Baseball History factoids

 This blog, while primarily dedicated to InnovaScapes Institute 'business data', is sometimes corrupted by my personal interests.  And those, as many of you know, include unusual historical serendipity.  And as I was composing the note about AstroVirtual in the previous post, I mentioined "Astro" and the Houston ball team, and I thought about baseball and Nolan Ryan.

So, dear reader, be patient with me, and hear me out on this (or skip ahead to more relevant stuff).

The movie Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, was a wonderful baseball fantasy, set in an Iowa cornfield, extolling the venerable game and its pull on the American psyche.   And it resonated in our family, a LOT actually.   It came out May 5, 1989.

My Iowa-born namesake paternal grandfather, Charles House, played Double-A ball in his youth; his younger brother Louie made it to Triple-A baseball.   My dad was the pitcher for his high school team when he met Mom.  And grandpa took my brother and me to all the Los Angeles Angels games for years circa 1950-1955, even introducing us to other ballplayers.  I got to know Warren Hacker, for example, the year that his knuckleball fooled enough batters that he vied for Most Valuable Player in the National League, with the best WHIP, and best Hits per game, and 3rd lowest ERA in the league.

When the Dodgers moved the Los Angeles, my dad took my brother and me to the 2nd World Series game ever played in the Los Angeles Coliseum.  The day my daughter Cynthia was born, I was at Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine its first year, with my grandfather, father, and brother.  The scoreboard announced that I was now a new father.  Cynthia has never let me forget that.   I didn't know yet that my wife's first cousin, Jim Didion (yes, brother to the famous Joan Didion). was the realtor for Chavez Ravine, and had a box behind home plate where he intro'd me to Tommy Lasorda Opening Day 1997.

And luck be with us, my grandfather was still alive, at 96, when Field of Dreams debuted.   And he loved it.   And he knew Bob Feller, the original strikeout king, born in rural Iowa a year after my dad was born a few miles away.   Feller still holds the most 1-hitters (12) in major league history (now tied with Ryan).   Feller did hold the most no-hitter record (3) until Sandy Koufax tied him in 1964 (and passed him in 1965, to end with 4).   Koufax only recorded 2 1-hitters though in his total career.

In 1989, my dad was a golfing partner with Koufax at their local Paso Robles CA club.  And daughter Cynthia, see above, was now a marketing associate for a little Texas company, Home Sports Entertainment, which launched on 1/4/1983, airing home games for the Houston Astros.   Their star pitcher was Nolan Ryan, who had just passed Koufax with his 5th no-hitter in 1981.  

Through HSE, Cynthia got to know Nolan Ryan, and then Prime Network bought HSE in March 1989, and Ryan moved to the Texas Rangers.  And then, Ryan got his 5,000th strikeout on August 26, 1989, like 3 weeks after my grandfather saw the Costner movie.  And Cynthia got Ryan to sign a baseball for him, and sent it to him.   Wow!   Cynthia's brother Warren owns that baseball today.

I arrived at my daughter Cynthia's home in Plano (next to Dallas, and near SMU where she graduated)  to find a life-size picture of Ryan on her bedroom door, signed "To Cynthia--Love, Nolan".  Puzzled, I asked "How did this happen?"   She smiled and said, "Dad, I threw the Prime Network party for Ryan."

So, today I went to Wikipedia, and found more info than I expected, that also resonated.   Ryan was born in rural Texas, 40 miles south of Victoria.   My maternal grandfather, Henry Coates (I am Charles Henry House, named for both grandfathers), was born 30 miles east of Victoria (La Ward, a town of 189 folk todayl).  Refugio (Ryan's home) is 2,730 folk today, MUCH larger.   La Ward kids went to school in Edna (pop. 5,940), and their league included Refugio High.  SMALL WORLD, huh?  Van Meter IA to Jewell IA for one; Refugio TX to Edna TX for another.    

But how about that.  We had personal connections to three of the greatest strikeout artists in baseball history.  Only one other pitcher in the past 140 years of the sport has matched Feller on no-hitters, that being Justin Verlander in 2019 for his third while with Houston.   And Ryan for total no-hitters and strikeouts, and Koufax for 2nd most no-hitters, to go along with Feller's 3rd most no-hitters (and he missed four peak seasons due to WWII) still stand among more recent sensations such as Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Randy Johnson, none of whom grew up near my grandparents.

Oh, yes, Cynthia, the girl for whom I missed the birth, took me to my 2nd World Series game, in San Francisco against the Texas Rangers, the 2nd game of the 2010 World Series.   Cynthia showed up, in a 95% Giant fans stadium, in Texas Ranger clothes--and I said, "Whoa."   And she replied, "Don't you realize that Nolan Ryan owns the Rangers now?"  Touché

Launching AstroVirtual Inc (AVI)

 My goodness, where did the time go?   My last post to this blog was in December, 2022.   Actually, there were five posts that month, the only ones for 2022.   And NONE for 2023.  Have you nothing to say?

Well, in truth, there is plenty to say, but seemingly 'no time to say it'.  Ever have that problem?   People in the middle of crisis don't generally take time out to describe it or write a book about it--they just ACT.  

Well, we've been acting.   My partner, Scott Futryk, and I formed a corporation last year, to little fanfare but with a lot of enthusiasm and hope for a couple of elder citizens.   Its name--AstroVirtual--says much.  It aspires to be "heavenly" or "star-struck" or whatever you'd imagine with an "ASTRO" prefix.  No, not the baseball team, although they've had some remarkable records over the past few years.   (Yes, Nolan did pitch for the Houston Astros, and serve them as an advisor years later).   More about Ryan and baseball in another post; this one is about our new company.

The posts of December 2022 describe our fledgling prototypes in modest detail.   Those have been updated, and some signal events have occurred along the way.  Here's a quick unverified chronology:

1. We filed a slew of patent claims early in 2023; these were 'fast-tracked' by the USPTO (US Patent and Tranemark Office), with the happy result last week that we've received advance notice of a major patent award for a sizable number of claims, along with encouragement to file additional materials (as funding permits, we'll certainly do this).    I don't know about you, but we've discovered that patent work is often a bit of an expensive hobby all by itself, and start-ups are usually lean mean machines (meaning cash starved--"oh, really?").

2. In July, Chuck was invited to SIGGRAPH '23, which was actually the 50th anniversary for SIGGRAPH.  He went as a "pioneer" thanks to his pioneering computer Display, the HP 1300A, from 1966, eight years before SIGGRAPH began.   It was heady, sitting alongside Don Greenberg, Andy van Dam, Jim Blinn, and Alvy Ray Smith in the "Memories" sessons.  And Don and I were invited to have the 'front row seats' for Nvidia's keynote by founder Jensen Huang, and then escorted by his aide to see him privately at the end.  WOW!!!

3. Huang's talk was amazing, and it is up on YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2VBKerS63A.  Because it is on YouTube, we have permission to 'play with it', and we took the opportunity to post it into our "Network Control Diorama environment".  Here's our AstroVirtual four minute extract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv--Why9LLo&t=244s  This extract essentially indexes multiple speaking points within his talk with separate video screens in the diorama--try that with your standard YouTube version!

4. We added two new environments to our "Standard" repertoire, raising the number of screens for an environment from 22 in the Standard Diorama model to 55 for an Exposition Center, and more than 100 in an EIS (Executive Information Center).    Every screen is dynamic, interactive, synchronous, with real-time pixel streaming.   The compute power to deliver this performance is stunning, but amazingly available at reasonable cost from compute streaming services (we're using a bank of top-end Nvidia servers to make all this run seamlessly).  

5. We unveiled the Exposition Center at the United Nations General Assembly in NYC on September 27.  This was an unexpected and terrific opportunity to showcase both the AstroVirtual environment and its visual power, with the three year COVID-19 Dashboard analytics that InnovaScapes Institute pioneered with the complex Dashboard designed earlier by Scott Futryk's "AnywhereAnytime" LLC.  The UN General Assembly, held twice a year with multiple focused workshops, has included a focus on Digital Health for the past three years.  For InnovaScapes to be invited to speak was a real privilege.  Here's the key talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63I88yOUIc

There were other highlights, but this list is adequate for now to give you a taste of our progress.  Thanks again for taking time to read and comment.  All the best for 2024

Chuck