Category Archives: All-Encompassing

Your Offseason Baseball Viewing Listings for November 1, 2013

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With games in Korea, Australia and Women’s Games from Japan, it’s a fun and eclectic mix of baseball for anybody looking for a fix of baseball as the North American off-season begins… or, in some cases, simply suffering from insomnia.

Do you know of any legal (whether they be sponsored or endorsed by a league or run by the league itself) streams? Let me know!

(All times Eastern)

4 AM: Australian Baseball League, Melbourne Aces at Canberra Calvary, will be streamed here, and will have a radio broadcast here.

4:30 AM: Australian Baseball League, Adelaide Bite at Brisbane Bandits, will be streamed here.

5 AM: Korean Series Game 7. Doosan Bears (Yu-Hui Kwan) at Samsung Lions (Jang Won-Sam). Winner wins the series. Will be streamed here.

7:20 AM: Australian Baseball League, Sydney Blue Sox at Perth Heat. Will be streamed here.

9 PM: Japan Women’s Baseball League “Japan Cup”. Astraia (JWBL) vs. Heisei International University (College team). Will be streaming here.

11 PM: JWBL “Japan Cup” Flora (JWBL) vs. Asahi Trust (Corporate Club Team). Will be streaming here.

What to expect during the off-season on the Baseball Continuum

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Well, now that the World Series is done, you probably are wondering what I’ll be doing to waste away the winter, especially since I won’t have any World Baseball Classic news to fill time with?

Well, here’s a run-down of what’s going to be happening:

  • Whenever possible, I’m going to have listings of places to watch or listen to offseason baseball, whether it be domestic (Arizona Fall League) or foreign (Caribbean, Australia, Asia, etc.). As I’ve mentioned before, I’d like to keep it to either official and/or legal sources- this is not a bootlegging pirate blog. Also, as an aside, the phrase “bootlegging pirate blog” is awesome. If you know of such games or sites, let me know. Video can be in any language, but radio-only stuff needs to be in English.
  • Bizarre Baseball Culture will become more frequent, preferably with maybe one or two a month, sometimes three, if I come across something that is total gold and/or fits current events well (for example, I had a Cardinals-related comic ready to be covered if St. Louis had won the World Series).
  • You’ll see the return of the Baseball Card Haiku Project that you may remember from July and August.
  • Out of the Park Baseball posts! What if certain points of baseball history had gone differently (earlier integration, for example)? What if there was a “Real” World Series? Stuff like that.
  • And, of course, there are always things nobody is expecting, and much of that will probably follow from what happens this off-season.

Your Offseason Baseball Listings (October 31, 2013)

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Crud. Now the MLB season is over. But wait! Don’t worry, here’s a list of baseball games to watch today. Don’t worry, I’m not going to watch all of these. Maybe. (NOTE: I am ONLY using official streams or TV showings, no bootlegs or illegal streams).

ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN

4 AM: Australian Baseball League Season Opener- Melbourne Aces (John Hussey) at Canberra Cavalry (Brian Grening), radio feed. Link for radio coverage will be posted here when it goes active. May also be available with video streaming here (click the game).

5 AM: Korean Series Game 6, Doosan Bears (Dustin Nippert starting) at Samsung Lions (Rick Vandenhurk). Doosan leads 3-2 in Best of 7 series. Video Stream can be found here.

And that’s it for today. HOWEVER, this is a CALL FOR ACTION: if you know of a LEGAL, TEAM-RUN and/or BROADCASTER-RUN place for baseball during these offseason months, let me know on my twitter feed. It can be a video of any language, OR a radio feed of English language.

Quote of the Night (Obstruction)

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OBSTRUCTION is the act of a fielder who, while not in possession of the ball and not in the act of fielding the ball, impedes the progress of any runner.
Rule 2.00 (Obstruction) Comment: If a fielder is about to receive a thrown ball and if the ball is in flight directly toward and near enough to the fielder so he must occupy his position to receive the ball he may be considered “in the act of fielding a ball.” It is entirely up to the judgment of the umpire as to whether a fielder is in the act of fielding a ball. After a fielder has made an attempt to field a ball and missed, he can no longer be in the “act of fielding” the ball. For example: If an infielder dives at a ground ball and the ball passes him and he continues to lie on the ground and delays the progress of the runner, he very likely has obstructed the runner.

A nice infographic on how fast a 95-MPH fastball is and how long a hitter has to react

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Answer: Not very long.

The “Slate” tool to find out the connections between Athletes is WRONG!

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You’ve probably seen this page pop up on your Twitter feed today. It’s a cool thing from Slate in which you can find how sports players are connected. For example, they use the example that Tom Brady and Kevin Garnett are within six degrees of each other, due to playing with people who had played with multi-sport athletes.

However, it is far from perfect. For example, it treats Jim Thorpe as two people (a baseball player and a football player), a grave error considering that he is one of the greatest athletes of all time. For another, there is an outright false statement that is seemingly also built into the tool. And I quote:

Hockey is the opposite, as there has never been a pro hockey player who also played top-level basketball, football, or baseball. As a result, hockey is a closed system. But once you get off the ice, it’s possible to link every pro baseball, basketball, and football star.

This is, of course, completely wrong, as there has actually been one player who played both baseball and hockey on the highest level. In fact, I wrote about him at one point: his name was Jim Riley.

Sadly, as of this writing, author Ben Blatt and Slate have yet to fix this. But, I can’t blame them, can I? I mean, Jim Riley is very obscure, and if not for the fact that he is the one person to play in both MLB and NHL, he would have been completely forgotten.

Still, I hope that they fix it. After all, I want to see how all of the ProStars connect together.

My Votes in Baseball Prospectus’ “2013 Internet Baseball Awards”

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Baseball Prospectus runs the Internet Baseball Awards, the oldest such internet-voted awards in baseball, open to anyone with any type of account at Prospectus. Amazingly though, this is the first year I’m actually voting in them. I have no idea why. I think it may be because I never got around to getting one of the free accounts at BP. I am ashamed.

Anyway, here’s how I voted this year (using a combination of statistics, my own eyes, and a bit of my gut), and keep in mind that you too can vote:

AL MVP (in order): Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, Chris Davis, Robinson Cano, Max Scherzer, Evan Longoria, Manny Machado, Felix Hernandez, Ben Zobrist.

I pick Cabrera over Trout, Donaldson and Davis due to his importance to the team, despite the fact that under advanced statistics Trout and Donaldson both had better years, WAR-wise. In addition, I have to wonder how well Cabrera might have been if he was healthy all season instead of completely hobbled in the final weeks. Also, it’s what my gut says. And my gut is stupid like this.

NL MVP (in order): Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, Carlos Gomez, Matt Carpenter, Clayton Kershaw, Joey Votto, Yadier Molina, Jose Fernandez, Cliff Lee, Andrelton Simmons

This is far less based on gut and far more based on statistics. Andrelton Simmons’ place in 10th is more because of his great fielding play, by the way.

AL Cy Young (in order): Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish, Hisashi Iwakuma, Anibal Sanchez

Not that much I have to justify here. Note: Iwakuma would have won the “Cy Underrated” award, if such a thing existed.

NL Cy Young (in order): Clayton Kershaw, Jose Fernandez, Cliff Lee, Adam Wainwright, Matt Harvey

Like the AL Cy Young, there isn’t much I have to justify here, especially at the very top. I was originally thinking of having Fernandez be four or five and perhaps Wainwright be two or three, but I’m feeling confident in this ordering and the stats more-or-less back me up. More-or-less.

AL Rookie of the Year (in order): Wil Myers, Jose Iglesias, Chris Archer, Sonny Gray, David Lough

The AL batch of newcomers this year was sort of “meh”, especially when compared to the National League.

NL Rookie of the Year (in order): Jose Fernandez, Yasiel Puig, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Gerrit Cole, Julio Teheran

Michael Wacha would probably be on this list if I included the postseason.

AL Manager of the Year (in order): John Farrell, Joe Girardi, Terry Francona

NL Manager of the Year (in order): Clint Hurdle, Don Mattingly, Mike Matheny

Manager voting is more-or-less based entirely on gut and impressions… so, uh, this is what my impression of how these guys did and what my gut tells me.

Songs of October: A Retrospective (Because Why Not?)

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It’s a sensation that’s spreading across the nation: Mups. Their spread is unstoppable, to the point where some like the “Cespedes Family BBQ” and Jesse Spector have begun to engage in a “#Mupwatch”. But some wonder: What is a Mup? Are they some sort of Muppet? Is it dangerous? And why are they being lit on fire?

Well, the answer lies in the commercials that have been playing in the lead-up to and during the post-season, featuring Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark”. Here is an example of such a commercial. While officially they are saying “Light ’em up”, it sounds, especially during the echoing segments, like they are actually talking about things called “mups”.

And thus continues a long tradition of October songs that have graced our televisions and infected our ears, whether we liked them or not. And, usually, if we DID like them at the start of the postseason, we end up being sick of them by the end just from hearing them so many times.

And, what’s more, these songs and how they become memes aren’t of a universal source. Most of them, for example, are part of TBS’ coverage, but others, including the latest Fall Out Boy song, are actually of MLB’s doing. Like, TBS is using a different song*,  and MLB Network itself also has a different song for the commercials for it’s two games**. Also, it should be noted that none of them are explicit about baseball, and most of them are more picked for the imagery of their chorus than any type of lyrical sense and fit.

*Using Google searches of the lyrics I was able to decipher, I’ve figured out it’s 30 Seconds to Mars’ “Do or Die”.

**Again using Google, I’ve found that the commercials use the chorus from Papa Roach’s “Still Swingin’“.

Still, with that out of the way, here’s a history (after the jump) of the Songs of October:

Continue reading →

1,000th Post Spectacular: The Best (So Far) of the Baseball Continuum

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If my WordPress is to be believed, this is my 1,000th post on the Baseball Continuum! So, let’s take a look back at some of the best posts here:

The First “Big” Post

The first “big” post here, the first to get any attention beyond the small group of friends and family that I told about the Continuum, was Baseball in the Year 2044: A look at “Rockets on the Mound”. The look I did at the obscure 1950s baseball sci-fi story was written about over on Hardballtalk, and It provided the template and something of a prologue to the Bizarre Baseball Culture segments I’ve done, which are probably the most popular things on this site.

The Most Viewed Posts

The top 10 most-viewed posts on the site all have to do with the World Baseball Classic, which isn’t surprising, given the fact I was one of maybe eight on the baseball blogosphere (at least in English) to give it the time of day and may well have been the first to start projecting out rosters. The most popular post that isn’t WBC related? Why, it’s the first Marvel/AAA Baseball Crossover. In case any of you who have read it missed it, I’ve actually talked to that comic’s writer as well as Chris Hill, who was one of the main people who made that promotion happen. The most viewed post that doesn’t involve the WBC or Bizarre Baseball Culture in any way was the post about strangest stadiums.

My Favorite Posts to Write

Two posts come to mind as my favorite to write, in no particular order:

The first is the one about international team names, just because it was so fun looking at all of the creative names abroad. One team, the Bolton Robots of Doom, liked it so much they sent me a t-shirt. I really need to find that t-shirt, it’s around here somewhere….

The second was the one on favorite baseball memories, simply because I was so glad and a little surprised at all of the ones I got back. I was expecting some from some of the bloggers I’d been in contact with before, but I was pleasantly surprised when I heard from some big-name writers and/or editors like Joe Posnanski, Howard Megdal and John Manuel. Besides, it was just cool to see all those memories.

Stupidest Post

This one. What was I thinking?

Most hilarious-in-hindsight post

The time I wrote an obituary for the 2012 Baltimore Orioles’ playoff hopes.

The One With the Most Photos

Probably the post on the Pepsi Legends game.

The post that got the most attention in my hometown

The Rochester Red Wings tweeted and Facebooked about my post about Jeff Clement and a miracle comeback.

The one that got the most attention in Hollywood

My recent post on Parks and Recreation‘s tie-in book got the attention of both show co-creator Michael Schur and Mets reliever David Aardsma.

And finally…

Thanks to everyone who has been reading the Continuum, promoting/linking to it, and helping to make it possible! The best is yet to come, and here’s to 1,000 more!

Better Late Than Never: My entry at @BaseballDeWorld’s Blogathon

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I missed it due to being out of town at the time, but I contributed an article to Baseball de World’s charity blogathon, so check it out- it’s about my favorite baseball memories.