011 @ 10:41 AM EDT (#237725) #

Ignorant of all things comical?

Nah, I'd say you got that about right, sir. 8-)

Magpie - Wednesday, June 29 2011 @ 05:21 PM EDT (#237768) #
There's a new one to me. I had always seen that emoticon with a colon, but the numeral 8 is indeed better.

I generally watch Leverage on the computer. (Same with Real Time - if there's another way to even see Real Time in Canada, I'm not aware of it.)
Matthew E - Thursday, June 30 2011 @ 10:23 AM EDT (#237787) #
I've looked into watching Leverage on the computer, but I was unable to find a legal way of doing so. If I overlooked something I'd be thrilled to hear about it; my wife and I just polished off the Season 3 DVDs and are primed for Season 4.
Rambling Boy | 11 comments | Create New Account
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