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A-shirt undershirt, usually worn simple in the festival periods

Example of t-shirt undershirt, usually not worn as outwear

A vest, undershirt, yankton, tank top, or singlet (Brit.) is an article of underwear worn underneath a dress shirt intended to protect them from body sweat and odors. It can have short sleeves or be sleeveless. The term most commonly refers to upper-body wear worn by males.

It also makes dress shirts less transparent. It can also be worn during winter months as an extra layer of warmth.

History[link]

Factory mass produced undershirts became common in the West in the early 20th century, with innovations turning the union suit into two pieces, for upper and lower body.

Types of undershirts[link]

• A-shirt
• T-shirt

This clothing-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Robin Meade
Robin Meade at Fort Benning, Georgia
Born	Robin Michelle Meade (1969-04-21) April 21, 1969 (age 43) New London, Ohio U.S.
Education	Ashland University, Malone University
Occupation	Journalist, Television Talk Show Host
Notable credit(s)	Morning Express with Robin Meade on Turner Networks' HLN
Religion	United Methodist
Spouse	Tim Yeager (m. 1993)

Robin Michelle Meade (born April 21, 1969) is the lead news anchor for HLN's morning show Morning Express with Robin Meade.

Background[link]

The daughter of a minister, Meade grew up in New London, Ohio and graduated from New London High School. She is of part Native American descent.^[1] She attended Malone College and Ashland University, where she majored in radio/television production, programming and performance and minored in political science. She graduated in 1991 with a major in programming and performance. In 1992 she became Miss Ohio, and was a semi-finalist in the Miss America pageant. She married Tim Yeager on November 6, 1993.

Career[link]

Meade began her career in broadcasting as a reporter at WMFD-TV in Mansfield, Ohio. She then worked as an anchor and reporter at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and at WJW-TV in Cleveland. Later, she got a job as the morning news anchor of WSVN-TV's Today in Florida and also served as the station's noon anchor and health reporter.

She went on to work at NBC Chicago affiliate WMAQ-TV where she started anchoring the morning newscasts and then co-anchored the weekend newscasts and also served as a general assignment correspondent for the station. During her tenure with the NBC affiliate, she covered the 1996 Olympics, which included special reporting on the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

She then joined HLN (then known as CNN Headline News), where she works now. Among many other stories, Meade anchored the network's coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom as well as that from Operation Iraqi Freedom in spring of 2003. She is based in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta. Her first day on-air at HLN was September 11, 2001.^[2]

Meade hosts Morning Express with Robin Meade on HLN on weekday mornings, along with Ryan Smith, Bob Van Dillen, Jennifer Westhoven, and Carlos Diaz.

She wrote a book titled, Morning Sunshine!: How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It Too. It was released on September 10, 2009. She has referred to it as a "non-fiction / motivational / inspirational / how-to / autobiographical book." It debuted at #12 on the "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous" section of the New York Times Best Seller list.^[3]

She is a host on the Oprah Winfrey Network show Ask Oprah's All Stars with Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, Dr. Oz.

On June 21, 2011, Meade released a country music album titled Brand New Day. A single, "Dirty Laundry," was released to country radio.

Meade is featured on the cover of the January/February 2011 issue of Making Music magazine and in an article about her experiences with recreational music.

Awards[link]

Meade won a regional Emmy Award for her efforts covering the 1995 collision between a school bus and a train in Fox River Grove, Illinois, that killed seven and injured more than 24 teenagers. She was nominated for a regional Emmy for her report on how to decrease chances of injury in survivable plane crashes.

In 2002, Meade was recognized by Lycos as one of the top 20 most popular television news personalities in the broadcast news industry.^[4] In 2004, she was voted "Sexiest Newscaster" by a Playboy.com online poll, with 40% of the vote (16,145 votes over a total of 40,380).^[1]

She won Ashland University's Young Alumnus Award for her achievements in broadcasting and served as the commencement speaker for the university's 2005 graduation ceremonies.^[5]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Singles[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robin Meade

• Profile on CNN.com
• Morning Express blog with posts by Robin and the crew
• Robin's weekly podcast feed
• Robin Meade at the Internet Movie Database

Tommy John
Pitcher
Born: (1943-05-22) May 22, 1943 (age 69) Terre Haute, Indiana
Batted: Right	Threw: Left
MLB debut
September 6, 1963 for the Cleveland Indians
Last MLB appearance
May 25, 1989 for the New York Yankees
Career statistics
Win–Loss record	288–231
Earned run average	3.34
Strikeouts	2,245
Teams
Cleveland Indians (1963–1964) Chicago White Sox (1965–1971) Los Angeles Dodgers (1972–1974, 1976–1978) New York Yankees (1979–1982) California Angels (1982–1985) Oakland Athletics (1985) New York Yankees (1986–1989)
Career highlights and awards
4× All-Star (1968, 1978, 1979, 1980) 1976 Hutch Award 1976 NL Comeback Player of the Year 1981 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award

Thomas Edward John Jr. (born May 22, 1943) is a former pitcher in Major League Baseball whose 288 career victories rank as the seventh highest total among left-handers in major league history. He is also known for the revolutionary surgery, now named after him, which was performed on a damaged ligament in his pitching arm.^[1]

Playing career[link]

John was an outstanding basketball player at Gerstmeyer High School in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he held the city single game scoring record. Choosing baseball when he realized he would not go on to play professional basketball, John signed with the Cleveland Indians and made his major league debut at twenty years-old in 1963. Following two partial seasons with the Indians, John showed occasional excellence during seven respectable years as a starting pitcher with the Chicago White Sox. However, it was a trade before the 1972 season to the Los Angeles Dodgers for mercurial slugger Dick Allen that began a skein of John's most famous years, first with the Dodgers and subsequently with the New York Yankees, where he posted a pair of 20-win seasons and was twice an All-Star. John was also named an All-Star in 1968 with the White Sox and 1978 with LA. He played in all three Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series of his era (1977, 1978 and 1981), having switched over to the Yankees by the time the Dodgers won the Series in 1981.

John was a soft throwing sinkerball pitcher whose technique resulted in batters hitting numerous ground balls and induced double plays. In the middle of an excellent 1974 season, John had a 13-3 record as the Dodgers were en route to their first National League pennant in eight years, before he permanently damaged the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching arm, leading to a revolutionary surgical operation. This operation, now known as Tommy John surgery, replaced the ligament in the elbow of his pitching arm with a tendon from his right forearm. The surgery was performed by Dr. Frank Jobe on September 25, 1974, and although it seemed unlikely he would ever be able to pitch again, he spent the entire 1975 season in recovery. John would work with teammate and major league pitcher Mike Marshall who was said to know how to help pitchers recover from injuries and taught John a completely different way to pitch where he would not turn his leg and go straight to the plate which eliminated the chance of him hurting his knee and arm, and he returned to the Dodgers in 1976. His 10-10 record that year was considered "miraculous" but John went on to pitch until 1989, winning 164 games after his surgery—forty more than before and one fewer than all-time great Sandy Koufax won in his entire career. After Phil Niekro's retirement, John spent 1988 and 1989 as the oldest player in the major leagues. In 1989, John matched Deacon McGuire’s record for most seasons played in a Major League Baseball career with 26 seasons played, later broken by Nolan Ryan.^[2] Today, many pitchers have Tommy John surgery during their careers.

John decided it was time to retire in 1989, when Mark McGwire got two hits off him. McGwire's father was John's dentist. John said of his decision, "When your dentist's kid starts hitting you, it's time to retire!"^[3]

In 2009, John failed to get enough votes to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his last year of eligibility with only 31.7% of the vote.^[4]

Career statistics[link]

Post-retirement[link]

John did commentary on select games during WPIX's final year of broadcasting Yankee baseball in 1998. He also guest-hosted the Mike and Mike ESPN Radio program on June 26, 2008. It is unknown whether he will do any further work for the network. On December 17, 2006, John was named manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish in the Atlantic League, an independent minor league in the Northeast. He is currently the spokesman for Tommy John's Go-Flex, a joint cream for older athletes. He is also currently doing a national radio tour to promote this product as well as talk about life as a minor league coach, his years in the Major Leagues and to educate younger pitchers on taking care of their arms.^[5]

Tommy John resigned as manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish on July 8, 2009, to pursue a "non-baseball position" with Sportable Scoreboards.^[6] In two-and-a-half years of managing, he compiled a 159-176 won-lost record with Bridgeport.

Personal life[link]

Tommy married the former Sally Simmons on July 13, 1970. They are parents of four children—Tamara, Tommy III, Travis, and Taylor. In 1981, when Travis was two years old, he fell 37 feet from a third-floor window in his family's New Jersey vacation house, bounced off the fender of a car, swallowed his tongue, and then lay in a coma for 17 days. He later made a full recovery.^[7] On March 9, 2010, Taylor John, age 28, died as the result of a seizure and heart failure because of an overdose of prescription drugs.^[8] As a 10-year-old in 1992, Taylor’s singing and acting talents landed him a role in Les Misérables on Broadway. He made news by taking time off from the stage, however, to play baseball at Federal Little League in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.^[9] In 1998, Tamara John married Chicago Bears long snapper Patrick Mannelly.^[10]

External links[link]

[1] Tommy John at baseball-reference.com

See also[link]

• Tommy John surgery
• List of Major League Baseball leaders in career wins
• List of most hit batsman by MLB pitcher
• Top 100 Major League Baseball strikeout pitchers

Bibliography[link]

• The Tommy John Story, F.H. Revell Company, 1978. ISBN 0-8007-0923-3. (With Sally John and Joe Musser, foreword by Tommy Lasorda.)
• The Sally and Tommy John Story: Our Life in Baseball, Macmillan, 1983. ISBN 0-02-559260-2. (With Sally John.)
• TJ: My Twenty-Six Years in Baseball, Bantam, 1991. ISBN 0-553-07184-X. (With Dan Valenti.)

References[link]

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube
• The Baseball Page

Ben Pollack (June 22, 1903 - June 7, 1971) was an American drummer and bandleader from the mid 1920s through the swing era. His eye for talent led him to either discover or employ, at one time or another, musicians such as Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Jimmy McPartland and Harry James. This ability earned him the nickname "Father of Swing".

Early life[link]

Born in Chicago in 1903 to a well-to-do family, Pollack was largely self taught as a drummer, and was afforded the opportunity to become the drummer for the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a top jazz outfit, in the early 1920s. In 1924 he played for several outfits, including some on the west coast, which ultimately led to his forming a band there in 1925. One of the earliest members of his band was Gil Rodin, a saxophonist whose sharp business acumen served him well later as an executive for the Music Corporation of America (MCA). Rodin also served as the "straw boss' for Pollack along with the young arranger-trombonist Glenn Miller. Already recognized as immensely talented on the clarinet, sixteen-year-old Benny Goodman began working with Pollack in 1925 as well.

The Victor and dime store label era[link]

In 1926, Pollack recorded for Victor. Many of his records were good sellers. From about 1928, with involvement with Irving Mills, members of Pollack's band moonlighted at Plaza-ARC and recorded a vast quantity of hot dance and out-and-out jazz for their dime store labels (Banner, Perfect, Domino, Cameo, Lincoln, Romeo, and others using colorful names like Mills' Merry Makers, Goody's Good Timers, Kentucky Grasshoppers, Mills' Musical Clowns, The Lumberjacks, Dixie Daises, The Caroliners, The Whoopee Makers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, Dixie Jazz Band, Jimmy Bracken's Toe Ticklers, and many others). Most of these records are usually listed in discographical books (like Brian Rust's Jazz Records) as by Irving Mills. The rare Jack Teagarden's Music book lists them properly as being a "Ben Pollack Unit". Combining Pollack's regular recordings with these side groups made Pollack one of the more prolific bands of the 1920s and 1930s.

The band played in Chicago, mainly, and moved to New York City around the fall of 1928, having obtained McPartland and Teagarden around that time. This outfit enjoyed immense success, playing for Broadway shows, and having an exclusive engagement at the Park Central Hotel. Pollack's band also was involved in extensive recording activity at that time, using a variety of pseudonyms in the studios. The orchestra also made a Vitaphone short subject sound film (which has been recently restored). Pollack, in the meantime, had fancied himself as more of a bandleader-singer type instead of a drummer. To this end, he signed Ray Bauduc to handle the drumming chores.

The 1930s[link]

Soon afterward, things began to become difficult for Ben Pollack. The Stock Market Crash of 1929, and subsequent effects on the music industry as a whole, had a negative effect on all bands at that time, and Pollack's was no exception. Work was scarce, and the band had several periods of inactivity, in spite of Pollack's best efforts in obtaining work. Changes in personnel were also inevitable. Benny Goodman and Jimmy McPartland left the band in the summer of 1929, either fired or quit, depending on whose story is to be believed. They were replaced by Matty Matlock on clarinet and Jack Teagarden's brother, Charlie, on trumpet. Eddie Miller was also signed as a tenor saxophonist in 1930.

Pollack left Victor in late 1929 and subsequently recorded for Hit of the Week (1930), the above listed dime store labels (1930–1931), Victor (1933), Columbia (1933–1934), Brunswick, Vocalion and Variety (1936-37), and Decca (1937–1938).

Pollack made several forays into the U.S. Midwest in the early 1930s, and also made some trips to Canada. During this time, he became involved with the singing career of his girl vocalist, Doris Robbins. As he was also involved with her romantically, he began to de-emphasize his involvement with band matters, much to the consternation of the musicians. Eventually, Ben Pollack and Doris Robbins married.

More changes came for the band in the spring of 1933 when trombone star Jack Teagarden gave his notice during an engagement in Chicago. It was not long after that, possibly a year, when the rest of the musicians decided to leave Pollack, They re-formed soon after as a co-operative band, fronted by Bing Crosby's brother, Bob.

Pollack re-formed his band eventually, and had some top-flight talent, including Harry James and Irving Fazola in it, but never really achieved any of the success of his earlier bands, despite the high quality of most of his recordings. These two stars, also, found greater success after they left Pollack. In the early 1940s, Pollack was the organizer for a band led by comedian Chico Marx. He tried his hand organizing a record label, Jewel Records (not the Plaza-ARC or the Shreveport labels), and at other venues, including restaurants on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood and in Palm Springs, California. He also appeared, as himself, in the motion picture The Benny Goodman Story and made a cameo appearance in The Glenn Miller Story.

All through this troubled period, Pollack managed to record excellent records and had an occasional hit, like the 1937 "Peckin'", which Pollack co-wrote with Harry James, originally issued on Variety VA-556. Ben Pollack also wrote "Deep Jungle", "Tin Roof Blues" with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and "Swing Out" with Wingy Manone.

Ben Pollack co-wrote the jazz standard "Tin Roof Blues" in 1923 when he was a member of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings: the band's trombonist George Brunies is also generally credited as a co-composer. In 1954, Jo Stafford recorded "Make Love to Me", which used Pollack's music from "Tin Roof Blues". "Make Love to Me" was no. 1 for three weeks on Billboard and no. 2 on Cashbox. The song was also recorded by Anne Murray and B. B. King.

In 1992, Ben Pollack was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

Death[link]

In later years, Pollack grew despondent and committed suicide by hanging in Palm Springs in 1971.^[1]

References[link]

1. ^ "Ben Pollack". http://www.redhotjazz.com/pollack.html. Retrieved 20 May 2009. 

• "Jack Teagardenn's Music - His Career and Recordings" by Howard J. Waters, Jr. (published by Walter C. Allen, 1960)
• "Jazz Records 1897-1942" 5th Revised and Enlarged Edition by Brian Rust (Storyville Publications, 1982)

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Ben Pollack at Find a Grave