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Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system. It occurs when the immune system attacks the central nervous system, which leads to demyelination. A demyelination disease is a disease of the nervous system when the myelin of the neutrons is damaged. Multiple sclerosis usually develops in young adults but can occur in just about any age group. It is most prominent in women. The very first case of multiple sclerosis was discovered in 1868 by Jean-Martin Charcot.

Multiple sclerosis affects the brain and the spinal cord; specifically the myelin sheath that is wrapped around the nerve fibers. These myelin sheaths electrically insulate the nerve fibers when working properly. Despite being discovered over a century ago, there is no known cause of multiple sclerosis. There are ideas that the disease can be caused genetically, by an infection or even by other environmental factors. There is also no known cure for multiple sclerosis. Treatment is used to restore the body to a somewhat normal state after an attack and is used to possibly help prevent any further attacks. Having multiple sclerosis does not affect the life expectancy of patients. MS patients tend to live just as long as the non-affected population.

There are a variety of symptoms that can appear in a person that might have multiple sclerosis but not all of them will appear at once. These symptoms will appear gradually and from time to time. They are weakness, inability to balance or stand, acute or chronic pain, fatigue, muscle spasms, random eye twitching along with bladder and bowl difficulties.

As mentioned earlier, there are some environmental factors that could play a role in the development of multiple sclerosis. They are extreme stress, a decreased exposure to the sunlight, decreased Vitamin D intake and production and even smoking.

There are treatments available today for patients with multiple sclerosis but there is no known cure for the debilitating disease. The main focus of the treatments is to return the body to a normal functioning state, prevent any future attacks and to prevent any disability to the body. Some alternative treatments not used widely by many doctors is a specific diet tailored to the patient, the use of hyperbaric oxygenation and different types of herbal medication.

The prognosis for people with the disease is promising despite no known cure. Almost 40 percent of patients reach the seventh decade of their life and 15 percent of deaths from the disease are directly related to suicide. Over 50 percent of deaths in multiple sclerosis patients is directly related to the consequences of the disease. The majority of patients with multiple sclerosis loss the ability to walk prior to death but 90 percent of patients are still able to walk 10 years after the disease was diagnosed. More over; the number is at 75 percent for people who have had the disease for 15 years.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease that cannot be entirely prevented nor entirely cured. With proper treatment and excellent care patients with the disease can go about living their lives.

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The practice of medicine has been around for centuries. Whether it is used for witchcraft or wizardry or just for the sole purpose of healing; medicine has been a mainstay in the survival of humankind. Medicine is simply defined as the art and science of healing. Practicing medicine involves treating and preventing disease and illness of humans. Medicine treats and prevents disease and illness through medication, surgery and various types of therapy.

The practice of medicine has been going on for hundreds of years. The first medicines were plants, animal parts and minerals. Medicine was practiced early on by shamans, priests and people known as medicine men. The practice of using plants as medicine is known as herbal healing. Herbal healing is still performed today. The Greeks, Egyptians and the Chinese are some of the first civilizations to experiment in the field of medicine.

Medicinal practices have become incredibly advanced over the past hundred years or so. X-rays, MRIs, CT Scans and more testing procedures have been invented. These tests allow doctors and nurses to see the inside of a patient’s body and their organs. Doctors can diagnose an illness such as bronchitis or a disease such as cancer. They can find where a bone is broken or where cartilage is torn and then tailor treatment accordingly.

The advancement of medicine over the years has also helped to save numerous amounts of lives. During the United States Civil War, many soldiers would have a limb or two amputated because of their battlefield injuries. If they survived the surgery, which took place in an open hospital (not in separate rooms), the injury would become infected with gout or other infections. Most of the soldiers that were operated on would die of an infection only days or months later. Medicine was not advanced enough yet to figure out how to successfully perform surgery without causing infection.

Medicinal practices have helped to develop treatments for cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Medicine is still working on cures for diabetes and cancer but with continued research will come close within the next 10 years or so. Doctors are now able to pinpoint the exact location of an illness or a disease and what medicines to use to deter the effects of the illness or disease.

One of the biggest advancements in medicine was the development of penicillin. It was developed in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming of Scotland. Penicillin is used to cure tonsillitis, pharyngitis and some skin infections. It is also used to treat gonorrhea, syphilis and cellulitis.

Millions of people have been saved by the advancements of medicine and will continue to be as more and more developments are made in the field of medicine. These advancements can be minute or they could be larger than life like a cure for cancer. If doctors and scientists hadn’t put their time and effort into developing new kinds of medicine then drugs like penicillin might not have ever been invented. Medicines are used to control heart problems, headaches, stomach diseases and sleep disorders to name a few.

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Laryngitis is when the larynx becomes inflamed. The voice becomes hoarse and there can possibly be a complete loss of voice because the vocal cords become irritated by the inflammation. Laryngitis can be acute; lasting less than three days or it can be chronic; lasting for more than three weeks.

There are a handful of symptoms for laryngitis:

• Having a dry, sore throat.

• Difficulty swallowing liquids or food.

• Constantly coughing; this ironically can cause laryngitis itself.

• Swelling of the larynx.

• Swollen lymph glands in the throat, face or chest.

• Having a cold or flu-like symptoms; this ironically can also cause laryngitis.

• Suffering from a fever.

When should you see a doctor? If you begin to cough up green or yellow phlegm or even blood; you should consult a doctor immediately. If you have a history of breathing problems, such as having to sit upright while breathing, you should see your doctor as quickly as possible because laryngitis could be a life threatening problem.

There are plenty of causes of laryngitis. They are excessive smoking, coughing, alcohol consumption, an infection from a fungus, inflammation due to overuse of the vocal cords and a viral infection.

There are a variety of different treatments for laryngitis. Some of them are breathing in moist air, resting your voice, drink plenty of fluids, treat the underlying cause of laryngitis and suck on lozenges. You can breath in moist air by sitting in the bathroom with the shower running on hot or putting hot water in a bowl and breathing in the steam. Drinking plenty of fluids helps to prevent dehydration, treating alcoholism or excessive smoking will help rid of laryngitis and sucking on lozenges makes the throat wetter and takes away the dryness and soreness.

Sometimes acid reflux can lead to laryngitis. If so, taking pills to prevent or downplay the symptoms of acid reflux can help against laryngitis. Such pills are Zantac or Prilosec.

With laryngitis, more so young children and older adults, the risk of your throat swelling shut is great. If this occurs get to a hospital as soon as possible. The treatment for a swelled shut throat is a breathing tube being placed in your throat, the patient being placed on a ventilator and the patient will have an IV in them. The IV will be pumping antibiotics and more than likely steroids into the patient’s body.

Laryngitis, like having a cold, is almost impossible to defend against. One precaution most people take is constantly washing their hands before they touch their face or their mouth. Young children should receive the influenza vaccine which can help prevent this sickness which can possibly be deadly for children at a very young age.

If the symptoms of laryngitis do not go away after 2-3 weeks you should consult a doctor again. Why? There is a slim possibility that there could be a tumor in your throat that needs further medical attention before it develops into anything life threatening.

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Leukemia is a form of cancer that develops in the bone marrow of human beings. Leukemia is usually caused by an uncontrolled production of blood cells. Those blood cells that produce at astronomical rates are the white blood cells. There are two forms of leukemia; acute leukemia and chronic leukemia. Acute leukemia makes the bone marrow extremely crowded and prevents the bone marrow from producing healthy blood cells. This type of leukemia occurs mostly in children and long adults. In children, this is an extremely common cause of death and should be treated immediately. If not treated immediately, the malignant cells will spread to other tissues and organs throughout the body.

Chronic leukemia usually takes months or sometimes even years to develop in one’s body and progress to the state of acute leukemia. Chronic leukemia is most common to occur in older adults but there is the possibility of it occurring in any age group. Once detected, treatment isn’t necessarily needed immediately. Sometimes doctors will hold off on treatment to find the best way to handle the disease after they monitor its development.

There is no definitive way to prevent leukemia but avoiding such risk factors as smoking, avoiding exposure to chemicals and avoiding exposure to radiation might help prevent the development of leukemia.

Below are the symptoms of leukemia:

• Dizziness

• Nausea

• Swollen tonsils

• Fever, chills, night sweats and other flu-like symptoms

• Bone pain

• Joint pain

• Unintentional weight loss

• Paleness

• Weakness and fatigue

• Diarrhea

• Malaise

• Swollen or bleeding gums

• Frequent infection

• Enlarged liver and spleen

• Constant headaches

For each different type of leukemia, acute and chronic, there are different types of treatments. For acute leukemia patients are treated by induction chemotherapy. Induction chemotherapy is when doctors use different medicines to bring about new bone marrow remission. Treatments also include eliminating any remaining leukemia cells; which is called consolidation therapy. There is also preventative therapy. Preventative therapy is the process of preventing the cancer from spreading to the brain and the nervous system. If the patient is not responding to any of these treatments then doctors will recommend a bone marrow transplantation procedure. Many cases of acute leukemia can be cured and some of them might not be cured.

For chronic leukemia there is no definite cure. Most treatments are combined with chemotherapy and medicinal shots of prednisone and prednisolone. Despite the lack of a cure for chronic leukemia, these cases can be controlled for long periods of time without any setbacks.

There are four factors in determining how well the body will respond to leukemia treatment. Those four factors are the age of the patient, the percentages of leukemia cells in the blood and bone marrow, the degree to which specific systems of the body are affected by the leukemia and if there are any chromosome abnormalities in the leukemia cells.

Leukemia patients can seek counseling and support groups through the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.

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Emphysema is a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease affecting the lungs of human beings. It is more often then not caused by exposure to toxic chemicals. Toxic chemicals does include long term exposure to tobacco smoke. Emphysema happens when the elasticity of the lung tissue is lost. This occurs with the destruction of the alveoli and the capillaries feeding the alveoli. The alveoli is a round structure found within the lung that aids in gas exchange with the blood traveling throughout the body. Symptoms of emphysema include shortness of breath when exercising and when resting, an expanded chest and hyperventilation.

Emphysema is an irreversible condition that causes degeneration of the lungs. The only way to slow the development of emphysema in patients is for the patient to quit smoking immediately and to avoid any tobacco smoke at all costs as well as other toxins harmful to the lungs. Emphysema cannot be cured but it can be prevented. To prevent emphysema people should not smoke, should avoid others who smoke as much as possible and should not inhale any toxins harmful to the lungs. The two types of emphysema are primary and secondary. There are ongoing studies that are currently examining the use of tretinoin, found in Retin-A (an acne medicine), as a possible reversal of emphysema. It has been tested on mice. The mice exhibited a return to elasticity of the lungs. Even though these studies are in their infancy, being conducted by the European Respiratory Journal, there is the possibility that a cure could be developed over time.

Emphysema affects thousands of Americans each and every year and the majority of cases are caused by smoking and other toxins affecting the lungs. Some of the most famous cases of emphysema have come from entertainers, novelists and musicians in the United States.

The most recent emphysema related death from the entertainment industry came in 2005 when late night legend Johnny Carson died from the disease. He passed away on January 23, 2005 from respiratory arrest caused by emphysema. Johnny Carson was the longtime host of “The Tonight Show” and one of the most entertaining comedians of his time. Carson was known for his love of the cigarette. He would constantly light up while filming the show. He appeared a couple of times at public shows with members of the Rat Pack.

Another famous case of emphysema was a member of the aforementioned Rat Pack; Dean Martin. Martin, one of the most soothing voices in the music industry of his time, died on December 25, 1995. He died of acute respiratory failure from emphysema. Martin was also a fan of the cigarette. In all of his movies, TV appearances and night club performances, Dino would always have a cigarette in his hand.

Other famous deaths from emphysema are T.S. Eliot, Richard Yates, Vincent Price, William F. Buckley Jr., Boris Karloff and Fyodor Dostoevsky to name a few. Among them are musicians, novelists, comedians, politicians and civilians. Emphysema cannot be cured but it can be easily prevented by not smoking and avoiding toxic chemicals that harm the lungs.

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Infantile paralysis, also known as polio, is a disease that affects the spinal cord and the legs of human beings. The disease is an acute viral infectious disease that can be spread and is usually spread from person to person via the fecal-oral route. Polio usually leads to the atrophy of one or both legs and in some severe cases can lead to paralysis. If a leg becomes atrophied the patient will need to use a cane, crutches, a walker or a wheelchair to move around. Most cases do not cause paralysis and the most common cases are spinal polio.

Infantile paralysis was first documented by Jakob Heine in 1840. In 1908, Karl Landsteiner identified the cause of polio, the poliovirus. Polio became a feared epidemic in the early 20th century as it was striking, paralyzing and killing hundreds of children worldwide. The majority of polio epidemics happened in large cities during the summer months when the air was hot, humid and sticky. The polio vaccines were invented by Jonas Salk in 1952 and Albert Sabin in 1962. These two scientists are widely credited for saving hundreds of thousands of lives with their inventive vaccines. There is a slight possibility that the disease could be completely eradicated across the world because of the efforts of the World Health Organization, UNICEF and Rotary International. These three groups are pulling out all the stops when it comes to educating the public about polio and ways to get vaccinated against the crippling disease.

The majority of polio cases result in only a temporary paralysis. The temporary paralysis usually lasts for a month or longer though. The paralysis disappears when nerve impulses return to the formerly paralyzed area. Recovery from polio usually takes about a full six to eight months. If paralysis lasts for more than a month and any longer than one year it is more than likely a permanent paralysis.

As of the 21st century there is no known cure for polio. All doctors can do is administer preventative vaccines and treat the condition if it does strike a person. The treatment process is to provide relief, speed up the recovery process and most importantly, prevent any further complications of the disease. Antibiotics are administered to patients with polio to prevent infection within the weakened areas, analgesics are administered for pain and moderate exercise along with a nutritious diet are other forms of treatment.

The two known vaccines, from Salk and Sabin, are the two most prominent vaccines for polio around today. Salk’s vaccines, known as inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), is given to the patient via injection. Sabin’s vaccine, known as oral polio vaccine (OPV), is administered orally to the patient.

As of a study conducted in 2006, there are only four countries left in the world where polio is still considered an endemic. Those four countries are Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Nigeria. With the efforts of the WHO, UNICEF and Rotary International; the world could see complete eradication of the disease within the next 100 years.

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1. IT WAS NOT A MISTAKE: IT WAS A SCHEME

Many people thing the economy is in free fall because some businesses made mistakes or because “everyone’s to blame.” Irresponsible borrowers are being equated with irresponsible lenders. Republicans are blaming Democrats, and vice versa. What the blame game misses is that this was at the heart of the collapse of the housing market that started the financial avalanche was a scheme and scam called Predatory Lending, often racially discriminatory and unscrupulous practices.

How do we know? The FBI tells us so as they open 2400 cases, say that crime is pervasive, open 1400 cases, indicted 400 people in the mortgage industry and announce a criminal investigation of 26 top companies. This is just the beginning. Even Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve blames fraud and corruption. Remember Franklin D Roosevelt’s word for the folks behind the depression? He called them “banksters”

That’s why I say we need a “jailout,” not a bailout.

2. WALL STREET “SUCTION” COMPOUNDED THE CRIME

It was Wall Street firms that figured out how make real money on the peddling of subprime mortgages. The idea: get as many as people on the hook for cheap mortgages with no documentation so we can securitize them, by slicing them into investment pools and selling them worldwide as “asset backed securities.” They pushed the brokers at the bottom to cut corners and get them more paper so they could turn straw into gold/ The problem: often there were no assets backing up asset-backed securities. The result, investors in other countries were defrauded and banks were forced to write down BILLIONS. This led to a lack of confidence and the credit crisis. Business writer Dean Starkman summed it up with one word: CORRUPTON. The same institutions were hiring lobbyists and making political donations to make sure they got their way. Corrupt themselves, they corrupted the political system further.

3. THE REGULATORS WERE NOT REGULATING

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission admits that his agency did not do its job and regulate. Why? Because this administration didn’t believe in regulation and supported all sorts of measures to let the “free market” do its thing. In addition, slick operators created a “shadow banking system” which was totally unregulated. The result, no one was watching the store or worrying about risk. Soon the law of karma went into effect — what went around came around. The Banks got what they wanted and now they don’t want it. Now they say, please bail us out.

4. THE MEDIA MISSED THE STORY

Where was the media exposing the this problem before it became a crisis, before three and half million families were forced into foreclosure, before the Congress passed a 700 BILLION dollar bailout that everyone in the know expects will go higher. The subprime lending book started after the http://dot.com boom went bust back in 2002. The market for these securities melted down in 2007. In that period, five years there were very few investigations perhaps because at this time, lenders and credit card companies spent $3 Billion advertising in the media. We need to investigate the Investigators.

5. WHERE WAS THE PUBLIC?

We can blame the kleptocrats on Wall Street and the compromised politicians, some of whom were sent to jail. We can even express our frustration with a media that barely covered the story when it might have done some good, and when they did cover tended to glorify high paying CEOs while not reporting on mounting economic inequality… But what about us, the people? Why were we in denial and not pressing our politicians to act in our interest?

One reason may be that we live in a charge-it society where we are constantly being told to shop until we drop. Many of us don’t really understand high interest, especially about how it compounds. So many of us are in debt and obsessed with personal economic problems that make it hard to have the time to relate to a larger economic debate. Yet, it seems clear that we all need to understand these issues more clearly, and base our opinions on real information.

I am not an economic “expert” but I pushed myself to investigate our economic calamity. My findings appear in the book PLUNDER (Cosimo) My hope is that readers will find it of value and get into the conversation. If I can learn about these problems and the need for change, so can you.

Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel. He was an Emmy Award winning producer for ABC News, director of the film In Debt We Trust and author of the new book: PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity.

According to a Senate report, the starting point of this crisis was in 1997, during the reign of the Clinton Administration. It was then that a period of housing price appreciation began – increasing by nearly 85% until 2006. Home prices jumped by 124%. This was unusual, having occurred only once before in American history, right after World War II.

Soon the housing sector was driving the American economy. Within the next few years, seven million families bought homes with subprime loans.

Homeowners who may have been cash poor, became house rich, by dipping into inflating home equity either by refinancing or taking out low-cost equity loans. As this business boomed, underwriting standards began to “deteriorate.” The banks and other lenders had found a new way to make money – and fast. These loans helped homeowners stave off foreclosures.

They were made possible by deregulation lobbied for by financial institutions, credit card companies, and homebuilders, the industries most likely to benefit.

As John Atlas and Peter Dreier explain in the American Prospect, they won support from the Democrats and Republicans under the cover of the “Reagan Revolution” to undercut reforms made in the 1970s.

In the 1970s, when community groups discovered that lenders and the FHA were engaged in systematic racial discrimination against minority consumers and neighborhoods – a practice called “redlining” – they mobilized and got Congress, led by Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, to adopt the Community Reinvestment Act and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which together have significantly reduced racial disparities in lending. But by the early 1980s, the lending industry used its political clout to push back against government regulation.

This was also the period of major bank consolidation through mergers and the S&L crisis, which saw the closures of scores of banks and major losses because of illegal practices including mortgage lending.

A few bankers were prosecuted but most were bailed out by the Congress. As a blog named the Last Hurrah explained: “Without understanding cause, or the reason for these plain Jane savings organizations in sustaining middle and working class home ownership – Congress just bailed out the lenders who had the wit to reorganize, and let it go at that. Essentially they financed the next bump in housing inflation, whether it be in inflated prices for existing homes, speculation in lots for tear-downs in good areas, or McMansion housing far from jobs and culture in the exurbs, that requires vast investment in infrastructure on the part of existing home owners and the states.”

Interest rate ceilings imposed by state usury laws dating from “reforms” in the 1980s were then rolled back. The lenders understood that these changes meant that now they could target a large potential market who wanted home ownership but could not qualify. And they could charge them high fees and interest.

The subprime loan was crafted for this community and promoted as a reform, a positive way for minorities to become part of the American Dream of homeownership for all. In this period, the Bush administration was hyping the promise of the “ownership society.”

(Now, given the foreclosure rate, ownership may actually decline under his “watch.”)

Most subprime borrowers were sold loans called “2/28” and “3/27” hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). These loans typically had a low fixed interest rate – called a “teaser rate “by the industry – but

only applicable during the first two-year period. After two years, the rate is reset every six months based on an interest-rate benchmark. In many cases, payments rose 30%, which made them un-affordable to people whose wages and income were barely rising. By 2004, 90 percent of the subprime loans had these ARMs.

Bear in mind also that the most vulnerable and hence “higher risk” subprime borrowers – many with low FICO credit scores and poor credit histories – were charged substantially higher interest rates and fees than other borrowers. They were more likely to be subject to prepayment penalties, which make it costly to refinance loans. It was known in the industry that these are the borrowers who are most likely

to default or become delinquent in payments and face foreclosure.

No one can fully explain why housing prices went up so quickly either, leaving the door open to explanations based on deceptive and fraudulent practices such as inflated appraisals.

Quickly, so-called “intermediaries,” unregulated and often unscrupulous mortgage brokers, hustled their way into the housing market and quickly dominated, taking a vast market share by a variety of tactics ranging from deceptive advertising to block-by-block solicitations to get people to buy and sell, always promising more than they can deliver.

These efforts were buttressed by large-scale advertising campaigns for firms like DiTech – which used an actor/comedian known for his appearances on Saturday Night Live – to hype the mortgages being backed by the General Motors Acceptance Corporation. (For a while the car company was making more on loans than selling automobiles.) Online lenders then joined the carnival of competition with more ads. Media companies raked in several billion from this advertising, which provided little incentive to expose these practices.

Speculators fielded street teams known as “birddogs,” rewarded for hunting down and signing up prospects. Abusive, illegal, and predatory practices were common. They enticed. They seduced, and in some cases, they threatened. I was told by a mortgage professional in the know that muscle was used, and that people were murdered in property battles.

According to the Joint Economic Report, “For 2006, Inside Mortgage Finance estimates that 63.3 percent of all subprime originations came through brokers, with 19.4 percent coming through retail channels, and the remaining 17.4 percent through correspondent lenders. Their data show the broker share increasing from 2003 through 2006.”

These companies were not regulated and did not come under safety and soundness regulations. The percentage of subprime mortgage securitized rose rapidly after 2001, reaching a peak value of more than 81 percent in 2005.

Underscore that: 81%!

As housing sales boomed, lenders just dumped their traditional criteria for originating loans. The Senate later found: “The share of loans originated for borrowers unable to verify information about employment, income or other credit-related information (‘low-documentation’ or ‘no documentation’ loans) jumped from more than 28 percent to more than 50 percent. The share of ARM originations on which borrowers paid interest only, with nothing going to repay principal, increased from zero to more than 22 percent. Over this period the share of subprime ARMs multiplied dramatically that were originated.”

Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel. He was an Emmy Award winning producer for ABC News, director of the film In Debt We Trust and author of the new book: PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity.

A few of the intelligent, attractive, and generous folks who have read my book, Pinch Hitter, have commented that I should’ve written more about the history of pinch hitters in my brief description before Chapter One. Well, I guess I could’ve done that, but Pinch Hitter is a fictional story about a middle-aged man who becomes a pinch-hitting specialist for his local team. Other than a basic description of what a pinch hitter is and does, I didn’t feel it was necessary to bore everyone with the history. In my description, however, I did mention the three top pinch hitters of all time.

For those who are interested in the history of pinch hitters, I recommend they read Stand and Deliver by Paul Votano. In that book, which I only recently discovered, Paul does an excellent job of chronicling the history of pinch hitting beginning in 1892 and ending in 2001.

However, for those who are interested only in how it all began and where things stand in 2008, I offer the following:

Prior to 1892, substitutions of any kind in major league baseball were only allowed in situations where there were injuries. That rule was changed in 1892, however, and the very first pinch hitter was “Princeton Charlie” Reilly. Reilly, who broke into the big leagues in 1889 with the Columbus Solons, played for only eight seasons. Besides being the first pinch hitter, he was also one of the people involved in the formation of the Pacific Coast League.

There have been many successful pinch hitters over the years. The most famous include Smoky Burgess, Jerry Lynch, Gates Brown, José Morales, and one of my all-time favorites, Manny Mota.

Manny Mota played for twenty seasons in the major leagues and, up until 2001, led all pinch hitters with 150 pinch hits. The right-handed hitter was basically a platoon outfielder who was used against left-handed pitchers until 1974. From that year on, he was primarily a pinch hitter. A singles hitter, Mota had the uncanny ability to drive in runs with line drive singles in the later innings. Hall-of-Fame Dodger announcer Vin Scully once said, “Mota could wake up on Christmas morning and hit a line drive to center.”

Mota passed Smokey Burgess on the all-time pinch hitting list with his 146th career pinch hit on September 29, 1979. The Dominican Republic native finished his career in 1982 with a .304 lifetime batting average.

Mota’s record of 150 pinch hits held up for nineteen years. On October 6, 2001, left-hander Lenny Harris took control of that record by collecting his 151st career pinch hit.

Harris, who played eighteen seasons in the majors, ended his career in 2005 with 212 career pinch hits – which is the current record and may never be broken. Harris also holds the record for the number of pinch-hitting at-bats: 804.

Second on the all-time list is Mark Sweeney. At last count, the left-hander, who is currently playing for the Dodgers, had 163 career pinch hits – although he may have added a couple since these stats were compiled. However, in order to surpass Harris’ record, he would need at least three or four more productive seasons. And, being that he’ll be thirty-eight in October and is hitting below .130, that prospect seems unlikely.

One cannot talk about the greatest pinch hitters of all-time without mentioning John Vander Wal, who holds the major league record for the most pinch hits in a season: twenty-eight in 1991. The same applies to Cliff Johnson, who hit twenty pinch-hit home runs during his twenty year career that ended in 1986. Both of those records may hold up for many years.

And then there’s San Diego rookie pinch hitter, David Robbins – oh, wait…he’s just a character in my book. Sorry, folks…sometimes I get a little confused.

Dean Whitney, a semi-retired music producer & publisher and avid baseball fan, recently self-published his debut novel, Pinch Hitter, through BookLocker.com. Dean also writes a baseball blog, which can be found at Dean’s Baseball blog. To learn more about Dean and his baseball novel, visit Dean Whitney.

Scott Fischman has been the junior most players to win one of the bracelets in the WSOP in the last 2004. He has been in the habit of playing poker from a very early age and thus has become of the bright stars in the world of poker games. This young stunning player is originally an American national having his residence in Las Vegas, Nevada. He started playing poker from a very early age when he was merely in his schools and within a short period of time became the master of the game. He was only twenty three when he won the No-Limit Hold’em with $300,000 and at the same time became the winner of several H.O.R.S.E. games.

In this world of poker where a number of heroes have risen and then disappeared into oblivion, this young man has made Doyle Brunson, the father of poker, his greatest rival; this proves his stamina and courage to fight in the industry and become the winner of it by dint of his unparalleled expertise and deep sense of the gaming strategies. Scott Fischman is one of those few stars who have challenged Brunson in such a way proving his underneath potential and confidence.

Famous player Scott Fischman is one of the active members of a poker-playing group called “The Crew” where there are some other eminent players with him like Bobby Boyd and Tony Lazar. He started rocking the discipline ever since he started playing the game and it was only his d