See, Seattle Can Win... Just Not As Often As Others

Last week following the Seattle Sounders won the MLS Cup I had written a post about Seattle championships and I just realized that I did not save it but here is the best shot at what was in my original write up.

Now that the Sounders have won the MLS Cup Championship a team from Seattle has won a championship in every professional sport except for the Seattle Mariners. This list does not include college teams, minor league teams, semi-pro teams or leagues that only the most die-hard fan would know about (sorry women's soccer, rugby, lacrosse, ultimate Frisbee and roller derby), only the leagues/teams that were accepted as "Professional" or top league at the time they won their championship.

The Seattle Mariners were a MLB expansion team in 1976 and in the team’s 40 seasons between 1977 and 2016 they have gone to the playoffs four times, making it to the ALCS three times but they have never made it to the World Series.

The Seattle Supersonics were an NBA expansion team in 1967 and in the 40 seasons between 1967 and 2007, when the team was stolen, they went to the playoffs 22 times. The team made it to the NBA Finals three times; 1978, 1979 and 1996, winning the NBA Championship in 1979.

The Seattle Storm were a WNBA expansion in team in 2000 and in the 17 seasons between 2000 through 2016 they went to the playoffs 12 times making it to the WNBA Finals twice, winning both times in 2004 and 2010.

The Seattle Seahawks were an NFL expansion team in 1976 and in the 40 seasons between 1976 and 2016 they have gone to the playoffs 15 times. They have gone to the Super Bowl three times, 2005, 2013 and 2014, winning the NFL Championship in 2013.

The Seattle Sounders were a MLS expansion team in 2007 and beginning their first season in 2009, this is not counting the team’s origin in the NASL in 1974 and USL time since. In the 8 seasons between 2009 and 2016 they went to the playoffs each season. They have gone to the MLS Cup Finals once, winning this year. In addition to this championship they have been US Open Cup Champions four times and they won the Supporters’ Shield once.

Now you are probably thinking “But Corky, how can a team from Seattle win the Stanley Cup? There isn’t even a professional hockey team there”

Well the answer is the Seattle Metropolitans, the first American hockey team to win the Stanley Cup in 1917, twelve years before the Boston Bruins won the Cup in the NHL.

The Seattle Metropolitans were an expansion team in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) in 1915 and in the team’s 9 seasons between 1915-16 through 1923-24 they went to the playoffs 7 times. They made it to the Stanly Cup Final three times in 1916-17, 1918-19 and 1919-20, winning in 1916-17 and tying in 1918-19 with the Montreal Canadians. The Stanley Cup in 1918-19 was suspended with Seattle and Montreal tied 2-2-1 due to the Spanish Flu outbreak.

I can also include MMA/UFC fighters

Randy Couture is from Everett and went to school in Lynwood, both about 20 minutes north of Seattle. In his 14 year MMA career he was the UFC Heavyweight Champion three times, UFC Light Heavyweight Champion twice, the UFC Interim UFC Light Heavyweight once, the UFC 13 Heavyweight Tournament Champion and is in the UFC Hall of Fame.

Benson Henderson grew up in Federal Way (Where I lived half my life), about 20 minutes south of Seattle. In his 10-year MMA career he has been the WEC Lightweight Champion once, the WEC Interim Lightweight Champion once, UFC Lightweight Champion once and he fought for both the Bellator Welterweight Championship and Bellator Lightweight Championship in the last 8 months, losing both times.

How about a couple of wrestlers from the Evergreen state?

Greg “The Hammer” Valentine was born in Seattle and in his 37-year career wrestling mostly in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF/WWF/WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) he won over 20 Heavyweight Championships, 16 Tag-Team Championships and a dozen or so various championships. He is also in 4 different Hall of Fames.

Daniel Bryan is from Aberdeen, about 2 hours west of Seattle and is also the birth place of Kurt Cobain. Bryan wrestled professionally for 17 years, which includes 6 years in the WWE, and he won a number of championships. In the WWE he won the World Heavyweight Championship once, WWE Heavyweight Championship three times, Intercontinental Championship once, US Championship once and Tag-Team Championship once.

Seattle may not compare to New York, Boston, Montreal, Chicago or LA when it comes to championships but when you consider that when Seattle teams have made it to their respective Championship game/series they have gone a decent .545% (6 out of 11 chances not counting the 1918-19 Stanley Cup that ended in a tie). Occasionally the Emerald City teams can put up the big win.

Operating The Death Star Is Scary Expensive

I came across something so odd I never even took it in to consideration before I read this story.

 

Ovo Energy, a British gas and electricity supplier, decided to figure out the daily operating costs of the Death Star. They worked with physicist Stephen Skolnick and Dartmouth mathematics professor Alexander Barnett and broke down every aspect of what would be required to run a military base of this size and the number they came up with is insanely immense. The costs were in English pounds so I converted the numbers to US dollars.

 

It would take $7.8 octillion per day, that is $7,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 every single day. To put it in perspective, there is $70 trillion annually global economic activity so the Death Star would require 100% more in their daily costs than is exchanged on the Earth in a year.

Here are what specifications they used for the size:

Diameter: 75 miles

Equator: 234 miles
Total weight 907.2 trillion tons
 

Population:

General staff: 1,700,000
Imperial military: 343,000
Stormtroopers: 26,000
Total staff: @ 2,100,000
 

Here are some of the line item costs that would have to be taken in to consideration daily or weekly.

Daily electricity costs: $52 billion
Daily food costs: $296,668
Laundry costs per cycle: $232,562
Daily waste & recycle costs: $570148

Additional costs:

Hyperspace jumps: $110,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 each jump
Laser shot: $5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 each shot
Recharging the laser: $10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 each time to recharge

The total number of planets that the Empire rules is never stated in any of the canon storylines but in Wookiepedia it has been stated that the Star Wars galaxy is over 100,000 light years across, 50 million inhabited systems and 69 million colonies. People are going to be paying some series taxes to keep the Death Star up and running and none of this takes in to account the building costs, not just once but twice.

Here is the graphic that Ovo included on their website, here is their link <Original Story>

Vintage Card Of The Month: 1934 Basma Manfred von Richthofen

 

This month’s VCoM is another Richthofen card that comes from a 1934 pack of Basma Cigarettes from Germany. The card is about the height of a standard American tobacco card like the T206 cards but wider about half an inch.

 

The downside to collecting Manfred von Richthofen cards is that most, roughly 90-95%, of the cards are of German origination which makes tracking and organizing a bear of a task. In fact, the only American cards of the Baron that I know of are the 1933-34 National Chicle Skybirds, the 2008 & 2009 SP Legendary Cuts Baseball and the 2011 Goodwin Champions cards. But I will not be dissuaded and continue my tasking hunt for the Red Baron.

This Would Be A Bum Pull

I came across an interesting autograph signature when I was checking out some autograph cards, I do not own any of these card. Jimmi Simpson is one of those actors where you recognize his face and he is in a number of top shows but he isn’t an A-List actor.

 

Just a couple of shows and movies he has under his IMDB belt; 24, My Name Is Earl, Late Show With David Letterman, Party Down, Date Night, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, It’s Always Sunny, House of Cards and HBO’s latest hit Westworld. This guy absolutely knows when to sign a contract, he may not have the biggest parts but he is successful in what he does.

 

So back to his autograph… He appeared in four episodes of the indie-show Psych as the character Mary Lightly which earned him an autograph card in the 2015 Cryptozoic Psych Season 5-8 release along other guest stars like Mekhi Phifer, Malcolm McDowell, Anthony Anderson and Val Kilmer. Now Cryptozoic may be not was well known with sports only collectors but they do some wonderful releases and this set was no different and the autograph cards are pretty obvious where to sign but Simpson marches to his own drum and signed over his face.

 

If I were a Jimmi Simpsons fan I would be disappointed with these cards. I have seen Wil Wheaton and Mark Hammill deface their autograph cards by adding little drawings or adding horns on their heads but signing in a way that covers the face would suck. From what I have seen all of his Psych cards are signed in a similar way.

Once A Gamer Always A Gamer

 

Today is just a two card fun post. If you are a pretty regular gamer and have been playing since for over a decade you probably know the name Leeroy Jenkins.

 

In 2005 a video came out from a World of Warcraft clan who was recording game play while they were getting ready to start a quest and one player was AFK (away from keyboard) and drinking. When Ben Schultz came back to the computer he decided to rush the dungeon while screaming his character’s name “Leeeeeroy Jenkinnnnnns!”.

 

After the video became so popular the reference became part of pop culture and Blizzard included two Leeroy Jenkins cards in their World of Warcraft TCG. The cards are essentially the same with the only difference being the layout design. I did end up buying both versions for some unknown reason, I never played World of Warcraft or the TCG but I just had to have them.

A Bunch Of Bone Cards

This year I worked on two other player collections as well as my Griffey collection, Jay Buhner and Ryan Bader both got some love. I didn’t post any goals for this year because most of the things that I had in mind for the blog were essentially what I had for the last two years and focused mainly on actively posting, continuing some serial posts and interact more with other bloggers. One thing that I did want to do was work on my Buhner and Bader collections and top 100 cards each.

 

I hit the milestone with Buhner with a COMC order in June and I will hit the mark for Bader with a COMC order I requested shipment on following COMC's Black Friday sale. Unlike my Griffey collection, where I am hunting all the time for cards I don’t have, I have a much shorter list for Buhner and they are mainly just certain cards that appeal to me like his early cards, special editions and of course autograph or memorabilia cards. There are a couple of ghost cards I replaced in the collection from “The Purge”.

I picked up 6 cards related to his first couple of years with the Yankees, specifically the Columbus Clippers.

1987 ProCards

 

1987 TCMA International League

 

1987 TCMA International League All-Star

 

1988 CMC

 

1988 Columbus Police Dept set

 

1988 Procards

 

In 1988 he was traded to the Seattle Mariners so for part of 1989 he played with the Mariners Triple A team in Calgary.

1989 ProCards

1989 TCMA Team Issue

 

His first cards in a Mariners uniform also showed up in 1989

1989 Topps Kmart

1989 Topps Mini UK release

 

1994 Finest and the Refractor version

 

1996 Score with a Griffey cameo

 

1996 Upper Deck VJ Lovero with his son Chase, a similar photo was used for the cover for the March 18, 1996 issue of Sports Illustrated. The image was recreated 20 years later for the March 18, 2016 Sports Illustrated issue.

 

1997 E-X 2000 Looking like Buhner is about to try to steal a base but in reality he had one of the worst success rates ever, only 20% on 30 attempted steals. So this is one of those cards that shows a unique image.

 

2000 Pacific Just a great shot of Bone is full swing

 

2001 Keebler I don’t know why but this is one of my favorite Buhner pickups this past year.

 

2015 Tacoma Rainiers 20^th Anniversary SGA Team set. These cards were handed out at the Rainiers games between July 22^nd-August 26^th, 2015. Each pack contained two cards of players who went through the Rainiers team on their way to the Mariners. This pack contained Griffey and Buhner (double win) and was handed out at the July 22^nd game.

2015 Prizm Signatures This was the only Buhner autograph I picked up this year