The Baseball thread...

[beeline]

So are the Phillies out of it this year?

There's quite a bit of baseball left to play!

[beeline]

The coach told me, "You gotta step out and meet that ball!" So I started doing that, taking a little step, leaning into it, and I started smacking hits pretty good. I'm still a hesitant scaredy-cat but in the long run that bit of coaching stuck with me.

Watch the ball until it hits the bat.

[JackRiddler]

You cannot be thrown out at third for the third out. That's not acceptable.

[norton ash]

The Expos. Somewhere in the substrata of things I loved in childhood that don't exist anymore.

Concession to modernity-- at the local minor-league game the other night a friend and I agreed that a Blackberry is a fine stadium companion for looking up stats, checking the standings and schedule, settling disagreements... or doing math like determining that if the second baseman went 0 for 5 that night, he'd go below the Mendoza Line... and he did.

[Six Hits of Sunshine]

DOCK ELLIS: BELIEVE IN YOURSELF



Dangerous Minds pal Glen E. Friedman is involved with a new “dockumentary” about flamboyant major league baseball pitcher Dock Ellis, who threw a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1972 while high on LSD.

Friedman dedicated his book, Fuck You Heroes to Dock Ellis and considers him to be a personal hero. Recently Glen gave an interview about his youthful interaction with the man they called the “Muhammad Ali of Baseball” and told his story to the filmmakers:

How did you meet Dock Ellis?
I first met Dock at Shea Stadium, here in New York, when I was a kid around 11 years old. When I went to games, I was fervent about getting autographs and memorabilia and I would always get there early to watch batting practice and to try to talk to the players ... asking for autographs, loose practice balls, broken bats, whatever a player had access to.

One afternoon Dock walked over to me, probably 1973, and asked why was I yelling so much. Of course I just wanted his attention, to say hello and to get an autograph. He said relax, not to worry, after he was done practicing he’d come back over and give me an autograph. A few minutes later, he came over and asked me why I wasn’t wearing an authentic Dock Ellis shirt? I happened to be wearing the nearest thing to a game jersey one could get in the early seventies - a 100% nylon Willie Stargell kid’s jersey I picked up in Cooperstown, just across from the Baseball Hall of Fame. There was Dock, pulling at my most prized shirt and asking why was I wearing a fake. I was bummed he was making fun of my favorite shirt, so I asked him, “Well, where can I get one of the Dock Ellis shirts you’re talking about? I’ve never seen one.” He didn’t really clue me in on that, but he signed my autograph book, for the first of many times.

Eventually in the conversation… Dock told me to meet him by the press gate later in the day, once he was sure he wouldn’t be called upon to pitch (midway through the 2nd game of a double header). I went to the designated place at the designated time and there came Dock strutting out in platform shoes, double-knit black flair paints and a red fishnet t-shirt. He was behind a fenced-in area, near the press gate and player entrance. People saw him and started yelling his name, “Dock, Dock!” He walked straight towards me. He’s got a brown paper bag, lunch bag sized, in his hand. He knelt down and started to talk to me, and said, “Don’t open this up! Don’t even peek inside this bag, until you get back to your seat, otherwise you won’t get outta here alive.” I said, “OK, Thanks Dock! See you around ...” thinking I’d got some super cool “Official” Dock Ellis T-Shirt.

I got back to my seat and looked inside the bag then, as discreetly as possible. I didn’t really believe my eyes, so I couldn’t just peek in the bag, I had to take out the contents to really see what it was, if in fact it was, yes it was his actual game jersey right off his back! I had a Number 17 Pittsburgh Pirates visiting team jersey. That was the first time I met Dock, but I saw him and hung out with him several times over the years after that.

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/dock_ellis

[JackRiddler]

Wow! You should repost that in the human beings are good after all thread, a.k.a. Stare Into the Abyss.

[Joe Hillshoist]

The Expos. Somewhere in the substrata of things I loved in childhood that don't exist anymore.

Concession to modernity-- at the local minor-league game the other night a friend and I agreed that a Blackberry is a fine stadium companion for looking up stats, checking the standings and schedule, settling disagreements... or doing math like determining that if the second baseman went 0 for 5 that night, he'd go below the Mendoza Line... and he did.

Do you guys get into stats in baseball cos nothing else ever seems to happen?

[JackRiddler]

Do you guys get into stats in baseball cos nothing else ever seems to happen?

Seems.

[norton ash]

Do you guys get into stats in baseball cos nothing else ever seems to happen?

Seems.

Sure enough. Keeping score and stats does help pass the time. Balancing offense/defense, and making decisions based on probabilities and variables is what baseball's all about.

Check out 'Moneyball', Joe ... I wonder how it would play in Oz.

[JackRiddler]

Do you guys get into stats in baseball cos nothing else ever seems to happen?

Seems.

Sure enough. Keeping score and stats does help pass the time. Balancing offense/defense, and making decisions based on probabilities and variables is what baseball's all about.

Check out 'Moneyball', Joe ... I wonder how it would play in Oz.

A lot happens on the field and baseball gives you the time to watch it. (Or it did, I'm sure I don't need to get into the noise and commercialism sapping the game of its quiet pleasures, since this is a phenomenon also affecting everything else besides baseball.) If you're not into it, you're not into it. The particular obsession with numbers is because no other sport can be broken down into its constituent parts as completely. The game is almost completely quantized. Every situation can be described precisely in a set of numbers, every pitch produces meaningfully quantifiable results, and most everything that happens can be attributed to individuals' play. Every run and every inning has a story that you can reconstruct from the recorded numbers 100 years later. It's kind of nuts, actually.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I don't know who Bill Freehan is but... the Detroit Tigers?

I owe you a beer JR.

1968 Detroit Tigers.

For fuck's sake. Was there ever any doubt over who would win that anyway?

I could ask Jack which sailor on the Pequod had a dream about being kicked by Ahab, and he'd know that too without having to look it up. The bastard. Never bet against that fucker, even if you think you're right. He knows just about everything anyway.

[JackRiddler]

I don't know who Bill Freehan is but... the Detroit Tigers?

I owe you a beer JR.

1968 Detroit Tigers.

For fuck's sake. Was there ever any doubt over who would win that anyway?

I could ask Jack which sailor on the Pequod had a dream about being kicked by Ahab, and he'd know that too without having to look it up. The bastard. Never bet against that fucker, even if you think you're right. He knows just about everything anyway.

Kind but infinitely exaggerated words. I really mean it, "knowledge" tends to infinity and thus what I know tends to zero. Don't you remember, you've been trying to get me to read Moby Dick, and I still haven't. The only thing I ever knew about Denny McLain is that he was a pitcher who won 31 games against 5 losses in '68 for the Tigers, so if it had been a trick question (any other team he might have been on, I don't know), I couldn't have gotten it. I couldn't even tell you who won the 1967 world series, and I probably couldn't name all of the champions correctly since 1969. I think I know about 1% of what a Baseball Prospectus editor knows about baseball, and about .00000000000000000000000000... (etc. etc.) ...000000000001% of what is available to "know" by humans on the planet, depending on how we define "know." Hell, anyone who speaks x languages properly, where x is equal to or greater than 4, is already (x-3)*33% ahead of me.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Do you guys get into stats in baseball cos nothing else ever seems to happen?

Seems.

Sure enough. Keeping score and stats does help pass the time. Balancing offense/defense, and making decisions based on probabilities and variables is what baseball's all about.

Check out 'Moneyball', Joe ... I wonder how it would play in Oz.

A lot happens on the field and baseball gives you the time to watch it. (Or it did, I'm sure I don't need to get into the noise and commercialism sapping the game of its quiet pleasures, since this is a phenomenon also affecting everything else besides baseball.) If you're not into it, you're not into it. The particular obsession with numbers is because no other sport can be broken down into its constituent parts as completely. The game is almost completely quantized. Every situation can be described precisely in a set of numbers, every pitch produces meaningfully quantifiable results, and most everything that happens can be attributed to individuals' play. Every run and every inning has a story that you can reconstruct from the recorded numbers 100 years later. It's kind of nuts, actually.

Thats actually a fascinating observation Jack. Kind of like a map and territory thing, tho perhaps the only thing missing is the feeling of tension, or lack of it.

I love the Dock Ellis story above, and the other one he's famous for. The no hitter while tripping. But baseball blows me away. Its like cricket but without the non stop action. Or the variety.

Tho actually since the 90s cricket has actually upped the stakes in the excitement stakes. One of the main reasons its popular in Australia is cos we like to beat the Poms. And we like the West Indies even tho they used to flog us.

I've heard about Moneyball too, maybe here. iT sounds like a good story, I like those stories no matter what the sport.

[JackRiddler]

Thats actually a fascinating observation Jack. Kind of like a map and territory thing, tho perhaps the only thing missing is the feeling of tension, or lack of it.

Well, you're not into it.

There is enormous tension once you know the game. Every situation in every inning can mean the win, though this only becomes obvious in the late innings. To succeed players have to be fanatical on every play. The other famous aspect I didn't mention is the game's measure of time, not continuously on a clock, but discretely in outs and innings. It really never is over until the final play. The comebacks in baseball are impossible in any other sport that I know of, certainly in any with a clock. This is also true of the season, since there are 162 games in the major leagues. So a 10-game deficit can still be overcome even with a month or two (out of six) to go. One man on a sudden hot streak can turn around a whole team. This allows a lot of space for hope and delusion in the fan. Despite the unusual number of spectacular comebacks, for every comeback story there are a great many more close calls. The elimination and championship structure is still such that hope is crushed 29 times out of 30, statistically speaking. If a 10-game deficit can be overcome, then that also means a dominant team can collapse just as spectacularly. There is a legend of long-term suffering attached to pretty much every team except the Yankees, Cardinals and Marlins. (Maybe the Dodgers, since they've been in LA.) The devotee of any of the other 27 teams can tell you a highly particular story of memorable failure, outrageous moments of fate and how each of them acquired a fatalist worldview; although fans of the Cubs, Red Sox, Phillies, Indians, old Brooklyn Dodgers and Mets are in a special league of pain. There was a funny movie about this called Game Six, written by Don DeLillo with Robert Downey and Michael Keaton.

[vanlose kid]

all I know about baseball is we owe it this.

thanks. i can find the door.

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