Tag Archives: baseball

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2015): The Royals and the Inevitable Hangover

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. Previous installments can be found here. Today, we look at the Royals.

The Royals had a wild ride last season, driving through the postseason like they stole it. And they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that meddling Bumgarner.

However, now the hard part: moving on. 2014 is over, the sweeping of the Angels and Orioles is in the past. Alex Gordon’s dash to third base is now but a memory.

And, perhaps most importantly, some of the key players from last season are gone. James Shields is now in San Diego. Billy Butler, long a mainstay in Kansas City, now is in Oakland. Nori Aoki is now a Giant. Josh Willingham, who hit a game-tying single in the Wild Card game last year, has retired.

To be sure, additions have been made and young players will continue to improve, but, well, it will be hard for the Royals of this season to match the run of last year, because getting to the World Series is hard. It’s a cold truth.

So, sorry, Royals fans, but it’s fairly likely you are in for a disappointment this year. But, rest assured, a bright future may still lay ahead, if the prospects work out.

But if not, hold on to those memories of 2014… because it was quite the achievement in itself.

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2015): Giancarlo Stanton’s greatest dingers

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. Previous installments can be found here. Today, we honor the Marlins the best way possible: Giancarlo Stanton dingers.

There are many ways to look at the Miami Marlins. You could look at a team on the rise, of Ichiro’s final days, or Jose Fernandez’s return from injury.

Or, you could just look at lots of Giancarlo Stanton home runs.

Let’s do that (after the jump):

Continue reading →

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2015): Looking at the Toronto Blue Jays during their first game of Spring Training

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. Previous installments can be found here. Today, the Blue Jays.

It was 1:05, and I turned on the TV to see that, finally, gloriously, spring training baseball has begun. MLB Network had Blue Jays vs. Pirates.

It was the Blue Jays feed, so here are my thoughts on them:

1) They essentially had a opening-day starting lineup to start off (with the exception of the starting pitcher, Aaron Sanchez), which is nice. Some teams will almost never have a opening-day lineup during Spring Training until the very end, but the Blue Jays have gotten down to business quick.

2) Russell Martin was starting his first pseudo-game in a Blue Jays uniform, and it was against his former team. Funny how that always happens. He made a nice defensive play in the first inning throwing out Sean Rodriguez on a full-swing bunt from his knees, although Justin Smoak definitely had to reach a bit to get the ball.

3) Aaron Sanchez gave up a 3-run, 2-out HR to Pedro Alvarez. Whoops. That probably wasn’t part of his plan. Then again, it should have ended the batter before, but Josh Donaldson botched picking up a ball. And that is why they have Spring Training, folks!

4)

Yeah, that happened. And it will happen again. Well, the lost hits due to shift.

 

5) Technical difficulties hit MLB Network at like 1:23. It gets all pixelly and stuff. This is an issue.

6) At 1:25, it got better. Praise the cable gods!

7) Aaron Sanchez has Pat Hentgen’s number.

8) Aaron Sanchez, who had a 1.09 ERA in 24 relief appearances last year, is knocked out in the second inning, down 5-0. Maybe he’s not made to be a starter, or maybe IT’S JUST THE FIRST SPRING TRAINING GAME AND WE SHOULDN’T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS!

9) Through two innings, the Blue Jays are hitless, which totally means they won’t get a single hit all this season. And we thought the Phillies would be bad.

10) Jung-Ho Kang hits his first professional North American home run for the Pirates, making it 6-0. It was off Marco Estrada. The Blue Jays have yet to throw a scoreless inning this pre-season. This means absolutely nothing.

11) Every time Kevin Pillar comes up, I think he’s Kevin Millar. I had a similar problem with Ryan Roberts and Brian Roberts. Oh, and as I typed that, Kevin Pillar hit a 2-run home run, so Toronto won’t get shut-out on the preseason. Good for him.

12)  If Dalton Pompey (said like “Pompeii”) doesn’t have that song by Bastille play every time he comes to the plate, something is wrong. He makes a nice steal after reaching base on a single.

13) I miss the end of the third ending making myself a late lunch. The Blue Jays make it 6-3. I wasn’t watching and thus cannot comment. Apologies.

14) Realizing I have other stuff I need to do, I decide I will cap this at 15.

15) Dalton Pompey makes a nice sliding catch in left field in the 5th inning. Later in that same inning, he loses a ball in the sun or something and it falls in for a RBI double. Baseball is a cruel mistress.  And thus ends my observations of the Toronto Blue Jays in their first Spring Training game.

Famous For Something Else: Bill Murray, American Treasure

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Due to other stories I’m working on, there will be no BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE this weekend. Apologies. Instead, here’s a Famous For Something Else that I’ve been meaning to put up.

Bill Murray, member of the early days of SNL, star of Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Stripes, Lost In Translation and all-around cool guy, was, ever so briefly, a professional baseball player.  He played for the independent Northwest League Grays Harbor Loggers in 1978 in-between SNL gigs, partly for a “what I did over summer vacation” segment for the show. The crazy tale is recounted here in a Oral History put together by Rob Neyer. And here are the stats of the player who Baseball Reference has recorded as “William Murray“:

Year Age AgeDif Tm Lg Lev G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB HBP SH SF
1978 28 6.7 Grays Harbor NORW A- 2 2 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .500 .500 .500 1.000 1 0 0 0
1 Season 2 2 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .500 .500 .500 1.000 1 0 0 0
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/1/2015.

Bill Murray. Ballplayer. Nobody would ever believe it, and yet it happened.

Murray remains involved with baseball to this day, owning stakes in a few independent clubs.

30 Teams, 30 Posts (2015): A Haiku About The Braves

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. Previous installments can be found here. Today, I lazily reduce the entire Atlanta Braves into a Haiku.

 

Atlanta Braves Team

No more Heyward or Justin

Markakis there now

 

—

 

Continuum Classic: The clever baseball reference in the “Parks and Recreation” book

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In honor of last night’s excellent finale to Parks and Recreation, a classic post from September 19, 2013, on the clever baseball 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!) Continue reading →

30 Teams, 30 Posts (2015): Alex Rodriguez’s arrival at Yankees camp, in the minds of some people (SATIRE)

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. Today, I talk about Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees by showing you an alternate world where Alex Rodriguez’s arrival at Yankee camp was as horrific as some people thought it would be or make it out to be:

We all feared this day would come. We told ourselves it was just a bad dream, a prophecy that would never be fulfilled.

But, alas, that bleak day happened. Alex Rodriguez, baseball’s greatest monster, arrived at Yankee Spring Training on Monday, coming days early by way of an ominous Zeppelin of Doom, powered by the tears of orphans and the death-cries of starved kittens.

After all, that is what Alex Rodriguez is all about. Himself. Some would move with the flow, be one with the team. But not Alex Rodriguez. Everything about him is looking out for number one. And yet, he is one of the ones who he has failed, right alongside his family, his team, his sport, America, and, indeed, all of mankind.

And, yet, he doesn’t even seem to know what, exactly, he has done wrong. Not today, not yesterday, not ever.

“Some of the mistakes.”

“Would not elaborate on what they were.”

Oh, and he said that while drinking the blood of a hapless victim. But that’s now important: he wouldn’t elaborate.

How could you not elaborate, Alex? Perhaps it is because of all of them. After all, your many crimes may include some of the following:

  • Lying
  • Getting caught with steroids
  • Using steroids in the first place
  • Kidnapping a young damsel and tying her to train tracks
  • Assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand and indirectly starting World War One
  • The ending of Man of Steel
  • Misplacing Thurman Thomas’ helmet in Super Bowl XXVI
  • Slapping at Bronson Arroyo’s glove
  • Tricking Howie Clark
  • Global Warming
  • Selling the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four to FOX Studios, thus depriving the world of seeing The Hulk fight The Thing and Wolverine hanging out with Captain America during WWII.
  • The Union’s defeat at Bull Run
  • The throwing of the 1919 World Series
  • The Lego Movie not being nominated for Best Animated Feature
  • The demise of MVP Baseball
  • Ken Griffey Jr.’s injuries
  • The episode of Lost about Jack’s tattoo
  • The disappearance of Flight 19
  • Centaurs

That’s a lot of potential things you could have possibly done, and the fact that most of them you had nothing to do with has nothing to do with that, A-Rod. You are a disgrace, a fraud, and a poo-poo head. Please go away.

—

In reality, of course, nothing interesting happened and amazingly nobody went quite this over-the-top with their blistering hot-take thinkpieces. Although we did get this picture of  journalists trying to catch a peek of his workout from a distance:

30 Teams, 30 Posts (2015): The Seattle Mariners could save the baseball fan experience

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. This is the fourth post of the series- look here for the rest. Today, I look at how the Mariners may be the team to introduce a new generation of the American baseball fan experience.

Not too long ago, I lamented the state of baseball fans over at Hall of Very Good (which is somewhat recycled in this post). To make a long story short: American baseball fans are horrible when it comes to cheering at ballgames. With a few exceptions, the only cheers that happen are those prompted by the scoreboard or during or after plays. It’s a far cry from the days when Boston fans taunted Honus Wagner with rewritten songs, Brooklyn fans had a small amateur band of musicians and Wild Bill Hagy led the “Roar from 34” in Baltimore, and it is far more sedate than the madhouse atmospheres in Japan or the Caribbean.

However, there is a place where I believe American baseball fandom could make a return to the raucous years of old: Seattle.

Why Seattle?

A few reasons:

1) It’s known to be very loud and supportive of it’s other sports teams.

Seattle is famous for how much it supports it’s teams. The “12th Man” of the Seahawks is famous for how loud it can get, at times even registering on the Richter scale. Their soccer team, the Sounders, were featured on Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel due to how they have been able to replicate the European soccer crowd environment. The loss of the Sonics is a open wound that more was the result of corporate greed than any lack of support. Therefore, the residents of the Pacific Northwest know how to get loud and organized in support of their teams and can be ridiculously devoted to them.

2) It has deep Japanese connections

The Mariners are one of the most popular MLB teams in Japan, a result of the many Japanese imports who have come to Seattle, as well as Seattle’s large Asian-American population. Nintendo, a Japanese company, owns the Mariners. Is it really that hard to imagine that perhaps the Mariners would have the inspiration and the means to form some Japan-style cheering sections, perhaps throw in some ouendan?

3) The King’s Court provides a template/Jumping Point

A king reigns in Seattle. He is King Felix of the House Fernandez, First of His Name. And when he’s on the mound, the Mariners have a section devoted entirely to them, and it looks like this:

Look at that and tell me that wouldn’t make an excellent jumping-off point for forming Japan or Europe-style fan sections with chants and waving flags and all of that! You can’t, because it’d make a perfect jumping-off point for forming a Japanese or European-style fan section!

4) The Mariners are going to return to the postseason sooner rather than later.

It feels like, during the postseason, the fans who had to survive long droughts are wilder. In 2012, Baltimore was raucous while the Bronx was a morgue. Pittsburgh waited years to return to the playoffs and turned PNC Park into a madhouse. Atlanta was in the postseason for so many years that they ended up having trouble selling tickets to NLDS games.

The Mariners haven’t made the postseason since 2001. Guess what type of crowd they’ll bring when they make the playoffs next? The answer: a lot closer to the Baltimore or Pittsburgh experience. It’ll be loud. Very loud. And it is then, perhaps, that it will happen: Seattle will bring a new evolution of the baseball fan experience. And then, the Baseball Gods willing, nothing will be the same again.

 

 

30 Teams, 30 Posts (2015): Orbit of the Astros

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. This is the third post of the series- look here for the rest. Today, I look at the one of the great rising stars of the Houston Astros- their mascot, Orbit.

The Astros are going to be something. Sooner than you think, they will have one of those “What The Heck” seasons, bursting onto the scene and into the playoffs like the Rays, Pirates and Royals of past years. They will revive pro baseball on the Gulf Coast of Texas, and teach everyone the true meaning of the unit of measurement known as the Altuve.

But until then, the Astros can at least rest easy knowing that they have one of the rising stars of the MLB Mascot Circuit- Orbit.

Photo by Matthew Britt. Used under Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)

Yes, Orbit, the Alien Muppet… thing. Once the mascot of the Astros from 1990 to 1999, he returned in 2012 by popular demand. And, since then, he has made his return worth it, using puns, slapstick, dancing, and mock-feuds. It is no coincidence that Orbit was brought along with the MLB All-Star Team to Japan for a recent tour, considering how great he was in 2014? No wonder, as our good friend Michael Clair once pointed out, that Astro won the Mascot of the Year Award.

Go below the jump for some thoughts and observations about some of Orbit’s highlights:

Continue reading →

30 Teams, 30 Posts (2015): It’s not an even year, so why bother with writing something about the Giants?

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2015 season. This is the second post of the series- look here for the rest. Today, a tongue-in-cheek post about the San Francisco Giants.

The San Francisco Giants have won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

They did not win the World Series in 2011 or 2013. In fact, they didn’t even make the playoffs.

So, despite the small sample size of that trend, it’s obvious that the Giants will not make the playoffs this year. Sure, they still have a good rotation, a very strong bullpen, Buster Posey, Hunter Pence, Bruce Bochy, and the like, but they also no longer have Pablo Sandoval. Michael Morse is gone too, which removes a power threat.

And, again, it really doesn’t matter, since it’s an odd year, not an even year. They could have Willie Mays and Barry Bonds available in the outfield, Juan Marichal in the rotation and Willie McCovey at first, and they still wouldn’t be making the playoffs this season. So, really, why even bother previewing them? Go eat some cookies or play video games or something. Maybe read a good book.

So, yeah, maybe the Giants will be worth writing about next year, when they are next scheduled to win the World Series. Until then, though, what they do will probably just be kind of meh.