There’s poetry in a round number.
Think, for instance, of the moment when your odometer rolls over to 50,000 or 100,000; do you pull over to admire it?
Those fleeting symmetrical figures command a singular fascination. Not a bit under, not a bit over — exact. And, then before you know it, they’re usually gone.
There is the Perfect 10, the 100th anniversary, the 5,000th friend and the 1,000,000th served. Even editors assign 1,000-word stories.
And then there is sports.
In a culture that is numbers obsessed, fans throw around terms like 1,tiffany bracelets,000-yard rusher or 100-RBI man all the time, but rarely do they mean that someone actually hit those statistical markers right on the nose. Usually athletes reach that milestone and then add on.
But a glance across the four major sports shows there are those rare times when players, for better or worse, didn’t make it any farther.
Perhaps the most well-known is also the most somber — Roberto Clemente’s 3,000 hits.
Following the 1972 season, Clemente boarded an airplane bound for Nicaragua. He was part of the relief effort to aid victims of an earthquake. But moments after the plane took off, it crashed,tiffany cuff Links, killing Clemente, and the other crew and passengers aboard.
Clemente’s impact on baseball went beyond his statistical prowess, but he never got a chance to advance past 3,000 hits when he died at the age of 38.
Of the major sports, baseball tends to draw the nerd — er, most cerebral fans, and baseball has an abundance of statistics to satisfy their geekiness, in a variety of categories. Rickey Henderson had 100 stolen bases in 1980. Darryl Strawberry finished his career with 1,000 RBI. Ellis Burks played in exactly 2,000 games. Bruce Sutter is 21st all time with 300 saves. Jim Bunning allowed 1,000 walks in his career.
Jeffrey Leonard and former Cub Shawon Dunston struck out 1,000 times. Leonard, who finished his career in Seattle, struck out in the fifth inning of his final game, which marked his last at bat. He was replaced in the field before his next turn in the lineup and he never played again.
Nobody has exactly 500 home runs. Chuck Klein, however, finished with 300.
New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez is within one home run of joining the 600 Club. But like a car’s odometer, this will likely be just a transitory figure. That doesn’t mean it will be easy for him to hit number 601. After Rodriguez hit No. 500, it took him nine games to hit the next one, and over those nine games, he hit .107.
For pitchers, 300 wins usually means automatic Hall of Fame entry. Both Lefty Grove and Early Wynn have 300 exactly.
A former White Sox player and broadcaster, Wynn struggled for his milestone, failing to achieve it in seven starts over nine months, the longest period ever between a pitcher’s 299th and 300th win. Finally, in 1963, pitching for the Indians at age 43, he pitched only five innings but got the win over the Kansas City A’s. "I was exhausted," he reportedly said.
In basketball, Wilt Chamberlain has the sport’s most notable round number, with the 100 points he scored in 1962. He hit 36 of 63 field goals and 28 of 32 free throws to do it. It took a minor miracle for Chamberlain to hit that many free throws, considering his lifetime percentage is just a shade over 51 percent.
But after that, basketball fails to produce many scintillating round numbers.
Walt Bellamy once had 1,500 rebounds in the 1961-62 season for the Chicago Packers. Danny Manning finished with 1,000 steals, while Shaquille O’Neal, if he retired today, would finish his career with 3,000 assists.
As for the NHL, the late Bob Hopert, a former Blackhawk, sat for 3,300 minutes in the penalty box, fifth most all-time in the NHL. Lanny McDonald had 500 goals, but after that, no hockey stats of significance ended in a couple zeroes.
The NFL, meanwhile, yields more interesting cases. Franco Harris and Curtis Martin both finished their careers with exactly 100 touchdowns. Two quarterbacks, The Bears’ Jim McMahon and Washington’s Doug Williams each threw for 100, but that pales in comparison to Denver’s John Elway,tiffany pendants, who had 300 when he retired. In 1986, Minnesota quarterback Tommy Kramer earned a Pro Bowl spot and the comeback player of the year award for his 3,000-yard performance, the only time an NFL quarterback threw for that in a single season. No receiver has had exactly 1,000 yards, but Marcus Robinson did have 1,400 for the Bears in 1999. Hall-of-Famer Barry Sanders did have the NFL’s lone 1,500-yard rushing season. Willie Ellison in 1971, Mercury Morris in 1972 — in Miami’s perfect season — Greg Pruitt in 1976 and Ricky Williams in 2000 rushed for exactly 1,000.
So why can’t you say someone who rushed for 998 yards is also a 1,000-yard rusher? Well, try telling that to anyone who missed out on an incentive bonus in their contract for falling just short of that mark. And try telling that to former Atlanta running back Dave Hampton.
In the final game of the 1972 season, Hampton reached 1,000 yards in the fourth quarter. But on his next carry, he slipped and lost yardage, putting him back at 995. Even though there was plenty of time left in the game, a long scoring drive by Kansas City put the Chiefs ahead late, forcing Atlanta to throw to catch up. Hampton didn’t carry the ball again that game.
Then in 1973, fate tormented Hampton again — he finished with 997 yards. After an injury-riddled 1974 campaign, Hampton entered the fourth quarter of the final contest in the 1975 season needing 28 yards to reach 1,000. Even with the Falcons trailing,tiffany earrings, Atlanta coach Marion Campbell gave Hampton the ball. He got 30 yards on three carries, and was immediately removed with 1,002 yards. It was the only season Hampton could call himself a 1,000-yard rusher — but not if we’re exact.
David Grim, aka Merge Divide, blogs to show the be
By day he is mild-mannered social studies teacher David Grim, but by night he reverts to his alter ego,tiffany rings, Merge Divide,tiffany, tearing up the blogosphere with insightful words and inspirational images.
Like a super hero with a secret identity, Grim, 40, spends about five nights a week in his Sharpsburg home contributing his thoughts and photo-based art to his blogspot "Crown of Appalachia" (http://crownofa.blogspot.com), which chronicles Grim’s travels in and around Pittsburgh.
It’s just one of the hobbies he enjoys outside of his "real job" with the Seneca Valley School District. Others hobbies include figure drawing in phone books and reading more than 40 books a year, with the goal of reaching 1,tiffany key rings,000 books before his older brother does. The total so far — David Grim, 850, the other Mr. Grim, 300.
As for that figure-drawing thing, it’s more of an obsession, really. For the past four years, Grim has been filling a phone book with figure drawings he creates on the spot of models at various figure-drawing sessions around town.
To date, he has filled one book, which he calls "The Book of Life," with 450 of these drawings, scattered throughout the book about every two or three pages. And he is currently busy filling another.
Now, 420 of the drawings from the first book and several dozen from the second are on display at Panza Gallery in Millvale in a solo exhibit of the same title, "The Book of Life." Well, not exactly solo. There is Merge Divide’s solo exhibit as well, "Images from Crown of Appalachia," on display in the next room.
These two exhibits are the closest one can get to Grim’s creative nexus. By way of explanation, on the eve of the opening reception for the exhibits, Divide decided to interview Grim for the blogspot:
"Lately, I’ve been thinking that David and I should have a talk together," Divide said.
"Are you excited for the show?" he asked Grim. "I know you’ve invested a lot of energy in this (and so have I), and I have to wonder about the state that you are in."
"Hmmm … I’d have to say that I have mixed feelings about it," Grim said. "I’ve always gotten a bit anxious before my openings. There will be a mix of people there. I’ll be trying to manage the representation of myself while keeping a mindful state about my social relationships with whoever shows up. It’s a little overwhelming, to tell the truth."
In a similar showing last year at Imagebox, Grim presented his work with just as much trepidation. In the end, declaring that it didn’t go so well: "We don’t have to talk about that," he says.
"I am a very analytical person," Grim says. "I have a master’s degree in counseling. I never really used it, except on myself."
But all of that aside, visitors to these two exhibits will be privy to the inventive output of one of the area’s most creative individuals.
Inspired by a childhood escape from religious conversion, "The Book of Life" presents the opportunity for Grim to reclaim the act of creation from an externalized "other," he says.
Based on the concept of a holy tome containing the names of all those saved from eternal damnation, this project seeks to render humanity in its purest of form — nude, defenseless and open. The intention of the displayed product is to raise questions regarding authority, transience, privacy and the relationship between the artist and his subject. "I’m working with the idea that, as creator, you can appropriate your subject," Grim says.
Remarkably, the first phone book remains intact. It’s on display here, under Plexiglas — an implication of the "holy book" it has become. But the drawings are on view, being displayed as a massive single-wall installation of the drawings in actual-size reproduction. Alone they are magnificent little renderings, as unique as the individuals they depict. Altogether they are overwhelming, like humanity itself.
"The purpose of the installation is to document the artistic process, the developmental process that I went through," Grim says.
Conversely, convinced that Pittsburgh is the figurative "Crown" of a vast tract of America marked by the Appalachians, Grim/Divide decided to commemorate his blog of travels throughout the region with several dozen of the images he has posted along with his blog entries over the past four years.
"This marks my initial foray into the sense of a partially imaginary place that may indeed exist," Divide writes. "I mean to convey the weird netherworld quality of this area in sociological and alchemical terms."
Hence, the photographs, though based completely in reality, have an otherworldly feel. Each is titled by the date of the blog entry related to it, and visitors are encouraged to look those up on a laptop computer provided for the purpose. A good idea since, the two — image and words — may not at first seem to be related.
For example, in the blog entry and photo from June 22, 2010, Divide details Grim’s trip to Cook Forest with his girlfriend, where they booked a night in the all-pink "Princess Suite" at the nearby Shiloh Resort.
"When we walked in the room we were initially struck by the overwhelming pinkness of the room," Divide/Grim writes. "It turns out that the shots (on the website) attributed to the Princess Suite were actually snaps of the "Angle (sic) Suite." I guess the color scheme for angels runs more toward the orange hues. If my expectations wouldn’t have been colored by the Net documentation, I likely would have not been surprised that Princesses only feel royal when surrounded by pink. Of course, I figured everything out as I got adjusted."
The image that accompanies the text is simply that of a layered lattice of tree branches. But here, as in all the entries, Grim’s detailed writings are as multi-layered as the images, making for an overwhelming exploration in itself.
"I think that Appalachia is a different country altogether, and Pittsburgh is the crown of Appalachia because, geographically speaking,tiffany bangles, it’s at the tip," Grim says, by way of simple explanation. But our region, as detailed by him, is far more diverse and interesting than could ever be imagined. Which is why this exhibit is so compelling.