Archive for Old News

In case you haven’t read the relevant press release, let it be known, bespectacled reader, that the Phillies will be hosting a 1980s Retro Night this Friday at Citizens Bank. While that particular event promises to be awkward in all the ways one imagines it could be awkward, it’s had the tonic effect of directing the author (after some super-high intense web-surfing) to the above-embedded video from Game Five of the 1980 NLCS between Philadelphia and Nolan Ryan’s Houston Astros.

Please join me, reader, won’t you, as we experience this experience together?

0:13 — For the first time ever, Larry Bowa is caught on film expressly not gesticulating wildly at someone or -thing.

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If you are at all like me, you haven’t really been following the Dodgers’ messy ownership situation over the last few years. Because if there is anything less interesting than when the rich and famous get married, it’s when they get divorced. So mainly for my own edification (and for that of those in a similar position) I have attempted to construct a basic summary of this whole fercockt mess.

It seems to me like this is just your typical case of boy (who has the same name as a famous dead author) meets girl; boy falls in love with girl; boy and girl get married; boy and girl become middle-aged man and woman; like so many marriages, theirs begins to grow stale as it enters its third decade; man and women attempt to revitalize their marriage by adopting a Major League Baseball team from Los Angeles (that they might not have even been able to afford to support in the first place); man hires the nerdy guy who is played by Jonah Hill in that new movie that’s coming out to be GM; man fires the nerdy guy who is played by Jonah Hill in that new movie after just two seasons; man and woman soon learn that adopting a Major League Baseball team could not do very much to repair the fact that man and woman just kinda don’t like each other anymore; a day before the start of their team’s second straight NLCS appearance, man and woman announce their separation; a day after their team loses its second straight NLCS, man fires woman from her position as CEO of their team; woman (as any self-respecting woman would) files for divorce; man says nasty things about woman and changes the locks on her office; man attempts to obtain sole custody of the team; woman challenges man’s claim to sole custody; time passes; man and woman begin to work towards a settlement; strapped for cash, man takes out loan and promises to repay it with money that he might never have; man and woman are investigated by the IRS for allegedly skimming millions of dollars from the team without paying taxes; Child Protective Services steps in and takes custody of the team; the younger brother of that old guy from Face the Nation is appointed as the team’s foster parent; Child Protective Services rejects the deal man and woman have in place to settle their custody battle; and we all wait for what happens next.

That’s all there is to it, really.

As they say: it’s always the children who are hurt the most in divorces.

Ask anyone who’s anyone or no one who’s no one, and they’ll tell you that Frank Robinson is a good, tough egg. In doing so, they’ll likely use a sampling of the Lord’s nouns like “toughness,” “class,” and “dignity.” But what if Mr. Robinson were forced to wear red pants paired with a red top? Would he still be tough, classy and dignified? Or would he, by mere virtue of the sartorial affronts inflicted upon him by, say, the Indians of Cleve’s Land, become something less? That is, do clothes make the man, or do they unmake him?

And what hope is there for the rest of us?

Letters of Note, which traffics in noteworthy letters, has unearthed a baseball-ing document from way back yonder in 1898, when men were men and diseases were just, just great. The subject of the missive in question? Sporting gentleman John T. Brush wanted to rid our fair game of the maledictions and impieties common to those who were not raised right-wise.

By all means, click, embiggen and quaff deeply:

What is most pleasing about this letter is that Mr. Brush takes pains to quote the salty (yet, to these ears, soaringly beautiful) phrasings of the time. Because of Mr. Brush’s meticulous cataloging, fans of the era would know that when a baseball-ist quipped, say, “I f****d your mother, you sister, your wife,” he was indulging in ruffian’s talk and was quite likely a cad and a masher. Lest there be any confusion about that.

So it turns out that not all about the Gilded Age was gilded. You big asshole.

Continuing this site’s very obvious Middle West bias, it’s with no little pleasure that I submit to the NotGraphs readership A Thing I Just Found on the Internet.

Specifically, the thing is an announcement — an announcement, dating from April 25h, by State Senator Tim Carpenter (D–Milwaukee) that each January 26th will now officially be Bob Uecker Day in the State of Wisconsin.

Regard, plagiarism:

“I was deeply honored this Saturday to deliver the official resolution to Bob Uecker at his radio booth at Miller Park. Bob’s famous ‘Get up, Get up, Get Out of Here, Gone’ signature call has marked thousands of Milwaukee Brewer home runs to every fan’s delight,” said Carpenter.

“Bob Uecker has been calling play-by-play radio broadcasts for the Milwaukee Brewers for 40 years. I grew up listening to Bob Uecker’s broadcasts with my parents and his great enthusiasm helped spark my love of baseball. He is a beloved figure in Wisconsin baseball,” said Carpenter.

There’s no mention as to whether state employees will receive the day off from work, although Carpenter did go on to implore everyone to enjoy a Usinger’s sausage “with some crisp kraut.”

Like any good blogger, Murray Chass is often angry about things — angry enough to bang Internet spoon on bloggy highchair. His latest bete noir, of which there are multitudes, is the imagined whippersnapper who’s responsible for the mollycoddling of today’s stick-and-ball bowlers. Grrr:

Pitchers have never had so many friends – in baseball itself and on the periphery of baseball. People keep coming up with excuses for pitchers and more crutches for them than for a legion of Tiny Tims.

Along with excuses, people keep lowering the standards for pitchers. People in my once proud profession are probably mostly to blame because the younger generation of baseball writers have led the rush to the dark side, believing their new view of statistics is more significant than the view of the older writers that has prevailed for as long as baseball has been played.

This, of course, is a common refrain. I’m not particularly interested in pitch-count arguments, but I am interested in bizarre physical extremes. So to make Mr. Chass and his band of renown feel a bit better, let’s think back to a time when pitchers truly were men among sniveling, rat-faced cowards like me. Consider this 1942 tale of brawn, flinty resolve and limestone testicles:

At Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo‚ one of the most memorable games in Japanese League history takes place‚ a 28-inning marathon (4-4 tie) between Nagoya and Taiyo. It takes three hours and 47 minutes and both starters‚ Michio Nishizawa of Nagoya and Jiro Noguchi of Taiyo‚ go all the way: Nishizawa 311 pitches; Noguchi 344. Games are not allowed to end in a tie because the league has to show off their fighting spirit‚ according to historian Yoichi Nagata. Because this is the last day of the spring schedule in the three-part season (spring‚ summer and fall)‚ closing ceremonies and awards are scheduled‚ so officials order the umpire to end the game. Nagoya uses only 9 players‚ and Taiyo‚ 10. Despite the war‚ the game is noted in TSN.

You know what real men do besides brawl in churches and use Valvoline to deep-fry falcon meat? They throw 344 mothertrucking pitches in a game.

Once, in a Diamond Mind league, I stretched out Scott Erickson to 260 pitches in order to allow my crippled bullpen to fight another day. And even though it was fake and on a computer and all that stuff (but we totally had girlfriends, so shut up), the notion of ritually abusing a fake computer pitcher to such an extent still struck my competitors as crazy. But 344 pitches in a single game of real-life, board-certified baseball? That’s crazy — as crazy as a gorilla with rabies, which, I am confident, is a thing that would be quite crazy.

My point in all of this? Murray Chass is a blogger.

Strong mug shot but probably still drunk.

Let’s get a disclaimer out of the way first. In no way are we making fun of alcoholism or driving under the influence, those are serious problems. Miguel Cabrera seems like he might need a little help overcoming a common yet grave addiction.

Still… the circumstances of his of his DUI arrest call to mind some of the worst behavior of famous people in our culture. The feeling of entitlement that pervades that simple phrase – “Do you know who I am?” – is one that deserves to be mocked, and heartily. I mean, really? Really, Mr. Baseball Player Swigging From An Open Bottle Behind the Wheel, Really? Do I care who you are right now?

So, in Mr. Cabrera’s honor, a mixed list of classic “Do You Know Who I Ams?” for your pleasure.

Filed under, Recent
Just this week, NFL Player Legedu Naanee walked through the middle of a homicide crime scene, then cursed officers for questioning his decision, got pepper sprayed and arrested and then screamed the money phrase while being led away. No, dude, you wear a helmet. No-one knows who you are without your jersey on.

Filed under, Scholastic
This urban legend has it that a student taking an exam runs late and continues to to scribble despite the yelling proctor, then calmly walks to the front of the class. He asks the proctor if he knows who he is, and after the proctor says no, throws all the test booklets into the air (mixed in with his own) and runs out of the class. I imagine him laughing hysterically – and getting away with it.

Filed under, Civilian
A suburban mom in a minivan jumped a curb, plowed through a front yard, hit a stop sign, slurred her words, smelled of alcohol and was to be led away by a couple of officers… but first she had to resist violently and utter the famous words. Well, who was she? The deputy coroner.

Filed under, Baseball, Classic
In perhaps the most ridiculous version of this trope, Padres prospect Matt Bush, “fresh” off of a .204/.310/.276 season at high-A Lake Elsinore in 2007, drunkenly attacked some high school lacrosse players in 2009. He, and I quote the story here, “picked up and threw a freshman lacrosse player,” screaming the question of the moment before answering it: “I’m Matt (expletive) Bush,” and “(expletive) East County.” Asked, and answered.

If you’ve never read the collected works of Great American™ Ralph Waldo Emerson — and, in particular, his essays “Self-Reliance” and “The Divinity School Address” — you should probably do that before you shuffle off this mortal coil.

However, if you’re busy for the minute, you can find much of Emerson’s thought condensed into this very brief quote from Manny Ramirez:

I’m just here to play the game and enjoy it… [I enjoy] my life. All the things that I do I enjoy. I’m not here to talk to [the media]. I’m here to play the game. That’s me, you know. The same. Everywhere I go is the same.

On the one hand, it might be important to note that this was Ramirez’s response when asked, in 2008, about his decision to sell a grill on eBay — itself a curious thing for a generational talent to be doing.

On the other hand, it’s also noteworthy that the above would be a perfectly reasonable answer to the question, “Manny: what, per chance, is your entire life philosophy?”

H/T: Reader T-pain.

This was a home run

Luckily, Baseball-Reference’s blog was all over it.

As the B-R blog covers exquisitely well, Steve Balboni was not a very good baseball player. However, he was an extremely entertaining baseball player. For one, he looked pretty funny. For two, and most importantly, the dude could hit some home runs.

The reason that I care about Steve Balboni goes back to a game in which I attended in the womb: this June 4th, 1989 game between the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Brewers at County Stadium in Milwaukee. My mom shares some of my love of baseball, and she shared her love of Steve Balboni with me, which, if I recall correctly, was born from this game.

This game featured a few collectibles, including a home run from Yankee Deion Sanders (off of the stalwart Bryan Clutterbuck) and a two-homer game from Jesse Barfield. However, it was Steve Balboni’s sole at-bat (replacing Don Mattingly in the field) which makes this game live on for my family. Balboni saw 12 pitches in that at-bat, and nine strikes. That means that Balboni fouled off at least 6 balls in a row (my mom described it as 17, which unfortunately can be struck as exaggeration from the B-R box score) before blasting a home run into the seats.

Sometimes, it takes a player’s skill or one magical postseason moment for him to live on in a fan’s mind. In this case, it was simply one heroic at-bat in a game between two bad teams in a Milwaukee summer. For that, Steve Balboni, we (specifically, my mom) thank you. And happy (belated) birthday, Steve.

For a generation of Toronto Blue Jays and Canadian baseball fans, it is the home run. The home run that forever changed Toronto’s baseball destiny. The home run that represents, perhaps defines, one’s fandom. And I’m not talking about Joe Carter’s 1993 World Series-winning walk-off.

What made Roberto Alomar’s call to Cooperstown this week so enjoyable for me was the reliving of past glories. Up here, they’re all we’ve got.

I was 10-years-old when Alomar sent a 9th inning 2-2 Dennis Eckersley pitch into right field for a two-run home run, to tie game four of the 1992 ALCS between Oakland and Toronto at six apiece, completing a rather miraculous 6-1 Blue Jays comeback. I don’t remember watching Toronto take an early 1-0 lead on a John Olerud home run, or watching Jack Morris get tagged for five runs in the Oakland half of the third, but for some reason, I remember Alomar’s home run. Vividly.

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