Starring Jon Hamm, Million Dollar Arm is the loosely-based upon a true-story tale of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, two Indians who were discovered after winning a reality show in their home country meant specifically to find India’s first professional ballplayers. It looks like the movie is taking some liberties with the events, but, hey, it’s always good to see a baseball movie:
As 2013 comes to a close, I’ll remember the good times we had by reposting some of the most popular things from the Continuum in the past year. Today, from September 19, a look at the clever David Aardsma reference in the Parks and Recreation book:
In 2009, Parks and Recreation first aired. A spiritual spin-off (but not an actual spin-off) of The Office, it follows the life of the Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the rest of the staff of the Parks and Recreation Department in the fictional, Springfield-like city of Pawnee, Indiana.
In 2011, Knope released a book on Pawnee in the show, entitled Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. NBC released the book in the real world.
In 2013, as part of a Netflix/Hulu binge to get caught up on Parks and Recreation before the next season starts, I also read Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. I got it from the library (thankfully, my local library is not run by Ron Swanson’s second ex-wife Tammi). In doing so, I was able to catch a clever baseball reference in it during a section on Pawnee’s school board- which is filled with people who have lots of A’s at the start of their names in order to be at the top of the ballot, helping them win simply through the laziness of the voters of Pawnee. I’ve put the page up below the jump*, can you spot it?
*(Please don’t sue me, NBC!)
In which I write Haiku-style poetry about a potpourri of baseball cards I found in a value pack. Because, well, it’s my blog.
2003 Topps Brad Voyles
I have to admit
I don’t know how many sounds
Are in Brad’s last name
In which I write Haiku-style poetry about a potpourri of baseball cards I found in a value pack. Because, well, it’s my blog.
1997 Bowman Todd Hollandsworth
Todd Hollandsworth’s card
Red-and-black border has he
Swing, Batter, Batter
In which I write Haiku-style poetry about a potpourri of baseball cards I found in a value pack. Because, well, it’s my blog.
1990 Topps Jeff Kunkel
Jeff Kunkel, cool name
What a awesome name to say
This was his last year
In which I write Haiku-style poetry about a potpourri of baseball cards I found in a value pack. Because, well, it’s my blog.
1992 Score Ellis Burks
Ellis Burks played for
the Red Sox in Nineteen Nine-
–ty two. Centerfield.
In 1997, Wade Boggs threw a scoreless inning against the Angels:
This is something that could just as easily be a Bizarre Baseball Culture. It’s the Sammy Sosa-starring slow-pitch softball, uhm… “classic”: Sammy Sosa Softball Slam.
I would have reinstalled this game to do a review, but I decided not to… because I can remember how much it sucked. I have played many horrible games in my day: I flew through freaking hoops in Superman 64 (how can you make a Superman game where the main activity is FLYING THROUGH FREAKING HOOPS!?!?!), I played a horrible Pokemon knock-off masquerading as an adaptation of Animorphs, I think I even played ET The Extraterrestrial for the Atari 2600 once in a museum somewhere.
Sammy Sosa Softball Slam is in that category of horrible. It was, for one thing, hilariously bad an idea. Let’s make a softball game… BUT WITH SAMMY SOSA! Even admitting this was the year 2000, I have to think some type of hallucinogens were involved for such a bizarre idea to happen.
The game itself wasn’t that much better. It was easy no matter what mode you were doing, the players involved (with the exception of Sammy himself) were ridiculously nondescript (compare this to the colorful cast of the great Backyard Baseball series), the graphics were bad even for their day, the announcer was annoying (he’d call Sammy “the man, the myth, the legend” basically every other time he came to the plate) and, oh, right, it was still a softball game starring Sammy Sosa. By the way, I remember that Sammy’s statistics were maxed out in the game, and that there was also a button on the player editing screen that would allow you to transform any player into Sammy Sosa- even if the player was a woman! Yes, with just the tap of a button, you could change anyone, regardless of age, race, or gender, into Sammy Sosa circa-2000… to play slow-pitch softball.
Think about the horrible implications of that.
Yeah, scary.
Oh, and this was the “thrilling” opening to the game. Although this is from the Playstation version and not the PC version, I seem to recall it being very similar:
(Shivers)
Okay, so, in the coming week or so, I’ll be setting up some stuff to go up automatically, as my internet will be a bit spotty. Here are some things to look forward to:
So… keep an eye out!
There was a fight between agents during the Winter Meetings today. One guy threatened to burn the other guy’s house down. Jeff Passan has the story over at Yahoo! Sports, and he makes a reference to Punch-Out! in it, which is awesome.
The Baseball Continuum 