Sorting Advice

[Marty Knapp]

I have a list that I'm currently sorting as follows:

--item 2 may be a word or a number
--item 1 is a date

sort the lines of myList by item 2 of each --sort any words alphabetically
sort the lines of myList numeric by item 2 of each --sort the numbers 
(any words go to the top of the list in the order provided in the first 
step)
sort the lines of myList dateTime by item 1 of each --sort by date

While this gives me what I need, is there a faster way to do this?

Thanks,
Marty