Tag Archives: Blogathon

(Blogathon ’16!) Related To Somebody Famous For Something Else: Tony Lupien, WWE Star John Cena’s Grandpa

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

I’m not much of a wrestling fan, but I know a great meme when I see one, and the meme related to WWE Superstar John Cena is a good one:

For those of you who don’t want to watch that, in essence, it is what happens when a completely unrelated scene is suddenly interrupted by the cry of “JOHN CENA!” or “HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!” and his theme music begins to play. It’s very stupid, but also hilarious.

But, did you know that the “public face” of the WWE is the grandson of a baseball player? And not just any baseball player, but an honest-to-goodness MLB player: Tony Lupien of the 1940s Red Sox, Phillies and White Sox. In fact, the first-baseman even received MVP votes during the depleted years of WWII:

Screen Shot 2016-01-27 at 11.00.11 AMHere are his Minor League stats:

Screen Shot 2016-01-27 at 11.01.46 AMAfter his career, Lupien went on to be manager and coach, including bringing Dartmouth University to the 1970 College World Series. He was also involved- both during and after his career- with the labor movement, including help co-author The Imperfect Diamond, a history of baseball’s labor relations up through the 1970s.

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At 8 AM: The start of “International Morning”, several hours of international baseball content

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

(Blogathon ’16!) On the Joe Maddon Head

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

In front of the TV in my bedroom, for reasons not fully known, there is a piggy-bank in the shape of Joe Maddon‘s head. It looks like this (apologies for the crappy smartphone picture):

CZ0U2kRUUAEASFa.jpg_largeI received it from a relative who found it at a Goodwill store or something like that, but where did it come from? How did it come to be?

I did some research, and found the truth: it was once a stadium giveaway in Tampa in 2011. It was given out on May 1 vs. the Angels (this game), and went to the first 10,000 kids under 14:

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 10.54.43 AMHowever, there were, according to Retrosheet, only 16,248 people in attendance that day. Were there 10,000 or so kids and only 6,000 or so adults? Did they just give them out to everybody? We may never know.

We also may never know how this, a bank in the shape of Joe Maddon’s head, got to upstate New York. I’d like to imagine it had crazy adventures, traveling the country with it’s fellow TV-situated souvenirs, a Buck O’Neil bobblehead and an even-more-inexplicable San Diego Padres-era Adrian Gonzalez statue.

Or maybe somebody just went on a vacation to Tampa, brought it back up, and didn’t want it anymore.

I prefer the first possibility.

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At 7 AM: Related To Somebody Famous For Something Else

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

(Blogathon ’16) Songs of October (Post-2015 update)

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

For the far-too-late update on what happened in 2015, go to the bottom of the post after the jump.

In 2013, there was a sensation that spread across the nation: Mups. Their spread was unstoppable, to the point where some like the “Cespedes Family BBQ” and Jesse Spector had begun to engage in a “#Mupwatch”. But some wondered: What was a Mup? Were they some sort of Muppet? Were they dangerous? And why were they being lit on fire?

Well, the answer lay in the commercials that had 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 were saying “Light ’em up”, it sounded, especially during the echoing segments, like they were actually talking about things called “mups”.

And thus continued 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 ended up being sick of them by the end just from hearing them so many times.

And, what’s more, these songs and how they have become memes aren’t from a universal source. Most of them, for example, have been part of TBS’ coverage, but others, including the Fall Out Boy song, have actually been of MLB’s doing. In 2013, for example, TBS was using a different song*, and MLB Network itself also had a different song for the commercials for it’s two games**. Rarely if ever have they been actually about baseball, usually selected more for their choruses or imagery.

*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 →

(Blogathon ’16) A Random Musing on the Fairport Little League Money-Grabbing Promotion

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

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Tons of people play Little League Baseball or have played Little League Baseball when they were of the age where you can.

This is not a story about my actual time on the Little League field, where my greatest moment was the time I drew a walk with the bases loaded to force in the walk-off run. No, this is about something else: the Fairport Little League money-grabbing promotion, a crazy promotion in which a pre-teen ballplayer was put into a box full of money, a blower was turned on to send that money flying around, and the kid had to try and grab as much money as possible, which he (or she) would be able to keep.

There were many thoughts on strategy for this. Some kids thought you should try to trap it against the sides of the box and then pull it on. Others thought you should just grab wildly and hope for the best. A few suggested using a loose jersey as a net to catch the dollars and then try to grab from the “net” since you were only allowed to keep the money you had in your hands. Still others thought that it was stupid and that you should just keep the entrance fee and use it to buy a candy bar from the concession stand.

That last group, while probably wise beyond their years, were absolutely no fun.

And then there was the question of what you’d do with the money. Maybe you’d use it to buy candy at the concession stand (always a great choice), maybe you’d rent a video game (this was back when there were actual stores that rented video games), or maybe you’d just put it into your piggy bank.

When I walked in to the box, all those years ago, I wasn’t sure what my strategy was. I think it was a mixture of the various strategies. And I can’t remember what I used the money I got for. Heck, I can’t even remember how much money I grabbed, period.

And yet, despite the fact that I’ve forgotten the end result, I still can remember that big box that sent money flying around you…. a piece of childhood and Little League.

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At 5 AM: A “Songs of October” Update

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

 

(’16 Blogathon) Moe Berg’s Secret Agent Files

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

Moe Berg was perhaps the most interesting person in the history of baseball, despite the fact he wasn’t that good of a ballplayer. A graduate of Princeton and Colombia Law, he spoke seven languages and read up to ten newspapers a day.

And, of course, he was a spy, operating during WWII (and arguably both before and after) for American intelligence. His most famous work came for the Office of Special Services, AKA the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA.

And, guess what? His OSS file is available online.

And it is… surprisingly boring. Now, by it’s very nature, a lot of covert operations stuff is never written down in the first place, or is destroyed, and even the neat stuff is put into fairly dry language. So much of Berg’s file is of expense reports, salary information, transfer papers, record-keeping, and other more-or-less boring paperwork. Funny, we never see the paper trail that James Bond or Ethan Hunt leave behind.

Still, there are some interesting things. For example, you can find Berg’s accommodation for the Presidential Medal of Freedom (page 6), the recommendation for why he should receive it (starting on page 21 of the document, a fascinating rundown of some of Berg’s WWII activities), a similar recommendation (starting on page 30) for another award a (Medal for Merit) that goes into some detail on his work involved with finding out about Axis nuclear weapons research, and also his rejection of the award (page 41) citing his belief that it was a “very modest contribution” to the war effort and an attempt by the government to make him reconsider (page 56). There are also communiques where Berg is referred to by his codename of “Remus”, as well as (on page 50) a copy of his oath of office.

So, check it out over at the Internet Archive. Now… I just need to read The Catcher Was A Spy so I can understand what some of it was referring to.

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At 4 AM: I remember a part of my childhood. Money is involved.

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

 

(Blogathon ’16) Baseball Card Haikus

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

Once, long ago, in the distant year of 2013, I went on a quest to write a crummy Haiku about every card I found in a potpourri of a value pack of baseball cards. It ended at number 18.

But, this morning, it returns. Now, I won’t be doing a “true” Haiku, but I will be doing the 5-7-5 format.

ballcards 7Oh Frank Liriano

On a faux-retro ball card

Fastball no-no Zoom

ballcards 6The Late Great Gary

On a non-MLB card

Who needs a logo

ballcards 5Bob Walk is stretching

Throwing the sphere that he is

Hopeful not his name

ballcards 4John with his helmet

In the field and at the plate

Rickey remembers

ballcardsThe Ghost of Rod Beck

Haunting the living Rod Beck

‘Tis Rod Beckception

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At 3 AM: The Catcher Was A Spy

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

(2016 Blogathon!) Famous For Something Else: Eddy Alvarez, Silver Medal Speed Skater

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

This “Famous For Something Else” is notable because the player in question has a chance of maybe one day becoming best known for baseball. It’s Eddy Alvarez, a middle-infielder in the White Sox organization who won a silver medal in the 5000 meter relay in short track speed skating at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He’s hit very well, but the fact he’s two to four years older than most people in the leagues he is in probably hurts his chances. Still, you never know.

Here are his stats:

Year Age AgeDif Tm Lg Lev Aff G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF
2014 24 3.6 2 Teams 2 Lgs Rk-A CHW 45 210 182 32 63 11 1 5 26 9 10 27 34 .346 .433 .500 .933 91 4 1 0 0
2014 24 4.4 White Sox ARIZ Rk CHW 27 130 110 20 32 5 1 2 12 5 6 20 24 .291 .400 .409 .809 45 3 0 0 0
2014 24 2.5 Kannapolis SALL A CHW 18 80 72 12 31 6 0 3 14 4 4 7 10 .431 .488 .639 1.126 46 1 1 0 0
2015 25 3.2 2 Teams 2 Lgs A-A+ CHW 123 553 450 88 133 29 7 5 53 53 15 88 85 .296 .409 .424 .834 191 8 2 8 5
2015 25 3.5 Kannapolis SALL A CHW 89 410 330 64 94 23 6 2 39 42 8 69 68 .285 .408 .409 .818 135 8 2 6 3
2015 25 2.4 Winston-Salem CARL A+ CHW 34 143 120 24 39 6 1 3 14 11 7 19 17 .325 .411 .467 .878 56 0 0 2 2
All Levels (2 Seasons) 168 763 632 120 196 40 8 10 79 62 25 115 119 .310 .416 .446 .862 282 12 3 8 5
A (2 seasons) Minors 107 490 402 76 125 29 6 5 53 46 12 76 78 .311 .421 .450 .872 181 9 3 6 3
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/27/2016.

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At 2 AM: Baseball Card Haiku

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity: Introduction

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Hello, and welcome to the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity, raising money through GoFundMe for the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, the charitable arm of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Over the next three days, you will read pieces from not only me, but some of the best writers, bloggers, Tweeters, researchers, fans, and podcasters on the web. Also, those who donate non-anonymously will be eligible for giveaways of books, a comic, copies of Out Of The Park Baseball, and a “Living Baseball Card”.

So, please, donate! But even if you are unable or unwilling to, I hope you enjoy the next three days of content.

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I’m not entirely sure why I chose to do this. Part of it is because I always enjoyed the “Old Time Family Baseball” Blogathons that Michael Clair ran for Doctors Without Borders (also a very worthy charity), but I think another big reason for why was my grandfather. His name was Jacob “Jack” Glickman. He was a pharmacist, and a baseball fan. Through him, my dad became a baseball fan, and through him, I became a baseball fan.

He also died of cancer. I can still easily remember the day he died- September 30, 2014. That was also the day of the classic Royals-Athletics Wild Card game. The two are very connected in my mind, as earlier that day I had been visiting my grandfather at the place where he was being treated in his final days. Despite the fact that doctors had said he probably didn’t have much time left, and that he wasn’t entirely all “there”, he still wanted to know about the game, when it would be, who was pitching, and who I thought would win.

I found out that he had passed away shortly before the start of the game. I was sad, of course, but I was told to not come to the hospital and instead watch the game. It was, as we all remember, an instant classic, and by the end I wasn’t so much sad about how my grandfather was gone, so much as sad that he hadn’t been able to see that great game.

So, when it came time to figure out what the Blogathon would be for, I came pretty quickly to the idea of raising money for a cancer charity. My grandfather was not the first fan to miss a great game because of the scourge of cancer, and sadly he was far from the last. It’s likely that all of us, including many of the guest writers who will be taking over this weekend, have known somebody who has been affected by the disease, and in many cases we likely know somebody who lost their lives to it.

And after some research, I decided upon Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Roswell Park, located in Buffalo but with affiliations across New York and the world, is America’s oldest cancer center, specializing in research and treatment. The RPAF is rated four stars by Charitynavigator.com, and donations will, according to their website, be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Fittingly, Roswell Park has a close relationship with the State University of New York at Buffalo, where my late grandfather studied to become a pharmacist. 

So, again, please donate. You only need a credit/debit card and a few minutes, but it could help people in the future.

Now, that’s how we got here. Make sure to come back next hour as I begin the Blogathon’s baseball content with an installment of “Famous For Something Else”.

 

 

The GoFundMe site for the 2016 Blogathon For Charity is now up!

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Hey everybody! The GoFundMe page for the 2016 Blogathon For Charity, which starts this coming Friday, is now up. While it is not quite complete yet as far as detailing giveaways (I just need to confirm a few things), it is now open for donations!

So, if you’d like to, please consider donating.

A preview of what I’ll be doing in the Blogathon

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Hello everybody, work continues on the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity benefiting Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, and we are now less than two weeks from the event, and about a week away from the GoFundMe page going up. Several of the guests have already sent in their pieces, and I’ve gotten some good possible giveaways for the Blogathon raffle as well.

So, two weeks out, I thought I’d give you a bit of a preview of some what you’ll be seeing from me in the blogathon:

The 50th Bizarre Baseball Culture

Yes, the 50th installment of perhaps the Baseball Continuum‘s most famous (as in, some people may have actually heard of it, maybe) feature. And it’s a doozy, as I’ll be looking at DC Super-Stars #10, aka THE BASEBALL GAME BETWEEN DC COMICS’ HEROES AND VILLAINS:

Now, this has been done before elsewhere, but it is such an iconic piece of the sub-sub-genre that is Superhero Baseball that it is the clear and obvious choice to be the fiftieth installment of Bizarre Baseball Culture. Get excited.

Breaking OOTP Episode 5: No Homers Club

Yes, Breaking OOTP will be returning as well, as I will create a world where home runs should be in very, very, very short supply, and then I will watch what happens.

International Morning

From 8 AM to 11 AM on January 29, every post (with the exception of one post to let people know what happened in the very early morning) will be about international baseball in some way, shape, or form, culminating in the first part of International Baseball Culture at 11 AM.

Red Wings Programs of the Past: 1990

The latest look at the history of the AAA Rochester Red Wings through their yearly programs will happen that night, with a look at the 1990 program. So if you ever wanted to see what David Segui looked like in 1990, this will be your chance.

First References

Diving deep into the Sporting News archives available to SABR members, I’ll reveal the first time that the “Bible of Baseball” referred to certain players, stadiums, and concepts. What will I be pulling up the first references to this time? I’m not saying, as it would spoil the surprise.

A Proposal to Hollywood to create an American version of Mr. Go

Exactly what it says.

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And, of course, more. Those are just some of the things you will see and hopefully read!