Tag Archives: Major League Baseball

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2016): The Future of Cespedes in 2016 Mets Camp

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post (of varying amounts of seriousness) about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2016 season. Earlier installments can be found here. Today, I go over other ways that Yoenis Cespedes can arrive at Mets camp.

The big story this year in Mets’ camp hasn’t been the pitchers, or the fact they are coming in as defending National League champions. No, it’s been Yoenis Cespedes. He’s arrived in crazy cars and on a horse, when he hasn’t been buying pigs for $7,000 just to eat them.

So, I have used a crystal ball to stare into the future and see what the future holds for Yoenis Cespedes in Mets camp:

  • On March 4, Cespedes will arrive in a Aston Martin DB5, like James Bond drove.
  • On March 7, Cespedes and his entourage will go to an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet in Port St. Lucie. They will proceed to eat it out of business.
  • On March 9, Cespedes will fly an autogyro to Tampa, where he will play against the Yankees. He will hit a home run and unleash a massive bat-flip. Certain Yankee columnists will take this the wrong way. It will be glorious.
  • On March 12, Cespedes will arrive at Mets camp driving a go-kart.
  • On March 13, Cespedes will skip the game at the Marlins and instead take a helicopter to Disney World, where he will have a blast.
  • Aware that you should “Beware the Ides of March”, Cespedes will stay inside in his room all day and play video games.
  • From March 17 to 19, Cespedes will disappear to go undercover and takes part in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando. He will be leading when the Mets find him and haul him back to camp.
  • On March 21, he will arrive at the Mets facility in a DeLorean with Christopher Lloyd, who he has paid to reprise his role of Dr. Emmett Brown.
  • On March 23, he will arrive on a hovercraft.
  • March 25 will see him arrive at the facility in a Harrier jump-jet.
  • March 30 will see Cespedes arrive riding an elephant.
  • On March 31 and April 1, Cespedes will accompany the Mets to Vegas to play the Cubs. He will proceed to break the bank at the Luxor, and then leave Vegas flying a UFO from Area 51.

 

What’s scary is… some of these might actually come true!

 

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2016): A running commentary on the first Spring Training Game of the Year

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post (of varying amounts of seriousness) about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2016 season. Earlier installments can be found here. Today, I watch the Phillies play their first Spring Training game of the year because I’m a glutton for punishment.

1:07- Severino Gonzalez is pitching for the Phillies. He had a 7.92 ERA last year. Even going with the fact that it was only in 30 innings, that is what is known as “not good”.

1:08- The first pitch in the Philadelphia Phillies march to the World Series is a ball inside and BWAHAAHAHA I actually implied they might make the World Series, my bad.

1:11- Gonzalez walks Dalton Pompey. ONWARD TO VICTORY, CITIZENS OF THE THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE!

1:12- Ryan Howard shows that defense and throws Pompey out at second. Because, y’know, Spring Training. Who cares.

1:13-

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1:15- Chris Colabello is up. Meanwhile, at Twins’ camp, this is happening.

1:16- Chris Colabello hits a infield single that dies in just the right place. Phillies announcers already considering that Gonzalez won’t go his two assigned innings. Phillies Phever: Catch It!

1:18- As the Phillies announcers mention that this could be their opening day outfield, MLB Network’s volume inexplicably increases, as if screaming in terror. Although, to be fair, it does look like a good OF defensively.

1:19- Severino Gonzalez hits a guy. Bases loaded. Darwin Barney is up. So that’s where he ended up.

1:21- Darwin Barney has a 2-RBI double. I’m really regretting doing this with the Phillies.

1:23- The inning is over and I’m making myself lunch.

1:24- Oh dear god, it’s back and I haven’t had an opportunity to eat lunch.

1:29- Marcus Stroman 1-2-3s the Phillies and strikes out one. There was a discussion on how to pronounce the “Franco” in Maikel Franco. Help.

1:33- The required run-down of coaching changes. It happens every spring.

1:36- Gonzalez sends the Blue Jays down 1-2-3. What does this mean? Who the hell knows!

1:38- They just showed the Phanatic welcoming Phillies fans at the airport. I wish the Phanatic welcomed me at airports.

1:45- I get back from lunch just in time to see Carlos Ruiz hit a game-tying 2-run single. Clearly, the Phillies are in good shape this year if I’m eating lunch most of the time.

1:47- Bob McClure, Phillies pitching coach, likens Spring Training to a auto race. Weird. Gregory Infante pitching now for Philly.

1:55- Two-run double again from Darwin Barney. Darwin Barney MVP. Mark it down.

1:57-

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1:58- For those of you scoring at home… don’t.

2:02- Another Spring Training tradition is hawking the future promotions. Like a hat that gives you Phanatic hair. I want one.

2:06- Full disclosure: I’m ending this live-blog at 2:30 because I have other stuff to do.

2:08- HAHA, Freddy Galvis’ car got hit by a BP homer by Maikel Franco.

2:12- Another Spring Training position- gratuitous shots of beaches.

2:16- “The Darwin Barney Show”. Words actually just said.

2:17- Andy McPhail is on TV now, and has a hat that looks more suited to touring Jurassic Park.

2:18- J.P. Arencibia, who apparently is a Phillie now, goes deep to make it 4-3. Our first dinger of Spring Training on TV.

2:30- Well, it’s 2:30 and nothing interesting is happening. So I’m out. Later, everyone.

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2016): The Orioles Physicals

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post (of varying amounts of seriousness) about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2016 season. Earlier installments can be found here. Today, I talk about the most trying trial in sports: the Baltimore Orioles’ physical process, which has infamously torpedoed several deals in the past.

From: Peter Angelos

To: Orioles Training Staff

Subject: Physicals

 

Gentleman,

As you know, we here at the Baltimore Orioles pride ourselves on having players who are in top physical form. We cannot risk somebody getting injured, we are putting too much money into them to have that happen. Therefore, I’d like to remind you of our process:

  1. The usual stuff the other teams do. They don’t go far enough, but they are on the right track.
  2. We then do the usual stuff again a second time, just to make sure.
  3. The doctor shall slowly toss a baseball to the the player. They must catch it. We need to make sure that they have good reflexes!
  4. There is a heavy bat in the clubhouse that only the truly healthy can lift. The would-be acquisition must lift this bat to prove their vigor. Yes, even the pitchers. Especially the pitchers.
  5. Crabcakes. They must eat them. No Baltimore Oriole can be expected to not eat crabcakes. If they cannot eat crabcakes, or are allergic to them, they are not worthy of being Baltimore Orioles.
  6. We then do the usual again for a third time, again to make sure.
  7. 10 push-ups. No exceptions.
  8. Sadly, we have been told we can no longer have would-be signings swim across Baltimore Harbor naked. In lieu of this, we’ll just have to do the usual stuff for a fourth time.
  9. They must allow us to stare into their souls. It’s awkward to just sit there while a doctor or trainer stares at you, but it is necessary.
  10. Ask me if I actually want to pay them that much money or for that many years. If I say no, just say you found something wrong.

Sincerely,

P. Angelos

“30 Teams, 30 Posts” (2016): The Giants Will Win Because It’s An Even Year

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In 30 Teams, 30 Posts, I write a post (of varying amounts of seriousness) about every MLB team in some way in the lead-up to the beginning of the 2016 season. Last year’s installments can be found here. Today, we get the easy part out of the way, with the sure-to-be-2016 champion 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 2009, 2011, 2013 or 2015. In fact, they didn’t even make the playoffs.

So, clearly, history tells us that there is no way that the Giants don’t win the World Series this year. It is inevitable, like the sun rising in the east or a spring training report that somebody is in the best shape of their lives.

Why have the Giants done so well in even years? Maybe it’s just random circumstance. Maybe it’s some strange effect related to President Obama being in office, and it will end once his second term is up. Maybe the Giants like Olympic years.

But for whatever reason, every even years has ended with Buster Posey giving a big hug to somebody. That will, clearly, happen again this year. The only question is who he will be hugging and what team they will be beating.

Breaking OOTP, Episode 4: The Seattle MARIOners vs. Pablo Sanchez and the Backyard Kids

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BreakingOOTPlogo

In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

Last time, we made the Seattle Mariners be full of Mario and Donkey Kong characters. This week, though, we have a exhibition series between the MARIOners (minus any Mariners) and… the Backyard Baseball kids (shown here to be on the Dodgers, because reasons)! Yes, Mario vs. Pablo Sanchez. At stake: The title of GREATEST VIDEO GAME BASEBALL TEAM OF ALL TIME.

Or something like that. Go below the jump, and be sure to check the previous post to see how I created the Mario characters- I used an almost-identical process for the Backyard Kids:

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Breaking OOTP, Episode 3: The Seattle MARIOners

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BreakingOOTPlogo

In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to its limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to its very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

The Seattle Mariners are owned by Nintendo. This is well known. The Seattle Mariners are also coming off a very disappointing season. This is also well known.

But what if the Mariners had had Nintendo’s own playing for them?

MarinersMarioWONDER NO MORE!

(AND GO BELOW THE JUMP TO SEE THE ARTICLE, AND CLICK PICTURES TO MAKE THEM BIGGER)

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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

 

—

 

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:

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