title: Cloward–Piven strategy

text: The authors pinned their hopes on creating disruption within the Democratic Party: "Conservative Republicans are always ready to declaim the evils of public welfare, and they would probably be the first to raise a hue and cry. But deeper and politically more telling conflicts would take place within the Democratic coalition...Whites – both working class ethnic groups and many in the middle class – would be aroused against the ghetto poor, while liberal groups, which until recently have been comforted by the notion that the poor are few... would probably support the movement. Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”


title: Cloward–Piven strategy

text: Michael Tomasky, writing about the strategy in the 1990s and again in 2011, called it "wrongheaded and self-defeating", writing: "It apparently didn't occur to [Cloward and Piven] that the system would just regard rabble-rousing black people as a phenomenon to be ignored or quashed."


title: Cloward–Piven strategy

text: In papers published in 1971 and 1977, Cloward and Piven argued that mass unrest in the United States, especially between 1964 and 1969, did lead to a massive expansion of welfare rolls, though not to the guaranteed-income program that they had hoped for. Political scientist Robert Albritton disagreed, writing in 1979 that the data did not support this thesis; he offered an alternative explanation for the rise in welfare caseloads.


title: Cloward–Piven strategy

text: In his 2006 book "Winning the Race", political commentator John McWhorter attributed the rise in the welfare state after the 1960s to the Cloward–Piven strategy, but wrote about it negatively, stating that the strategy "created generations of black people for whom working for a living is an abstraction".


title: Cloward–Piven strategy

text: According to historian Robert E. Weir in 2007: "Although the strategy helped to boost recipient numbers between 1966 and 1975, the revolution its proponents envisioned never transpired."


title: The babysitter and the man upstairs

text: The babysitter and the man upstairs — also known as the babysitter or the sitter — is an urban legend that dates back to the 1960s about a teenage girl babysitting children who receives telephone calls from a stalker who continually asks her to "check the children". The basic story line has been adapted a number of times in movies. The 1950 murder of teenage babysitter Janett Christman is commonly cited as a source of the legend.


title: The babysitter and the man upstairs

text: The legend details a teenage girl who is watching television at night while babysitting after the children have been put to bed upstairs. The phone rings; the unknown caller tells her, "Check the children." The girl dismisses the call, but the anonymous caller dials back several times, and the girl becomes increasingly frightened. Eventually, the babysitter calls the police, who inform her they will trace the next call. After the stranger calls again, the police return her call, advising her to leave immediately. She evacuates the home and the police meet her to explain that the calls were coming from inside the house and that the unidentified prowler was calling her after killing the children upstairs.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Tabei wrote seven books, organized environmental projects to clean up rubbish left behind by climbers on Everest, and led annual climbs up Mount Fuji for youth affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.


title: Junko Tabei

text: An astronomer named asteroid 6897 Tabei after her and in 2019, a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in her honour.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Junko Ishibashi was born on 22 September 1939 in Miharu, Fukushima, the fifth daughter of seven children. Her father was a printer. She was considered a frail child, but nevertheless she began mountain climbing at the age of ten, going on a class climbing trip to Mount Nasu. She enjoyed the non-competitive nature of the sport and the striking natural landscapes that came into view upon reaching the top of the mountain. Although she was interested in doing more climbing, her family did not have enough money for such an expensive hobby, and Ishibashi made only a few climbs during her high school years.


title: Junko Tabei

text: From 1958 to 1962, Ishibashi studied English and American literature at Showa Women's University. She initially planned on a career as a teacher. After graduation, she returned to her earlier passion for climbing by joining a number of men's climbing clubs. While some men welcomed her as a fellow climber, others questioned her motives for pursuing a typically male-dominated sport. Soon, Ishibashi had climbed all the major mountains in Japan, including Mount Fuji.


title: Junko Tabei

text: When she was 27, Ishibashi married Masanobu Tabei, a mountaineer she had met during a climbing excursion on Mount Tanigawa. The couple eventually had two children: a daughter, Noriko, and a son, Shinya.


title: Junko Tabei

text: In 1969, Junko Tabei established the Joshi-Tohan Club (Women's Mountaineering Club) for women only. The club's slogan was "Let's go on an overseas expedition by ourselves", and the group was the first of its kind in Japan. Tabei later stated that she founded the club as a result of how she was treated by male mountaineers of the time; some men, for example, refused to climb with her, while others thought she was only interested in climbing as a way to find a husband. Tabei helped fund her climbing activities by working as an editor for the "Journal of the Physical Society of Japan".


title: Junko Tabei

text: The Joshi-Tohan Club embarked on their first expedition in 1970, climbing the Nepalese mountain Annapurna III. They successfully reached the summit using a new route on the south side, achieving the first female and first Japanese ascent of the mountain. Tabei and one other member, Hiroko Hirakawa, were chosen to complete the final climb to the top, accompanied by two sherpa guides. The climbers had brought a camera, but the temperature was so cold that the camera's film cracked.


title: Junko Tabei

text: From her experience in the Annapurna III ascent, Tabei realized that she and the other Japanese women had sometimes struggled to reconcile traditional Japanese values of quiet strength with the more immediate practical needs of mountaineering. Many Joshi-Tohan Club members were initially reluctant to admit they did not know something or needed assistance, preferring to keep a stoic silence, but mountain climbing forced the women to acknowledge their personal limits and accept help from each other.


title: Junko Tabei

text: After Tabei and Hirakawa successfully summited Annapurna III on 19 May 1970, the Joshi-Tohan Club decided to tackle Mount Everest. The club created a team known as the Japanese Women's Everest Expedition (JWEE), led by Eiko Hisano, which would attempt to summit Mount Everest. JWEE contained 15 members, most of them working women who came from a range of professions. Two of the women, including Tabei, were mothers. They applied for a climbing permit for Everest in 1971, but had to wait four years to receive a place in the formal climbing schedule.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Tabei helped to find sponsors for the expedition, although she was frequently told that the women "should be raising children instead". She was able to obtain last-minute funding from the "Yomiuri Shimbun" newspaper and Nippon Television, but each group member still needed to pay 1.5 million yen (US$5,000). Tabei taught piano lessons to help raise the necessary funds. To save money, Tabei made much of her own equipment from scratch, creating waterproof gloves out of the cover of her car and sewing trousers from old curtains.


title: Junko Tabei

text: After a long training period, the team made the expedition in May 1975. The group attracted much media attention with their plans, and the 15 women were initially accompanied by journalists and a television camera crew as they began their climb. They used the same route to ascend the mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had taken in 1953, and six sherpa guides assisted the team for the full span of the expedition. On 4 May, the team was camping at when an avalanche struck their camp. Tabei and four of her fellow climbers were buried under the snow. Tabei lost consciousness until sherpa guides dug her out. Luckily, there were no casualties. Bruised and injured by the incident, Tabei could barely walk and was forced to spend two days recovering. As soon as she was able, however, she resumed the expedition and continued leading her team up the mountain.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Although the team had originally planned to send two women up to the peak of Everest (accompanied by a sherpa), a bout of altitude sickness meant that the team's sherpas could not carry the number of oxygen bottles required to accommodate two climbers. Only one woman could continue. After much discussion, Hisano nominated Tabei to complete the climb. Nearing the peak, Tabei was furious to discover that she would have to cross a thin, hazardous ridge of ice that had gone completely unmentioned in accounts by previous expeditions. She crawled along it sideways, later describing it as the most tense experience she had ever had. Twelve days after the avalanche, on 16 May 1975, with her sherpa guide Ang Tsering, Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Tabei was showered with attention as a result of her achievement. In Kathmandu, a parade was held in her honour. On her return to Japan, she was received at the Tokyo airport by thousands of cheering supporters. She received messages from the King of Nepal and the Japanese government, a television miniseries was made about the Everest expedition, and Tabei made personal appearances across Japan. However, Tabei remained uncomfortable with this level of fame. She later told media that she preferred to be remembered as the 36th person to summit Everest: "I did not intend to be the first woman on Everest."


title: Junko Tabei

text: Tabei continued her mountaineering pursuits, eventually climbing the highest mountain on each continent: Kilimanjaro (1980), Mt. Aconcagua (1987), Denali (1988), Mt. Elbrus (1989), Mount Vinson (1991), and Puncak Jaya (1992). Upon her successful climb of Puncak Jaya, she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits challenge. By 2005, Tabei had taken part in 44 all-female mountaineering expeditions around the world. She had a personal goal of climbing the highest mountain in every country in the world, and by the end of her lifetime she had completed at least 70 of these mountains.


title: Junko Tabei

text: She never accepted corporate sponsorship after Mount Everest, preferring to remain financially independent. She saved money to fund her expeditions by making paid public appearances, guiding mountain-climbing tours, and tutoring local children in music and English. Tabei's friends and supporters sometimes donated food and equipment.


title: Junko Tabei

text: In addition to her climbing, Tabei worked on ecological concerns; in 2000, she completed postgraduate studies at Kyushu University focusing on the environmental degradation of Everest caused by the waste left behind by climbing groups. Tabei was also the director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, an organization working at a global level to preserve mountain environments. One of the trust's projects was to build an incinerator to burn climbers' rubbish. She also led and participated in "clean-up" climbs in Japan and the Himalayas alongside her husband and children.


title: Junko Tabei

text: In May 2003, a celebration was held in Kathmandu to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first successful summit of Mount Everest, and crowds of Nepalese people gathered to cheer a procession of past Everest climbers. Tabei and Sir Edmund Hillary were given a special place in the festivities for their respective achievements.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Between 1996 and 2008, Tabei wrote and published seven books. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Tabei began organizing annual guided excursions up Mount Fuji for schoolchildren affected by the disaster.


title: Junko Tabei

text: Tabei was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2012, but continued with many of her mountaineering activities. In July 2016, despite her advancing illness, she led a youth expedition up Mount Fuji. She died in a hospital in Kawagoe on 20 October 2016.


title: Junko Tabei

text: On 22 September 2019, Google commemorated the 80th anniversary of her birth with a Doodle. The accompanying write-up gave her motivation slogan, "Do not give up. Keep on your quest."


title: Junko Tabei

text: On 19 November 2019, a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in honour of Tabei's mountaineering accomplishments. The theme for naming mountains on Pluto is "Historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in the exploration of the Earth, sea and sky".


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The Thing Called Love is a 1993 American comedy-drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Samantha Mathis as Miranda Presley, a young musician who tries to make it big in Nashville. River Phoenix, Dermot Mulroney and Sandra Bullock also star. While the film involves a love triangle and various complications in Miranda's route to success, it provides a sweetened glimpse at the lives of aspiring songwriters in Nashville. Its tagline is: "Stand by your dream".


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The film was Phoenix's final complete screen performance before his death. Bogdanovich called the movie "a little picture with a slightly meandering French quality."


title: The Thing Called Love

text: A "making of" documentary is available on the film's DVD release, titled "The Thing Called Love: A Look Back".


title: The Thing Called Love

text: Miranda Presley is an aspiring singer/songwriter from New York City who loves country music and decides to take her chances in Nashville, where she hopes to become a star. After arriving in Music City after a long bus ride, Miranda makes her way to the Bluebird Café, a local watering hole with a reputation as a showcase for new talent. The bar's owner, Lucy, takes a shine to the plucky newcomer and gives her a job as a waitress.


title: The Thing Called Love

text: Before long, Miranda has gotten to know a number of other Nashville transplants who are looking to land a gig or sell a song, including sweet and open-hearted Kyle Davidson, moody but talented James Wright, and spunky Linda Lue Linden. As the four friends struggle to find their place in the competitive Nashville music scene, both Kyle and James display a romantic interest in Miranda, but she is drawn to James in spite of his moody temperament. Miranda pursues James, and they end up getting married, but they soon realize marriage takes work. James leaves Miranda behind to make his album, what he always wanted to do, but realizes he left his heart with her. He comes back to the Bluebird Cafe but discovers that Miranda has left town. Miranda returns and sings a new song, before tentatively reuniting with James. Kyle joins them as Linda Lue leaves for New York, and the remaining three discuss writing a song together.


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The film was to have been directed by Brian Gibson but in September 1992 he left the project to make "What's Love Got to Do with It" and was replaced by Peter Bogdanovich.


title: The Thing Called Love

text: Bogdanovich says Phoenix approached Paramount to appear in the film. "He was brilliant to work with," said the director. "There were maybe two days during the 60-day shoot that I felt he wasn't as together as he was on other days. But one day, it was freezing cold and the other day, he took some kind of cold medicine that didn't agree with him. That was what I was told. But all the rest of the time, he was great... He was concerned with more than his own role. He was concerned with the overall picture, with the other actors and characters... He would have made a very good director.""


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The film focuses on the songwriters rather than the performers. "It's a different kind of crowd," said Bogdanovich. "More cerebral, less about the glitz."


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The film features cameos from Trisha Yearwood, Pam Tillis and Kevin Welch. River Phoenix wrote two songs including "Lone Star State of Mine"; Dermot Mulroney wrote one, and Sandra Bullock wrote lyrics for the song she performed. Bogdanovich admitted the film had some similarities to "Fame" and "Flashdance" movies that became "kind of a genre of its own... We tried to play by the rules of that. {But} we also tried to play against that -- we tried to make it different from that kind of movie. We tried to walk a sometimes difficult tightrope."


title: The Thing Called Love

text: Todd McCarthy of "Variety" magazine wrote: "Perhaps there's not much new to say about the dues and disappointments involved in breaking into the country music scene, but the scenes are fresh and the emotions real in Peter Bogdanovich's tune-laden, mixed-mood drama."


title: The Thing Called Love

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave it 1 out of 4 and wrote: "Perhaps no one could have saved Phoenix, who was not lucky enough to find a higher bottom than death. But this performance in this movie should have been seen by someone as a cry for help."


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The film debuted in several Southern markets. It was expected to open wider in autumn, but Paramount decided against this following the death of River Phoenix. The movie ultimately ranked among the least profitable films of 1993. "Paramount did do some releases in Seattle and a few other places," said Bogdanovich in 1994. "But I think they were afraid of being accused of exploiting River's death. There was a kind of general worry about that. I guess that is the thinking that prevailed. It's pretty disappointing, but you know, I've learned to go on."


title: The Thing Called Love

text: The director felt the death of Phoenix affected watching the movie. "It was a totally different movie before. It had a hopeful quality and now it doesn't. The ending is ambiguous, but because River died, it becomes very sad. The last thing you're left with is that he is dead, even though the character is alive ... (The movie) was supposed to be bittersweet, but it turned out being more bitter than sweet."


title: Nike Hercules

text: The Nike Hercules, initially designated SAM-A-25 and later MIM-14, was a surface-to-air missile (SAM) used by U.S. and NATO armed forces for medium- and high-altitude long-range air defense. It was normally armed with the W31 nuclear warhead, but could also be fitted with a conventional warhead for export use. Its warhead also allowed it to be used in a secondary surface-to-surface role, and the system also demonstrated its ability to hit other short-range missiles in flight.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules was originally developed as a simple upgrade to the earlier MIM-3 Nike Ajax, allowing it to carry a nuclear warhead in order to defeat entire formations of high-altitude supersonic targets. It evolved into a much larger missile with two solid fuel stages that provided three times the range of the Ajax. Deployment began in 1958, initially at new bases, but it eventually took over many Ajax bases as well. At its peak, it was deployed at over 130 bases in the US alone.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules was officially referred to as transportable, but moving a battery was a significant operation and required considerable construction at the firing sites. Over its lifetime, significant effort was put into the development of solid state replacements for the vacuum tube-based electronics inherited from the early-1950s Ajax, and a variety of mobile options. None of these were adopted, in favor of much more mobile systems like the MIM-23 Hawk. Another development for the anti-ballistic missile role later emerged as the much larger LIM-49 Nike Zeus design. Hercules would prove to be the last operational missile from Bell's Nike team; Zeus was never deployed, and Hercules' replacements were developed by different teams.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules remained the US's primary heavy SAM until it began to be replaced by the higher performance and considerably more mobile MIM-104 Patriot in the 1980s. Patriot's much higher accuracy allowed it to dispense with the nuclear warhead, and Hercules was the last US SAM to use this option. The last Hercules missiles were deactivated in Europe in 1988, without ever being fired in a military conflict.


title: Nike Hercules

text: During World War II, the US Army Air Force (USAAF) concluded that existing anti-aircraft guns, only marginally effective against existing generations of propeller-driven aircraft, would not be effective at all against the emerging jet-powered designs. Like the Germans and British before them, they concluded the only successful defence would be to use guided weapons.


title: Nike Hercules

text: As early as 1944 the US Army started exploring anti-aircraft missiles, examining a variety of concepts. They split development between the Army Air Force or the Ordnance Department based on whether or not the design "depend[ed] for sustenance primarily on the lift of aerodynamic forces" or "primary on the momentum of the missile". That is, whether the missile operated more like an aircraft (Air Force) or a rocket (Ordnance).


title: Nike Hercules

text: Official requirements were published in 1945; Bell Laboratories won the Ordnance contract for a short-range line-of-sight weapon under Project Nike, while a team of players led by Boeing won the contract for a long-range design known as Ground-to-Air Pilotless Aircraft, or GAPA. GAPA moved to the US Air Force when that branch was formed in 1947. In 1946, the USAAF also started two early research projects into anti-missile systems in Project Thumper (MX-795) and Project Wizard (MX-794).


title: Nike Hercules

text: In 1953, Project Nike delivered the world's first operational anti-aircraft missile system, known simply as Nike. Nike tracked both the target and the missile using separate radars, compared the locations in a computer, and sent commands to the missile to fly to a point in the sky to intercept the target. To increase range, the missile was normally boosted above the target into the thinner air and then descended on it in a gliding dive. Nike was initially deployed at military bases starting in 1953, especially Strategic Air Command bomber airfields, and general deployment then followed at US cities, important industrial sites, and then overseas bases. Similar systems quickly emerged from other nations, including the S-75 Dvina (SA-2) from the USSR, and the English Electric Thunderbird in the UK.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Even as the Nike was undergoing testing, planners grew concerned about the missile's ability to attack formations of aircraft. Given the low resolution of the tracking radars available at the time, a formation of aircraft would appear on the radars as a single larger return. Launched against such a formation, the Nike would fly towards the center of the composite return. Given the Nike warhead's relatively small lethal radius, if the missile flew into the middle of the formation and exploded, it would be highly unlikely to destroy any of the aircraft.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Improving performance against such targets would require either much higher resolution radars or much larger warheads. Of the two, the warhead seemed like the simplest problem to address. Like almost any thorny military problem of the 1950s, the solution was the application of nuclear bombs. In May 1952, Bell was asked to explore such an adaptation to the Nike. They returned two design concepts.


title: Nike Hercules

text: "Nike Ajax" used a slightly modified Nike missile, largely a re-arrangement of the internal components, making room for the WX-9 "gun-type" warhead also being developed as an artillery round. The WX-9, like all gun-type designs, was long and thin, originally designed to be fired from an artillery piece, and easily fit within the Nike fuselage.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The competing implosion-type design is considerably more efficient and uses much less fuel to reach any given explosive power. Bell also proposed a much more modified design known as "Nike Hercules" with an enlarged upper fuselage able to carry the XW-7 warhead of up to that wouldn't fit in the existing fuselage. In spite of the greatly increased explosive power, the WX-7 was only slightly heavier than the WX-9, about for common XW-7 versions, as opposed to for the XW-9.


title: Nike Hercules

text: At the same time, there were increasing concerns that higher speed aircraft would be able to launch their warheads at the extreme range of the Nike bases. This was a common complaint by the Air Force, who noted that bombers had the ability to attack from as much as while the Nike was only comfortable launching at about . This could be increased even further using stand-off missiles, like those currently under development by all of the nuclear-armed forces for just this reason. A larger Nike with greatly improved range would not only help address this sort of attack, but also allow a single base to defend a much larger area, lowering the overall costs of deploying a widespread defensive system.


title: Nike Hercules

text: As the larger Hercules would be easier to adapt to a longer-range form, the Army selected it as the winning design. Bell began working on the new design in concert with the Nike partners, Western Electric and Douglas Aircraft Company. Instead of the basic W-7, development of an improved boosted fission design known as W31. This used much less fissile material and was thus considerably less expensive. Developed by Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque and at Los Alamos, it was given 1A priority by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in March 1953.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Soon after design work started, the Army requested that the existing liquid fuel engine be replaced with a solid fuel design, for a variety of reasons. Primary among these was that the Ajax fuels were hypergolic, igniting on contact. Due to the nature of these fuels, extreme caution had to be used whenever the missiles were moved or unloaded for maintenance. This was carried out in a protected area behind a large berm, in order to protect the rest of the site from an accidental explosion during fuelling. This complexity added enormously to the cost and time required to maintain the missiles.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Solid fuel rockets can remain stored for years and are generally very difficult to ignite without an extended period of applied flame. This means they can be manhandled safely and maintained with the rocket motor installed. However, the lower specific impulse of these engines, combined with the requirement for longer range, demanded a much larger fuselage to store the required fuel. Hercules, still known officially as "Nike B" at this point, grew to become a much larger design. This, in turn, required a much larger booster to loft it, but this was solved by strapping together four of the existing Nike boosters to form a cluster known as the XM-42, with the only modification to the original M5 engine design being the addition of new holes to bolt them together, creating the M5E.


title: Nike Hercules

text: During this period, some effort was put into a "frangible booster" for the Ajax. Ajax's boosters were housed in steel tubes that fell near the base, presenting a serious range safety concern. Martin produced the T48E1 and E2 designs for Ajax used a fiberglass casing that was destroyed by small explosives, but this proved overweight and did not boost the Ajax to the required speed. Redstone Arsenal then presented the T48E3 which was somewhat larger and longer to reach reasonable performance, but only at the cost of having to modify all of the Ajax launcher rails. The Army eventually decided not to proceed with any Ajax modifications as Hercules would be arriving shortly anyway. Similar experiments for Hercules boosters led to the XM-61 single-chamber booster, but when the XM-42 cluster proved to be even less expensive than expected, this effort was also dropped.


title: Nike Hercules

text: As part of the upgrade project, the original missile became known as "Nike I". On 15 November 1956, the new missile was officially renamed as the Nike Hercules, as part of DA Circular 700-22, while the Nike I becoming Nike Ajax.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The new design ultimately provided effective ranges on the order of and altitudes ranging from . Minimum range had a ground radius of approximately and an altitude of approximately 20,000 ft.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Throughout the early Nike evolution, the then-new Air Force had been encouraged by the deployment of the missile systems. They saw this as an extension of the Army's existing "point defence" role, and as a valuable backup to their own manned interceptors. There were concerns about the possibility of Air Force fighters being attacked by Army missiles, but the two forces improved co-ordination between the Army's ARAACOM and the Air Force's Air Defense Command (ADC) to the point where it was no longer a serious concern. Nevertheless, when the Army first released information about Ajax to the press in 1953, the Air Force quickly responded by leaking information about BOMARC to Aviation Week, and continued to denigrate Nike in the press over the next few years.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Things changed dramatically with the development of Hercules. By the early 1950s, the Air Force was still struggling with their own long-range weapon systems, originally started in the 1940s in the GAPA project. The project had moved several times, and was now in late development as the BOMARC. BOMARC proved extremely expensive, difficult to maintain in operation readiness, had questionable performance, and was displaying a continued inability to reach operational status. Instead of de-emphasizing BOMARC in favor of Hercules, inter-service rivalry became rampant, and the Air Force began a policy of denigrating Hercules and the Army using policy by press release.


title: Nike Hercules

text: In a famous event, the Air Force interviewed for an article that appeared in the "New York Times" entitled "Air Force Calls Army Nike Unfit To Guard Nation". This was answered most forcibly not by the Army, but the Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson, who wrote in "Newsweek" that "one hard solid fact remerges above them all: no matter what the Nike is or isn't, it's the only land-based operational anti-aircraft missile that the U.S. has." By the time early Hercules deployments were starting in 1958, BOMARC was still nowhere near operational.


title: Nike Hercules

text: All of this was part of a larger fight going on over the Army's Jupiter missile, which the Air Force stated should be their mission. Wilson attempted to address the inter-service rivalries by enforcing a strict limit on the range of Army systems. In his 26 November 1956 memorandum, he limited the Army to weapons with range, and those involved in ground-to-air defense to only . This forced the Army to turn its Jupiter IRBM systems to the Air Force, and to limit the range of their ABM developments.


title: Nike Hercules

text: This did not do much to stop the squabbling, nor did it solve the problems that led to the issues in the first place – the fight over Hercules and BOMARC and related anti-missile developments. Nor did it stop the fighting in the press. Army Colonel John C. Nickerson Jr. publicly denounced Wilson, while leaking details of their latest missile design, the Pershing missile. The resulting flap led to calls for Nickerson to be court-martialed and was compared to the Billy Mitchell court-martial in the 1920s.


title: Nike Hercules

text: It did, however, allow development of Hercules to continue, and the system was soon preparing to deploy. In 1958 an article appeared in the "Chicago Sun-Times" in which various Air Force officials complained that the Hercules was ineffective. Chicago was slated to shortly begin receiving its Hercules upgrades. Similar articles began appearing in papers around the country, invariably just before that city was to begin receiving their missiles. This prompted ARAACOM commander Charles E. Hart to petition the Secretary of Defense to order the Air Force to stop the well organized campaign against Hercules. The Army then began its own series of press releases under what they called "Project Truth".


title: Nike Hercules

text: Eventually, in November the new Secretary of Defense, Neil H. McElroy announced both systems would be purchased. Both forces, and their congressional supporters, realized that splitting the budget would mean neither force would be funded to the level required to fulfill the defence mission. In 1959 both the House and Senate debated the systems, with the Senate recommending cutting funding for Hercules and the House stating the opposite. The House eventually came to support the Defense Secretary's position as stated in the Master Air Defense Plan, retaining Hercules while reducing BOMARC and SAGE.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Meanwhile, the Air Force scrambled to bring BOMARC to operational status, and on 1 September 1959 declared the 46th Air Defense Squadron at McGuire Air Force Base operational. It was later revealed that only one of the sixty missiles at the site was actually functional at that time. Engineers continued work on getting a second missile operational at McGuire, but the Air Force went ahead with plans to open the Suffolk County Missile Annex by 1 January 1960. In January, only four missiles were operational at Suffolk, and during House appropriation hearings that month, the DoD proved rather subdued when Congress attacked the design, especially in light of several failed tests of the BOMARC B missile. In February, Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas D. White shocked everyone when he requested that BOMARC deployments be reduced to eight US and two Canadian sites, essentially killing the program.


title: Nike Hercules

text: In the aftermath of the Hercules/BOMARC debates, retired Army Brigadier General Thomas R. Phillips wrote an article for the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" that BOMARC and SAGE had been the "most costly waste of funds in the history of the Defense Department."


title: Nike Hercules

text: Plans had been made to test the Hercules' W-7 warhead in a live-fire exercise in 1959 as part of "Operation SNODGRASS". However, as rumours of a ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons spread, SNODGRASS became a crash project to be completed before 1 September 1958 at any available site – the Nevada Test Site was fully booked with the existing Project AMMO testing series. Part of the rush was due to the newly evolving understanding of the effects of nuclear weapons on radar systems, which led to serious concerns about various weapon's systems ability to operate after nearby nuclear explosions. Testing of the W-7 was put into AMMO, while the SNODGRASS series was moved to an Army-Air Force test at Eglin Air Force Base with tests of both the conventional T45 and nuclear W-7 warheads. A variety of problems, including one found in the W-7 warhead, caused delays in the testing programs, so a single launch of the T45-equipped Hercules was also added to the AMMO project.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The AMMO shot took place on 1 July 1958, successfully intercepting a simulated target flying at an altitude of and a slant range of . The first SNODGRASS round was launched on 14 July with its warhead replaced by an instrument package and launched against a Q2A Ryan Firebee I drone. A similar test on 17 July against a Q2A destroyed the target with the T45. A dual-launch followed on 24 July, with the first round destroying its target with the T45, and the second with the instrument package flying one second behind. A similar test on 29 July launched two missiles against three F-80 Shooting Star drones flying in formation, the first missile destroyed the lead aircraft while the second passed within lethal range of a second. Testing was unexpectedly cancelled before the W-7 could be fired.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules was designed from the start to operate from Ajax bases. However, as it protected a much greater area, not as many sites were needed to provide coverage of potential targets. Early deployments starting in 1958 were on new sites, but Ajax units started converting as well. Conversions were largely complete by 1960, leaving only a few Ajax sites in use. The last active Nike Ajax batteries were relieved of their mission in December 1961, followed by the last Army National Guard unit in May 1964.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Nuclear-armed Nike Hercules missiles were deployed in the United States, Greece, Italy, Korea and Turkey, and with Belgian, Dutch, and U.S. forces in West Germany. Conventionally armed Nike Hercules missiles also served in the United States, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Japan, Norway, and Taiwan. The first deployments in Europe began in 1959.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Even before deployment of Hercules began, studies on improvements to the system had been identified. A 23 October 1954 report stated that "Concurrent with the prosecution of the NIKE I and NIKE B programs, studies and research and development must be conducted to insure that the NIKE equipment is modernized to the maximum extent within the limits of current technology and economics of improvement as compared to investment in a new system ...". Three key elements were identified; the need to attack formations without nuclear warheads, operations against low-altitude targets, and better traffic-handling capabilities to handle larger raids.


title: Nike Hercules

text: In early 1956, Bell began studies of the Improved Nike Hercules (INH) concept by considering the predicted threat for the 1960-65 period. This was aircraft with speeds up to Mach 3, a wide range of radar cross sections, and powerful electronic countermeasures. IRBMs and ICBMs were also a consideration, but these were being addressed by the Nike Zeus concept, leaving only short-range weapons as an issue Hercules might need to address. To address this whole range of issues, Bell proposed a series of changes:


title: Nike Hercules

text: The addition of the TRR solved a problem with early pulse radar units. It is relatively easy to jam a conventional radar by sending out additional pulses of radio signal on the same frequency. Unless the transmitter has encoded some additional form of information in the signal, the receiver cannot determine which pulse it sent out and which is from the jammer. Note that this has no effect on the determination of the "direction" to the target, which is the same for both the original and jammer pulses. However, it makes the determination of range difficult or impossible. The TRR solves this problem by providing a separate ranging system on another frequency. By making the signal wide-frequency, the jammer has to likewise broadcast across a similar bandwidth, limiting the energy in any one frequency and allowing the operator to tune the receiver to find an unjammed band. Combining range from the TRR and direction from the TTR provided complete information on the target.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The changes were designed to be upgradable without major changes to the deployed system – the TTR/MTR could be replaced at any time, the HIPAR used its own displays and therefore required no changes in the missile launch equipment, the TRR was slaved to the TTR and simply updated range readings, and the new seeker could be retrofitted at any time. The original Ajax detection radar retroactively became known as LOPAR, and remained in use as the main target selection radar in the missile control van. HIPAR would detect targets separately and "hand off" to the LOPAR and TTR so those systems could remain largely unchanged and able to launch either Hercules or Ajax.


title: Nike Hercules

text: These changes were presented on 24 August 1956, and accepted by both CONARC and ARADCOM. The active seeker system was later dropped to lower costs. Engineering was complete in 1958 and entered low-rate production in May 1959. The first HIPAR was tested at White Sands between 14 April 1960 and 13 April 1961, starting with two Ajax launches that passed 14 yards and 18 yards from the drone targets, and a further 17 Hercules launches that were generally successful. Among the various test targets were a Mach 3 Lockheed AQM-60, a drone, and a Corporal missile. Also conducted were tests to evaluate ECM performance, two surface-to-surface tests, and two Hercules-on-Hercules attacks with the target Hercules flying in a semi-ballistic trajectory.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Deployment of the INH upgrade kits began on 10 June 1961 at the BA-30 site in the Washington–Baltimore defense area, and continued into September 1967. HIPAR was a large system and generally deployed under a dome on top of a concrete platform that raised it above any local obstructions. To provide the same range of view, the tracking radars were also often placed on concrete platforms of their own, although these were much smaller.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The Hercules missile systems sold to Japan (Nike J) were subsequently fitted with upgraded internal guidance systems, the original vacuum tube systems being replaced with transistorized ones.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Although Hercules had demonstrated its ability to successfully engage short-range missiles, the capability was not considered very important. During development the Air Force continued its Project Wizard while the Army started its Project Plato studies for dedicated anti-missile systems. By 1959, Plato was still very much a paper project when news of large deployments of short-range missiles in the Warsaw Bloc became a clear threat. Plato was cancelled in February 1959, replaced in the short term by further upgrades to Hercules, and in the longer term by the FABMDS program. FABMDS would have performance against any credible "theatre" ranged missile or rocket system, as well as offer anti-aircraft capabilities, the ability to attack four targets at once, and be relatively mobile.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The Hercules system was compared to threats ranging from the relatively short-range Little John, Honest John and Lacrosse through medium-range systems like Corporal, Sergeant and Lance, and finally the long-range (for battlefield concerns) Redstone. Of these threats, Redstone was considered just within the Hercules' capabilities, able to defend against such a target over a relatively limited range. Increasing performance against these longer-range "theatre" weapons would require more extensive upgrades that would have pushed the time-frame out to the range when FABMDS was expected.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The primary change to create the resulting "Improved EFS/ATBM Hercules" was a modified version of the HIPAR. The antenna was modified to give it the ability to see higher angles, while the Battery Control Console was upgraded with dual PPI displays for short- and long-range work, and the data link to the missile van was upgraded. Additionally the radar was given the "Electronic Frequency Selection" (EFS) system which allowed operators to quickly switch between a selection of operating frequencies at about 20 microseconds, while the earlier system required manual switching that took about 30 seconds.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The first EFS sets arrived at White Sands late in 1962 and started testing in April 1963. In testing the system was successful against all manner of short-range rockets and missiles, and successfully tracked the Redstone on 23 September and 5 October 1963, but failed to achieve a "kill" in either test due to unrelated problems. A test against the much higher performance Pershing was carried out on 16 October 1963, and while the HIPAR was able to detect the missile, the tracking system was unable to track it.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The first deployment of the EFS/ATBM HIPAR was carried out between February and 20 April 1963, but during this time the Army decided not to deploy these systems in the United States. Further deployments to allied units and US units in Alaska were carried out between November 1963 and the summer of 1965.


title: Nike Hercules

text: As Hercules had evolved from the fixed-base Ajax system, early deployments offered no mobility. However, both Ajax and Hercules systems in Europe had to be able to move as US forces shifted. This led to the use of semi-trailer systems for the fire control systems, which could be easily moved and re-positioned as required. LOPAR was relatively small, and the TTR/MTR were always trailer based, so these systems were also fairly mobile. The problem was the missile launcher itself, and especially the large HIPAR radar, which presented a formidable mobility problem.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Starting in April 1960, considerable effort was put into a fully mobile "Cross-Country Hercules" launcher based on the M520 Goer vehicle, an articulated prime mover that saw considerable service during the Vietnam War. This system was successfully tested at White Sands on 1 October 1961. In spite of this success, the GOER-based Hercules would not be used operationally.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Efforts to mount the HIPAR on the same platform between March and December 1962 were not nearly as successful, and on 18 December 1962 the concept was abandoned in favor of an "airmobile" solution using conventional M52 trucks and modified trailers. The resulting system used six semi-trailers: four to carry HIPAR electronic gear, one to carry the antenna, and one to carry the generators. General Electric demonstrated a prototype on 11 February 1964. The AN/MPQ-43 Mobile HIPAR was made part of Hercules Standard A in August 1966 and began operational deployment in Europe on 12 April 1967.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Soviet development of ICBMs and the de-emphasis of their bomber force decreased the value of the Hercules system. Beginning around 1965, the number of Nike batteries was reduced. Thule's air defense was reduced during 1965, and SAC air base defense during 1966, reducing the number of batteries to 112. Budgetary cuts reduced that number to 87 in 1968, and 82 in 1969. Nike Hercules was included in SALT I discussions as an ABM.


title: Nike Hercules

text: All CONUS Hercules batteries, with the exception of the ones in Florida and Alaska, were deactivated by April 1974. The remaining units were deactivated during the spring of 1979. Dismantling of the sites in Florida – Alpha Battery in Everglades National Park, Bravo Battery in Key Largo, Charlie Battery in Carol City and Delta Battery, located on Krome Avenue on the outskirts of Miami – started in June 1979 and was completed by early autumn of that year. The buildings that once housed Delta Battery became the original structures used for the Krome Avenue Detention Facility, a federal facility used primarily to hold illegal aliens awaiting immigration hearings. In Anchorage, Alaska, Site Point (A Battery) was converted into a ski chalet for Kincaid Park. Site Summit (B Battery) still sits above Eagle River, its IFC buildings and clamshell towers easily visible when driving towards Anchorage. Site Bay (C Battery), across Cook Inlet from the others, has been mostly demolished, with only burned out shells of the batteries remaining, as well as a few storage bunkers. The large airstrip remains, and is often used by locals for flight instruction and practice.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules remained a major front-line weapon in Europe into the 1980s. Over the years, the vacuum-tube guidance system, as well as the complex fire control systems' radars, suffered from diminishing manufacturing source (DMS) issues. In part because of less parts supportability, Western European (Fourth Allied Tactical Air Force (4 ATAF) and Second Allied Tactical Air Force (2 ATAF) sites essentially became fixed sites and were no longer considered capable of a mobile role. During the last years of their deployment in Europe, the issue at hand was more about maintaining security of the nuclear capable missiles, rather than mobility. The DoD invested considerably in upgrading the security of the storage areas of the launcher sections, ultimately installing significant towers that were capable of watching over all three sections within the "exclusion area".


title: Nike Hercules

text: The U.S. Army continued to use Hercules as a front-line air defense weapon in Europe until 1983, when Patriot missile batteries were deployed. NATO units from West Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Greece and Turkey continued to use the Hercules for high-altitude air defense until the late 1980s. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the units were deactivated in 1988. The last Hercules missile was launched in the Sardinian range of Capo San Lorenzo in Italy on November 24, 2006.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Approximately 25,000 Nike Hercules were manufactured. Early models cost about each, while most recent cost estimate, from Japan, was million.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The Nike Hercules was a command-guided, long-range, high-altitude anti-aircraft missile. It was normally deployed in fixed bases with a central radar and control site (Integrated Fire Control area or IFC) separated from the launcher area (LA). Hercules batteries in the US were generally placed in older Ajax bases, using their underground storage and maintenance buildings. 145 missile batteries were deployed during the cold war.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Each Nike battery consisted of two or three areas; IFC, LA and general. The LA consisted to a maximum of four launching sections, each section consisted of an underground storage area, an elevator to move missiles to and from the surface launchers, and four aboveground firing locations. One of these locations was directly above the elevator, the others were reached by manually pushing the missiles off the elevator to the launcher along rails. The LA also had a control van to control and monitor the LA activities and maintenance facilities.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The IFC contained the search and tracking radars and control center (operators, computer, etc.), and various related offices and communications centres for general operations. To operate the Nike Hercules system on the IFC the crew consisted of about nine operators under command of the Battery Control Officer (BCO). The crew on the LA, also under command of the BCO, was responsible for preparing and erecting the missile. On both the IFC and the LA maintenance people were available.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The battery crew was housed on-site, either at the IFC, or sometimes, together with administrative offices and general services on a separate area.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Any single battery could only launch a single missile at a time, due to the limited number of radars, computers and operators. Four Nike batteries were normally organized into a single battalion.


title: Nike Hercules

text: When mounted on its booster pack, the Hercules missile was long with a wingspan of (one side only). The upper stage alone was long. The fuselage had a bullet-like shape (Sears–Haack body), but this was difficult to make out due to the presence of the four large delta wings running almost the entire length of the fuselage. Each wing ended with a control flap which was separated from the wing by a short distance, leaving a gap. The back of the controls were even with the extreme rear of the missile. Smaller deltas in front of the main wings, and blended into them, provided roll control with very small flaps mounted to pivot along a line roughly 45 degrees from the line of the fuselage. These smaller wings also housed the antennae of the transponder.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The booster was formed from four of the earlier Ajax M5E1 boosters held together in a frame. Each of these was a steel tube, and held together in this fashion they presented a considerable range safety issue when they fell back to the ground after launch. The boosters were equipped with four large swept-wing fins at the extreme rear, behind the rocket exhaust, using a diamond cross-section suitable for supersonic lift.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules could carry either a nuclear warhead or a conventional high-explosive warhead (T-45 fragmentation type). Initially the nuclear-armed version carried the W-7 Mod 2E nuclear warhead, with yields of 2.5 or 28 kt. Beginning in FY 1961 the older warheads were replaced by W-31 Mod 0 warheads, with yields of 2 kt (Y1) or 30 kt (Y2). The last versions carried the W31 Mod 2 warhead, with yields of 2 or 20 kt.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Approximately 25,000 Nike Hercules were manufactured. Three versions were produced, MIM-14A, B and C. The differences between these versions are not known. There are slight differences in dimensions as reported in different sources, it is not known if this is due to different versions.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Interceptions with the Hercules system would typically start with targets being detected and identified on the HIPAR system, if this was in use. Otherwise the LOPAR was used. In order to simplify the upgrades at Ajax sites, HIPAR did not replace the earlier ACQ radar from Ajax, which was retained and now known as LOPAR. HIPAR used its own displays and operators, and forwarded targeting information to the LOPAR operators who would then pick up those same targets on their own display.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Once a target was found on the LOPAR, it could be identified with aid of an Identification friend or foe system. The LOPAR provided rough range, azimuth and limited altitude or elevation information to the operators of the Target Tracking Radar (TTR), who would manually slew the TTR onto the target. Once locked-on, tracking was automatic.


title: Nike Hercules

text: New to the Hercules system was the Target Ranging Radar, or TRR. It is relatively easy to jam range information on monopulse radars like the TTR by sending out false return signals. The radar can continue to locate the target in elevation or azimuth because all of the signals come from the same location, but the receiver cannot easily determine which pulse was sent by the radar and which was sent by the electronic countermeasures (ECM) on the target aircraft, which is needed to measure the time-of-flight. The TRR system combatted this by allowing switching between two very different set of frequencies. This signal would be very difficult to jam because the jammer would have to broadcast across a wide set of frequencies in order to ensure they were returning on the frequency the receiver had actually selected. Meanwhile, the TTR can continue offering location information, and in the case that is also jammed (difficult but possible), was upgraded to offer a home-on-jam mode that used the ECM system's own broadcasts as a location source. Skilled operators could also try to track the target in a manual tracking mode.


title: Nike Hercules

text: As soon at the TTR was locked on to a target, an analog computer (later digital) continually computed a suitable intercept point in the sky and an expected 'time to fly' of the missile based on information from the TTR and basic performance information about the missile. This information was displayed on plotting boards.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Prior to launch, the Missile Tracking Radar (MTR) locked on to the transponder in the selected missile. Like the Ajax, the Hercules used a transponder in the missile. A short period after launch the actual location, i.e. azimuth, elevation and range of the missile were displayed on the plotting boards. The firing or launch command was given manually by the Battery Control Officer based on orders or Rules of Engagements. To ensure the MTR could see and track the missile during its initial rapid ascent as it launched, the IFC was normally located about from the "Launching Area" (LA). In the case of Hercules, all of the radars were typically mounted on (concrete) elevated platforms to improve their line-of-sight.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Information from the MTR and TTR continued to be fed to the computer for updating the intercept point based on any actual changes in either the missile or the target location, speed or direction. The guidance commands were sent to the missile by modulating the MTR transmit signal. When the missile neared the intercept point a command signal was sent to the missile to explode.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules missiles were normally stored in a "safe" mode, using various keys and pull-to-arm pins. During an alert, the site would go on "blue alert", at which time the LA crew would arm and erect the missiles and then retreat to safety. As the missiles were brought to readiness, a light board in the LA control van lit up with a series of amber lights for each launcher area, and green lights for each missile. On the IFC the status of the selected missile was given.


title: Nike Hercules

text: When the battery was given orders to attack a target, the alert status lamp changed from blue to red. When the TTR and MTR radars were locked, the computer had a firing solution and the missile reported active, the LA lamp changed from amber to green, indicating the ability to fire. At this time the target information and the intercept point were displayed on the plotting boards and the BCO selected the right time to manually fire.


title: Nike Hercules

text: The entire sequence of events from decision to launch to actual launch normally took about 36 seconds. This included about 30 seconds to develop a track for a target; 4 seconds for computer to develop a firing solution, and 2 seconds between the initial fire order command and missile launch. There was a 5-second allowance for the missile to launch, if it failed to do so it was marked "rejected" and another missile selected. A new missile could be launched about 11 seconds after detonation or rejecting the previous missile. Based on the 'time to fly' of the missile this limited overall battery rates to about one launch every couple of minutes.


title: Nike Hercules

text: Hercules also offered the ability to attack pre-located ground targets, after feeding in the coordinates in an operation that took about five minutes. For these missions the computer used the MTR to guide the missile to a point above the target, then commanded it to dive vertically while measuring any changes in trajectory as it fell. The missile would eventually pass out of line-of-sight with the MTR, so final arming information was provided during the dive, and the warhead was triggered by a barometric fuse.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: "Hit and Run" is the fourth episode of the sixth season of "Better Call Saul", the spin-off television series of "Breaking Bad". Actress Rhea Seehorn directed the episode written by Ann Cherkis. The episode aired on May 2, 2022, on AMC and AMC+. In several countries outside the United States and Canada, the episode premiered on Netflix the following day.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: In the episode, Jimmy McGill faces the repercussions of having defended Lalo Salamanca in court and Kim Wexler starts to believe she is being followed as they continue their plan to sabotage Howard Hamlin's career.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: The episode was the television directorial debut of Seehorn, who plays Kim. "Hit and Run" was met with positive reviews for its direction, on-screen performances, cinematography, and pacing. An estimated 1.16 million viewers saw the episode during its first broadcast on AMC.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: Mr. and Mrs. Ryman return home after riding their bicycles through an Albuquerque suburb. Their house is revealed to be the operations center of people who are surveilling Gus Fring's home. Gus returns to his home and uses a tunnel system to enter the Ryman home, from which he oversees a widespread search of Albuquerque for Lalo Salamanca. Mike Ehrmantraut says no leads have been found, but Gus insists that Lalo is alive.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: While Howard Hamlin visits his psychologist, Jimmy McGill disguises himself as Howard, uses his duplicate key to take Howard's car, and picks up Wendy at a motel. They drive past Kim Wexler and Clifford Main and Jimmy pretends to force Wendy out of the car, making it appear to Cliff that Howard is using prostitutes. Jimmy returns the car just as Howard leaves his appointment. Kim drives Wendy back to the motel and Wendy alerts her to a nearby car, which Wendy believes to be undercover police. Kim notices the same car continuing to follow her. While meeting "pro bono" clients at the El Camino Dining Room, Kim spots the car again and confronts the occupants. Mike reveals that the men following her work for him, that Lalo may still be alive, and that Mike is having men monitor anyone Lalo may contact. Kim realizes Mike is the man who saved Jimmy's life in the desert and asks why he told her, not Jimmy. Mike replies that she is "made of sterner stuff." As he leaves, she recognizes him as the former courthouse parking lot attendant.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: Jimmy notices that he has become a pariah among courthouse staff, which Bill Oakley explains is because Jimmy defended Lalo. Jimmy later discovers that his defense of Lalo has made him popular among local criminals seeking representation from "Saul Goodman". Mrs. Nguyen evicts Jimmy from the nail salon because of the high client volume, so Jimmy begins scouting for a new office. That night Kim meets Jimmy at a potential location for his new office and is still shaken by the possibility that Lalo is alive. Despite poor maintenance and other problems, Kim approves, citing its proximity to the county courthouse and jail, and Albuquerque's bail bonds offices. She and Jimmy leave for dinner, and Kim opts not to mention her meeting with Mike.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: The episode was written by Ann Cherkis and directed by Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim, marking Seehorn's television directorial debut. She became the first "Better Call Saul" cast member to direct an episode of the series; Giancarlo Esposito, who plays Gus, directed an episode of the sixth season as well. Seehorn said co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and executive producers Melissa Bernstein and Thomas Schnauz had often promoted the idea of actors guest directing on "Better Call Saul" after actor Bryan Cranston directed some episodes of "Breaking Bad". Editor Kelley Dixon recalled Seehorn visiting the editing room of "Better Call Saul" during the second or third season and sharing her desire to direct an episode. Seehorn said she was very observant of other directors on set, including John Shiban, Norberto Barba, Scott Winant, and Michael Slovis. Gilligan and Gould also gave her access to shot lists and she would work with frequent "Better Call Saul" director Michelle MacLaren to break down episodes. Seehorn was initially hesitant about asking for permission to direct the episode but found the courage to bring it up due to her relationship with the crew.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: Michael Morris was the episode's producing director, Angie Meyer was the assistant director, and Paul Donachie was the cinematographer. The first scene that was shot for the episode was the nail salon scene, which Seehorn said made her nervous due to the number of crew members on set. She described the experience as a fun trial-by-fire. She said she received one piece of advice about being truthful when she did not know something: "Being full of crap, they'll see through it in a heartbeat. So there was a lot of, 'I don't know! That's a very good question! I'm gonna think about that!'" Gilligan and Gould told her that the job would be stressful but said that "as hard as it is ... just try and find some joy when you can. Be as present as you can and have some good times as well."


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: Seehorn and Cherkis noted how the episode displayed intimate and vulnerable moments in a majority of the character's lives, from Howard's therapy session, Clifford Main's revealing his son has a drug problem, Gus being irritated with removing his concealed weapon, Bill Oakley's conversation with Jimmy about ethics, and Kim's initial realization that she is being followed. "Hit and Run" introduces several settings and characters from "Breaking Bad", including the strip mall location of Saul Goodman's eventual office, the Crossroads Motel, and minor characters Spooge and Wendy, played respectively by David Ury and Julia Minesci. The strip mall location of Goodman's office had, since the end of "Breaking Bad", been leased by a few sports bars, but by the time "Better Call Saul" was ready to shoot there, the property had become vacant. Seehorn took a detail-oriented approach as a director, working with Meyer and Donachie to storyboard the shots during the weekends. The episode's cinematography was rigorously considered: Seehorn made sure the point-of-view shots in the episode were only included if they moved the story forward, so as to avoid breaking audiences' immersion. The only scene Seehorn had to watch the playback of during filming was the scene with Kim and Clifford Main because the action was occurring behind her.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: Married couple Joni and Kirk Bovill played the Rymans, the couple riding their bicycles in the episode's cold open. Seehorn wanted the sprinkler they ride past to sound like a machine gun, and worked with sound mixer Phil Palmer and boom operator Mitch Gebhard to accomplish the effect. The song in the sequence, "Best Things in Life" by The Dreamliners, was selected early on in the production by music supervisor Thomas Golubić to highlight the developing contrast between the scene's beginning and end. As Seehorn put it, "I wanted everything that was idyllic in the beginning to be awful and violent in the end." The crew said the opening sequence was included because they trusted viewers to notice and remember information through visuals instead of exposition.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: The reveal of the tunnel system underneath Gus's house took weeks of preparation to film. The interior and exterior of the ground floors of both houses, including the bedroom and closet in Gus's house, were real locations, while the tunnel and the two basements were all part of a connected set constructed on a soundstage. Donachie shot the sequence to look like it was filmed in one take. Some visual effects in the episode added in during post-production by Rodeo FX included the red house from the opening sequence, and the windshield and rear-view window of the car belonging to Mike's men in the long zoom shot when Kim confronts them.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: The episode also features the first interaction between Kim and Mike, who is played by Jonathan Banks. It was the only scene that was not rehearsed beforehand and was inspired by "Heat" (1995), specifically by the first interaction between Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley and Amy Brenneman's Eady. Cherkis's script called for the scene to take place outside the diner but it was Seehorn's decision to change the setting. Some ideas for the scene would have seen Mike standing at a bus stop or sitting on a bench but these concepts were scrapped due to logistical issues, such as the amount of natural light, limited coverage of the actors, and the fact that the exterior of the diner had already been shown in "Wine and Roses". Seehorn told Banks she wanted to honor the moment by making him walk out of the diner when there was a lot of sunlight so he could "be backlit like the icon you are!" During post-production, editing for the episode was completed by Chris McCaleb in Albuquerque with the assistance of Seehorn, who was in Los Angeles. They worked remotely using FaceTime to communicate and the ClearView system to edit.


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of seven reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.0/10. Critics were positive of Seehorn's direction and performance, the episode's pacing, and the return of Wendy's character. Michael Hogan of "Vanity Fair" complimented the makeup design. Scott Tobias, writing for "Vulture", called the cold open a "fun tease" for its use of the 1965 song "Best Things in Life" by the Dreamliners. He also noted the episode as "the fork in the road where Jimmy and Kim's paths diverge." "Rolling Stone"s Alan Sepinwall highlighted Kim and Mike's first interaction as a scene that was both "wracked with tension ... and yet also understated and lovely in the way you would hope for these two when they finally got to speak". He also praised Jimmy's steady transformation into Saul Goodman as well as Seehorn's direction, writing that "tonally and visually, this one felt and looked very much like an episode helmed by a "Saul" vet, rather than by someone whose only previous directorial credit on IMDb is a short film called "How Not to Buy a Couch"." Steve Greene from "IndieWire" said the actress played Kim's "internal calculus unsurprisingly well." "The A.V. Club"s Kimberly Potts gave positive notes to the cinematography and Seehorn's work on the episode, calling it a "stellar directorial debut in a Kim Wexler-intensive episode".


title: Hit and Run (Better Call Saul)

text: An estimated 1.16 million viewers watched "Hit and Run" during its first broadcast on AMC on May 2, 2022. At the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards, Rhea Seehorn received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for this episode.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Stephon Strickland (born September 30, 1990) is an American professional wrestler currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he performs under the ring name Swerve Strickland and is a former AEW World Tag Team Champion (with Keith Lee). He is also known for his time with WWE, where he performed under the ring name Isaiah "Swerve" Scott, where he is a former one-time NXT North American Champion.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: As Shane Strickland, he is best known for his work in Maryland Championship Wrestling (MCW) Major League Wrestling (MLW), Evolve Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW), where he is a former MLW World Heavyweight Champion, Evolve Champion and CZW World Heavyweight Champion. He also is well known for his time on "Lucha Underground", where he performed under the ring name Killshot. Additionally, he is also a former two-time CZW Wired TV Champion, and PCW Ultra Heavyweight Champion.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Strickland was born in Tacoma, Washington. His father was a sergeant first class cook in the United States Army. His father moved the family to Frankfurt, Germany when Strickland was two months old to live on an American military base. Strickland spent the first seven years of his life in Germany. Following their stay there, they then moved to Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, where he attended Donegal High School. At the school he excelled in sports, notably football, basketball and track.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: After graduating, Strickland felt the need to "follow in his father's footsteps", enlisting in the United States Army Reserve. To start this career, Strickland went down to South Carolina to start basic training. From there, he went to Augusta, Georgia for advanced individual training. Following that, he was stationed in York, Pennsylvania, to complete his basic training.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Shane Strickland decided to become a professional wrestler when he was an 18-year-old, one year into his military service. He was serving as a signal communications specialist, a position he went on to hold for eight years. He began training at Ground Xero (Zero) Wrestling Training Academy in August 2008, doing so while still active duty for the military. It did not take long for him to start getting bookings around the Maryland and Pennsylvania areas. He had military commitments in the city of York, Pennsylvania, which forced him to only wrestle in that general area's independent scene in the early years of his career.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Stricklands first appearance for a significant promotion was in September 2011 for the National Wrestling Alliance where he lost to Phil Brown. On March 3, 2012, he defeated Alex Payne in his debut for East Coast Wrestling Association. He would go to debut for World Xtreme Wrestling in a six-man match on September 15, 2012.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Strickland made his Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) debut on February 4, 2012 in a dark match. On March 10, 2012, at Aerial Assault, Strickland participated in the main event, a Best Of The Best 11 Qualifying Aerial Assault Elimination Match won by Samuray del Sol. On November 10, 2012, at Night of Infamy 11, Strickland participated in a CZW Wired TV Open Challenge, but was defeated by the champion A. R. Fox. At Best of the Best 12, Strickland participated in the Best of the Best tournament, but he was defeated in the first round by Alex Colon.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On September 14, 2013, at Down with the Sickness, Strickland participated in the main event a Chris Cash Memorial Fatal 4 Way Ladder match for the CZW Wired TV Championship, but the match was won by Colon. At Cage of Death XV, Colon defeated Strickland in a title match. On March 8, 2014, at High Stakes, Strickland defeated the CZW Wired Champion Devon Moore to win the title for the first time. At Best of the Best XIII, Strickland retained the title against Moore in a Ladder match.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Then, Strickland started a feud with Joe Gacy. At Dojo Wars 6, Strickland lost the title against Gacy. However, Strickland regained the title two weeks later at Dojo Wars 7. In October 2014, Strickland participated in the World Triangle Tournament, a tournament held by Westside Xtreme Wrestling, Combat Zone Wrestling and Big Japan Pro-Wrestling. Strickland ended with 3 point in the Block B. Finally, at Cage of Death XVI, Gacy defeated Strickland for the title. After a lengthy absence in which he wrestled for WXW in Germany, Strickland made a one-time appearance in 2015 in a victory over David Starr.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: In 2016, Strickland had an acclaimed series of matches with Dezmond Xavier and in the 2017 Best of the Best tournament, he made it to the finals before losing to Dave Crist. In July that same year, he then went on to defeat Gacy, Lio Rush, and Davey Richards in a 4-way to win the CZW World Heavyweight Championship for the first time. He held on to the title until November before losing to Gacy, who then immediately lost the title to Rickey Shane Page. Page then challenged both men to a Cage Of Death match for the title, which Strickland was unsuccessful at winning.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On May 5, 2012, Strickland made his debut for Evolve Wrestling, where he teamed with Latin Dragon to defeat DMC and Nate Carter. On August 4, 2018, Strickland defeated Matt Riddle to win the Evolve Championship at Evolve 108. At Evolve 114 he lost the championship to NXT's Fabian Aichner, ending his three-month reign. Strickland wrestled NXT's Kassius Ohno at Evolve 116 on November 10, 2018 in a losing effort. After not appearing for three months, Strickland returned to Evolve at Evolve 121 on February 15, 2019, to face NXT's Adam Cole. He would be defeated by Cole and the following night he would defeat A. R. Fox. He faced JD Drake at Evolve 126 for the WWN Championship in a match he lost.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: In 2016, Strickland made his debut in Germany for Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw), taking part in the 16 Carat Gold tournament and later their World Tag Team League, which he won alongside David Starr. They beat many established teams such as, Angélico and Jack Evans, Ringkampf (Timothy Thatcher and Walter), Moustache Mountain (Tyler Bate and Trent Seven) and The Leaders of the New School (Marty Scurll and Zack Sabre Jr.). During 2017's WrestleMania 33 three-day weekend, he wrestled seven matches for five different promotions, including four in one day. On August 25, 2018, Strickland appeared at Triplemanía XXVI. He and A. C. H. appeared at that event to represent Major League Wrestling through the MLW and AAA partnership. They were in a Four-way match for the AAA World Cruiserweight Championship. Strickland would fail to capture the championship. On March 23, 2019, Strickland competed for The Crash Lucha Libre in fatal-4-way for The Crash Cruiserweight Championship.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Strickland won the PCW Ultra Light Heavyweight Championship on March 26, 2018. Two months later at their next event he defended against Douglas James with Ricky Steamboat as the guest referee. He finished the year with successful defenses against Dragon Lee, Flip Gordon, Rey Horus and Darby Allin, among others. On December 7, 2018, Strickland defeated Pentagon Jr. for the PCW Ultra Heavyweight Championship, becoming a double champion as he was still holding the Light Heavyweight Championship. He would vacate the Light Heavyweight Championship shortly after, and he defended the Ultra Heavyweight Championship at their A2K19 event on January 18, 2019 against Brian Cage.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On March 9, 2019, Strickland gave a farewell speech at a DEFY Wrestling event, indicating he will soon be signing with a major company. At Wrestle Summit 2019, he appeared as PCW Ultra roster member. At the event he lost his PCW Ultra Heavyweight Championship to Mil Muertes. Following Wrestle Summit, Strickland revealed that on April 6, he will wrestle for Wrestling Revolver at WrestleCon's Pancakes and Piledrivers event. In the match, he teamed with Joe Gacy and Eddie Kingston to face-off against oVe, in what was promoted as his last match on the independent circuit.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Strickland participated in El Rey Network professional wrestling television series "Lucha Underground". Strickland became a central character on Lucha Underground, as one of a small group of characters to appear in every season. His friend Ricochet being on the show led to him sending Konnan some of his demo tapes in late 2014. This led to a tryout match with Willie Mack and him later being signed by the company. He portrayed the character of Lt. Jermaine Strickland, a military vet who carries dog tags to honor the memories of his fallen comrades and wrestled under a mask as Killshot. During the first season, he aligned with Big Ryck and Willie Mack and participated in a tournament for the LU Trios Championship, but they were defeated in the finales by the eventual winners Angélico, Son of Havoc and Ivelisse. Following the first season, Strickland asked head writer Chris DeJoseph if he could write some background and story for his character. This led to it having more military elements.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: In Season 2, had a feud with Marty Martinez after Marty stole his dog tags after a match between them ended in a no contest. Their feud ended in a Weapon of Mass Destruction match, where Killshot defeated Martinez. After the match, Killshot started a storyline when he received a letter from A. R. Fox, a former brother in arms who Killshot left for dead in battle. They faced each other at Ultima Lucha Tres Part I in a Hell of War match where Killshot won. ESPN called it "one of the most brutal contests to ever be televised in professional wrestling." Two weeks later, The Mack reunited Killshot and Fox and won the Trios Championship. During Season 4, Killshot had a feud with Son of Havoc which culminated at Ultima Lucha Cuatro in a mask vs mask match. After losing the match, Killshot surrendered his mask to Son of Havoc and revealed his identity as Lt. Jermaine Strickland. As he was leaving the temple, he apologized to Dante Fox and asked to be relieved of duty. Being granted permission, Killshot exited the Lucha Underground temple.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On October 5, 2017, Strickland debuted in the main event of Major League Wrestling's 2017 rebirth show One Shot by defeating Ricochet. On April 12, 2018, Strickland defeated Matt Riddle at one of MLW's first major shows, to win an eight-man tournament and the vacant MLW World Heavyweight Championship. He lost the title to wrestler Low Ki after Strickland had a few successful defenses, with his reign lasting 91 days. Following that he feuded with Sami Callihan, which ended in a street fight won by Strickland. They also participated in a War Games match in September 2018, where Callihan attacked Strickland during his entrance, removing him from the match. This was reportedly done to write him off television if contract negotiations changed.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On episode 32 of MLW's weekly program "MLW Fusion", Strickland faced Low Ki in rematch for the Heavyweight title. However, after a distraction, Ki "ripped" out some of Strickland's hair and rolled him up for the win. After the match, Strickland grabbed a microphone and begun a worked shoot towards MLW management turning heel in the process. He mentions owner Court Bauer and blames management for his bad luck as of late. He ends the promo with, "As of right now, I am terminating my contract and I'm.." as his microphone gets cut off. Strickland proceeded to throw trash at the MLW employees that were confronting him, he flips off one of them and hops the rail into the audience and leaves.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: They followed this up two weeks later on "Fusion" with a scene of Strickland and Court Bauer arguing behind his closed office door. After this, it was stated he was "contractly obligated" to appear at the December 13, 2018 MLW event, Never Say Never. At the event he was defeated by CMLL luchador Rush. This match aired on "MLW Fusion" on January 18, 2019. Strickland opened the show with a heel promo disparaging the fans and the city until he was interrupted by Rush. This was Strickland's last appearance in MLW. On January 15, 2019, Strickland stated on Twitter that he was now a free agent.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On April 17, 2019, it was announced that he signed a contract with WWE and begun working at their Performance Center, and his ring name was changed to Isaiah "Swerve" Scott. He wrestled his debut match against Cameron Grimes, a dark match that took place before the May 1 NXT television tapings. In June, it was announced that Scott will compete in a tournament named NXT Breakout Tournament, where he made his debut on the July 3 episode of "NXT", losing to Cameron Grimes in the first round of the tournament. On the July 23 episode of "205 Live", he debuted on the brand by losing to Cruiserweight Champion Drew Gulak. At Worlds Collide on January 25, 2020, Scott challenged for the Cruiserweight Championship in a fatal four way match against Travis Banks, Jordan Devlin, and then-champion Angel Garza, but was unsuccessful.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On April 12, Scott was announced as a participant in a tournament to determine the interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion, representing Group B in the tournament, where he was defeated by Akira Tozawa and Gentleman Jack Gallagher, but was able to defeat El Hijo del Fantasma, leaving him with one win in the tournament, thus failing to advance to the finals. Scott then began feuding with Cruiserweight Champion Santos Escobar, El Hijo del Fantasma's new ring name, after Scott claimed to be the only one who has pinned Escobar. On the August 26 episode of "NXT", Scott challenged Escobar for the title but lost after Escobar hit him with a loaded mask. On the September 1 episode of "NXT Super Tuesday", Scott and Breezango (Tyler Breeze and Fandango) defeated Legado del Fantasma in a Six-Man Street Fight after Scott once again pinned Escobar, thus earning Scott a title shot at . At the event, he lost to Escobar.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Scott then entered the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic tournament, where he was paired with Jake Atlas, but the two were eliminated from the tournament by the eventual winner MSK (Nash Carter and Wes Lee) and following the match, argued with one another. On the February 17, 2021 episode of "NXT", Scott attacked Leon Ruff after losing a match to him, turning heel in the process. At , Scott would participated in a 6 Way match, where he eliminated Ruff and Cameron Grimes but would be last person eliminated in the match by Bronson Reed.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: On the May 4 episode of "NXT", Scott defeated Ruff in a Falls Count Anywhere match after A. J. Francis interfered on Scott's behalf. The following week, Scott was joined by Francis (who was now called Top Dolla),


title: Swerve Strickland

text: Tehuti Miles (now called Ashante "Thee" Adonis) and Briana Brandy (now B-FAB), forming the stable Hit Row. On the June 29 episode of "NXT", Scott defeated Bronson Reed to win the NXT North American Championship, his first title in his WWE career. As part of the 2021 Draft, Scott along with the rest of Hit Row, were drafted to the SmackDown brand. On the October 12 episode of "NXT", he defeated Santos Escobar to retain his NXT North American championship, only to lose to Carmelo Hayes, ending his 105-day reign. On November 4, B-Fab was released from her WWE contract, shortening the group. On November 18, Scott was released from his WWE contract along with Adonis and Dolla.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: After departing from WWE, Strickland, now using the name Swerve Strickland, signed with All Elite Wrestling on March 6, 2022, at the Revolution pay-per-view event.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: He made his in-ring debut for AEW on the March 11 episode of AEW Rampage, scoring a pinfall victory over Tony Nese. The following week, Strickland aligned himself with Keith Lee in a feud with Team Taz (Powerhouse Hobbs and Ricky Starks). Strickland and Lee would then begin tag teaming, dubbing themselves Swerve In Our Glory. At "Dynamite": Fyter Fest Night 1 on July 13, Swerve In Our Glory defeated defending champions The Young Bucks and Team Taz in a Triple or Nothing match to win the AEW World Tag Team Championship. They had successful title defenses against the likes of The Lucha Brothers and the Gunn Club and a PPV victory over The Acclaimed at All Out before losing the titles in a rematch with The Acclaimed at Dynamite Grand Slam on September 21st.


title: Swerve Strickland

text: He has two daughters and a son, that were all born in the early 2010s. Strickland is the first cousin of former NFL linebacker Fred Strickland.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: Elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for 2022 were conducted according to the rules most recently amended in 2016. As in the past, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recently retired players, with results announced on January 25. David Ortiz, in his first year of eligibility, was the only player elected from the BBWAA ballot.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: Meetings of the Early Baseball Era Committee and Golden Days Era Committee—two of a group of four bodies generally referred to as the Veterans Committee—who consider players from the 1871–1949 and 1950–1969 eras, respectively, took place in December 2021, having been postponed from December 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Early Baseball Era Committee elected Buck O'Neil and Bud Fowler, while the Golden Days Era Committee elected Minnie Miñoso, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, and Tony Oliva.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The inductees and other honorees composing the class of 2022 were honored in ceremonies in Cooperstown, New York, on July 24, 2022.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The list of players appearing on the BBWAA ballot was announced on November 22, 2021. There were 17 players carried over from the prior year's ballot, who garnered at least 5% of the vote in 2021 balloting and were still eligible for election, along with 13 players selected to appear on this ballot in their first year of eligibility, whose final major league appearance was in 2016.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: This was the final BBWAA ballot for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa. Schilling joined Jim Bunning in becoming the second player ever to run out of eligibility after having twice received 70% of the vote, but falling short of the necessary 75%.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: Players who met first-year eligibility requirements but were "not" selected by the screening committee for inclusion on the ballot included: Michael Bourn, Billy Butler, Marlon Byrd, Chris Capuano, Coco Crisp, Gavin Floyd, Jeff Francoeur, Roberto Hernández, Omar Infante, Kelly Johnson, Colby Lewis, Kyle Lohse, Javier López, Ángel Pagán, Brayan Peña, Joel Peralta, David Ross, Brendan Ryan, Matt Thornton, Juan Uribe, Ryan Vogelsong, and Jerome Williams.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The Early Baseball Era Committee met to consider players from the pre-1950 era. The committee was established in July 2016; this was its first meeting to consider candidates for election to the Hall.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: Within the Early Baseball Era Committee, the Hall of Fame announced a Special Early Baseball Overview Committee to form a ballot of 10 Negro League players for consideration; the special committee was led by former commissioner Bud Selig in a non-voting role.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The ballot was announced on November 5, and the voting was held on December 5. All 10 candidates were deceased.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The Golden Days Era Committee met to consider players from the 1950–1969 era. The committee was established in July 2016; this was its first meeting to consider candidates for election to the Hall.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The ballot was announced on November 5, and the voting was held on December 5. Of the 10 candidates, only Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, and Maury Wills were still alive.


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The 2022 Ford C. Frick Award will be officially presented on July 23 in an awards presentation in Cooperstown. According to the rules last amended in 2016, nominees in this balloting were considered from the Broadcasting Beginnings category—"early team voices and pioneers of baseball broadcasting"—one of three categories considered on a rotating basis. The announced finalists, all of whom are deceased, were:


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: The 2022 BBWAA Career Excellence Award will also be officially presented on July 23 in Cooperstown, honoring a baseball writer "for meritorious contributions to baseball writing". The award was formerly named for J. G. Taylor Spink, longtime publisher of "The Sporting News".


title: 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

text: On December 7, 2021, Tim Kurkjian, an ESPN analyst who had a long career as a writer for "The Dallas Morning News", "The Baltimore Sun", and "Sports Illustrated", was named as the recipient. Allan Simpson, founder of "Baseball America", and sportswriter Marty Noble were the other finalists.


title: John Musker

text: John Edward Musker (born November 8, 1953) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He often collaborates with fellow director Ron Clements and is best known for writing and directing the Disney films "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), "The Little Mermaid" (1989), "Aladdin" (1992), "Hercules" (1997), "Treasure Planet" (2002), "The Princess and the Frog" (2009), and "Moana" (2016).


title: John Musker

text: Musker was born in Chicago, Illinois, the second oldest of eight children in an Irish Catholic family. His father, Robert J. Musker, who worked for over 40 years at Illinois Bell Telephone, died in 2008 at the age of 84, and his mother, Joan T. Musker (née Lally), died in 2011 at the age of 81.


title: John Musker

text: He attended Loyola Academy in Illinois and then graduated from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, where he majored in English and drew cartoons for the "Daily Northwestern". After that, he served a two-year apprenticeship with famed animator Frank Thomas, a supervising animator of Disney films such as "Peter Pan" (1953), "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), and "The Aristocats" (1970). Musker met Ron Clements during the production of "The Fox and the Hound" in 1981, where he worked as a character animator under Clements and Cliff Nordberg. Musker teamed up with Clements as story artists on "The Black Cauldron" before they were removed from the project.


title: John Musker

text: Following the green-lighting of Clements's pitch for an adaptation of the children's book series "Basil of Baker Street" by Eve Titus into an animated feature, Musker and fellow story artist Burny Mattinson were assigned as the original directors while Dave Michener was brought in as an additional director. Due to a shortened production schedule and multiple story rewrites, Roy E. Disney assigned Mattinson to serve as director/producer while Ron Clements was brought in as another director.


title: John Musker

text: While working on "The Great Mouse Detective", newly appointed Disney CEO and chairman Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg issued invitations to the animation staff for their first held "gong show" session. Demanding only five new ideas, Clements pitched an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" and a high-concept idea of "Treasure Island in Space", which were both rejected by Katzenberg and Eisner. The next morning, Katzenberg approached Clements and asked him to expand his initial treatment.


title: John Musker

text: With "The Little Mermaid" in production in 1986, Musker joined Clements in expanding the original treatment into a twenty-page rough script, eliminating the role of the mermaid's grandmother and expanding the roles of the Merman King and the sea witch, and were later joined by Off-Broadway musical composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken who collaborated on the song and musical score. Released in November 1989, "The Little Mermaid" was praised as a milestone in rebirth of Disney animation by film critics and collected a domestic gross of $84 million, cumulatively receiving $184.2 million worldwide.


title: John Musker

text: When work on "The Little Mermaid" was wrapped, Clements and Musker re-developed their idea for "Treasure Planet", but the studio still expressed disinterest. Instead, the two directors were offered three projects in development: "Swan Lake", "King of the Jungle", and "Aladdin". The directors eventually chose the latter, desiring a wacky, faster-paced, and more contemporary mood separate from the previous Disney animated films.


title: John Musker

text: Working from Ashman and Menken's treatment and musical score, the two delivered a story reel to Katzenberg in April 1991, which was strongly disapproved of. Jettisoning multiple characters and story ideas and adding Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio as co-screenwriters, the production team restructured the entire story in eight days. Released in November 1992, "Aladdin" received positive reviews from critics, and became the first animated film to gross over $200 million domestically.


title: John Musker

text: Following work on "Aladdin", Clements, along with Musker, resumed their work on "Treasure Planet", which was again turned down by Katzenberg in 1993, who disapproved of setting the adaptation of a classic adventure tale in outer space. A deal was struck with the two directors to create another commercial film before he would approve "Treasure Planet". Rejecting projects in development such as "Don Quixote", "The Odyssey", and "Around the World in Eighty Days", they were later informed of animator Joe Haidar's pitch for a "Hercules" feature, and signed onto the project.


title: John Musker

text: During production on "Hercules", in 1995, Clements and Musker signed a seven-year contract deal with the studio which stipulated following "Hercules", the studio would produce "Treasure Planet" or another project of their choosing.


title: John Musker

text: With "Treasure Planet" completed in 2002, Clements and Musker later inherited "Fraidy Cat", which was originally a project developed by Dutch animation director Piet Kroon. "Fraidy Cat", however, never saw its light of day, as David Stainton, then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, refused to green-light the project. It was soon followed with Clements and Musker's resignation from Walt Disney Feature Animation in September 2005.


title: John Musker

text: When John Lasseter was appointed chief creative officer over Walt Disney Feature Animation in February 2006, he invited Clements and Musker back to Disney to oversee production on "The Frog Princess", and were officially confirmed as directors in the following July. Later re-titled "The Princess and the Frog", the film received positive reviews and grossed $267 million worldwide.


title: John Musker

text: After directing "The Princess and the Frog", Clements and Musker started working on an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's "Mort", but obtaining the film rights prevented them from continuing with the project. To avoid similar problems, they pitched three new ideas, where by 2011, the two directors started developing the film based on an original idea. In late 2012, the duo announced that they will be directing a new film in the future, but they have their lips sealed for the title, the plot, and the animation style.


title: John Musker

text: In July 2013, it was revealed that the film, titled "Moana", would be "a Polynesian tale involving the island folk and the idols made famous the world over". On November 10, 2014, Disney confirmed "Moana" would be released on November 23, 2016.


title: John Musker

text: In March 2018, having worked at Disney for 40 years, Musker announced his retirement from Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is currently animating his own original short film by hand.