The Baseball thread...

[MinM]

Don Drysdale's widow (Ann Meyers-Drysdale) is calling the USA Womens Olympic Basketball games on NBC.

There's an interesting connection between Don Drysdale and Bobby Kennedy that seems to have had a significant impact on the former Dodger right up until he died...

Donald Scott "Don" Drysdale (July 23, 1936 – July 3, 1993) was a Major League Baseball player and Hall of Fame right-handed pitcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was one of the dominant starting pitchers of the 1960s, and became a radio and television broadcaster following his playing career. The Disney character Herbie has the number 53 since that was Drysdale's number...

Drysdale was born in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California and attended Van Nuys High School, where one of his classmates was actor Robert Redford...

Drysdale died of a heart attack in his hotel room in Montreal, Quebec, on July 3, 1993. Radio station employees were sent to look for him when he failed to make the bus for Olympic Stadium. where the Dodgers were to play the Expos. Hotel staff went in and found him face down, near his bed...

Among the personal belongings found in Drysdale's hotel room was a cassette tape of Robert F. Kennedy's victory speech after the 1968 California Democratic presidential primary, a speech given only moments before Senator Kennedy's assassination. In the speech, Kennedy had noted, to the cheers of the crowd, that Drysdale had pitched his sixth straight shutout that evening. Drysdale had apparently carried the tape with him wherever he went since Robert Kennedy's death...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Drysdale

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[Bruce Dazzling]

[MinM]

August 8, 1988
The Cubs get lights at Wrigley Field
The last stronghold of daytime baseball finally glows in the dark.

On Aug. 8, 1988, the lights go on in Wrigley Field, which had been the only major league park where night games were not played. (Chicago Tribune photo by Frank Hanes / August 8, 1988)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/poli ... 6410.story

Home Run Derby @ Wrigley Field in Los Angeles © 1960

The TV series ran in syndication from January to July 1960 and was only canceled when the host announcer Mark Scott died of a heart attack on July 13, 1960 at age 45.

The twenty-six half hour episodes featured sluggers Hank Aaron, Bob Allison, Ernie Banks, Ken Boyer, Bob Cerv, Rocky Colavito, Gil Hodges, Jackie Jensen, Al Kaline, Jim Lemon, Harmon Killebrew, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Wally Post, Frank Robinson, Duke Snider, Dick Stuart, and Gus Triandos.

It is a thrill to see once again, these great players take their cuts at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, a minor league ballpark that was later demolished in 1966. When one batter was at the plate, Mark Scott would interview the other batter, which was usually just small talk. Yet the whole thing is priceless.

Batters were given three outs per inning and the player with the most home runs after nine innings won. Any ball not hit for a home run was an out and if a batter did not swing at a pitch that was in the strike zone it was an out. The winner of the contest received on the spot a check made out for $2,000 while the loser received $1,000. Considering that back then the players were so underpaid, these winnings were relatively significant.

As you would expect, the home run champion in the series was Hank Aaron who appeared in the most episodes (7) where he had a 6-1 record and earned $13, 500.

Al Kaline appeared once, and that was a showdown against Aaron who defeated number 6 in episode 10 with a 5-1 victory.

In years past ESPN and ESPN Classic have shown the episodes, and thanks to MGM Home Entertainment, in 2007 the episodes were released on three DVDS.

I hope you enjoy this video of the match between Henry Aaron and our own Al Kaline.

http://blog.detroitathletic.com/2010/08 ... irca-1960/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Casey

[MinM]

...If the GM actually believes that this unprepared jackass is one of the best managers in MLB then I don’t know what to think of the purgatory I am stuck in as a Tigers fanatic.

Root for a school shooting like Columbine and hope Leyland uses that as an excuse to quit like he did in Colorado? Even I am not that demented.

Leyland falling asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth ………..

You’re getting WARMER.

http://detroitsportsrag.net/shrivel-up-and-die-old-man/

Aside from being a bit hyperbolic and a tad harsh I did not realize Jim Leyland used the Columbine shooting as an excuse to quit the Rockies.

[Bruce Dazzling]

So are the Phillies out of it this year?

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

Utley's back, Cliff Lee got his first win of the year on Wed night, and Ryan Howard was just activated from the DL.

Now all they have to do is go 56 and 22 the rest of the season in order to finish with 93 wins, and they just might have a shot.

Suddenly, the Phillies are only 3 games out of a wild card spot.

[JackRiddler]

dupity

[JackRiddler]

Suddenly, the Phillies are only 3 games out of a wild card spot.

I stopped paying attention not so much because of the inevitable July collapse of the Schein-Mets as because the Fucking Wilpons were awarded Willets Point by way of eminent domain, theirs to destroy and abuse even in death. (Ever wonder what's worse than Donald Trump? Or even Steinbrenner?)

Anyway, I'm for it. I'm not anti-Phillies, far from it. Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski or Rollins, Howard and Utley, same kind of wrecking crew with the same attitude. It would be great to see them come up out of nothing and clean everyone's clock, which you know they are capable of doing if they get in. And I'm always against the Braves. They have to be punished for a century to make up for what they did to us all those years. (Even if, remember 2000, etc.) Then again, you gotta like the idea of the Orioles. Or the Tigers. Or even Texas, who must have earned it by now. But I'm a Nationalist and anti-American.

[Laodicean]

.330 AVG, 44 HR, 139 RBI

[jingofever]

How about that A-Rod? That was a clutch move letting Ibanez bat for him. He earned his 32 million dollars tonight.

[JackRiddler]

How about that A-Rod? That was a clutch move letting Ibanez bat for him. He earned his 32 million dollars tonight.

I don't think Ibanez is hurting for salary.

[Bruce Dazzling]

How about that A-Rod? That was a clutch move letting Ibanez bat for him. He earned his 32 million dollars tonight.

I don't think Ibanez is hurting for salary.

Speaking of Ibanez, last night was the dictionary definition of "mixed feelings" for me, as I really grew to like him during his time with the Phillies. When he pinch hit hit for Rodriguez last night, I absolutely knew in my gut that he was going to hit a home run, and I prepared myself for the inevitable cognitive dissonance of him tying the game for a team that I despise.

It was a weird feeling, to say the least.

I did not know, however, that he was going to hit the second home run to win the game. That one took me completely by surprise. In the final analysis, I'm glad he tied the game, but I would have preferred that he didn't get the chance to win it.

Or, to put things more bluntly, fuck the Yankees.

[Six Hits of Sunshine]

I love San Francisco - beautiful city!

I can't think of a more annoying fanbase that hardly deserves the team they have. UGGGHHHH

Brian Wilson is the worst. Thank Christ I didn't have to see his stupid ass. Fuck you, Giants.

[JackRiddler]

Wilson's mini-me did the job, though.

So it's done. That's AL baseball for you. Both sides have some pretty big sides of beef playing, swinging long. No constructing runs, and no epics this year.

[Six Hits of Sunshine]

And now for your consideration: a Dickey knuckleball in slow mo...like a leaf dancing in the wind...

[FourthBase]

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.

Were.

Nah, who am I kidding, still are. 1986 will never die, not for me.
Even the most cinematic comeback miracle ever can't change us.
We love complaining more than rejoicing...well, not quite...but...well...
Winning felt a little weird, losing is comfortable, losing is...home.

There was also a certain pride, in having endured so many epic heart-shattering losses.
But if a Red Sox fan can't derive a newfound eternal optimism from the immortal 2004 season...
Well, serves him or her right.

Love your posts in this thread, Jack.

Also love the Randy Johnson dove, the Doc LSD no-hitter, all knuckleballers but especially Dickey (someday there will be a female MLB pitcher, and she'll be a knuckleballer, maybe submariner to boot.) Also loooove the argument for untimed sports' aesthetic superiority, bks, and Kretchmar whoever you are. And this made me choke with envy:

My part-time job has me working every home game for our local MLB team, part of my job is to actually watch the game so I'm seeing a ton of baseball these days. Frankly I'm not much of a fan, but you can't spend that much time watching something without getting into it at least a little. Classic case of cognitive dissonance... I just really hate all the pitching shenanigans some of the teams play (cough*Rays*cough), enough with the mound meetings and stall tactics and play the damn game. Old time baseball!

[<<<<radiating envy]

So, I'll just block that out and return to that awesome gif of Dickey.

And now for your consideration: a Dickey knuckleball in slow mo...like a leaf dancing in the wind...

(I was part of what I think was -- and probably still is -- the most exhaustively-realistic fantasy baseball league known to man. All teams -- except the fucking Yankees and the Cardinals, whose rosters were dispersed to lubricate transactionality -- with entire rosters, scored by a select set of sabermetric stats. I was the Rays. In 2006. I wound up dabbling in acquiring fetishes and indulging in prejudices, like, I hoarded every known knuckleballer in the majors and minors. Yes, there was/is a 100% complete minors. 2006 was a good year to have the Rays prospect-wise. And the rules...so complex and real that the league probably would serve as good practice for prospective GM's. Seriously. The Wood, the Abad, and the Uggla. WAU. How I miss thee.)

Should be an interesting season, for us in Boston. No expectations. I like it.