Archive for TLDR

So this is how it ends. Will McDonald (now ExRoyalsReview on Twitter), longtime mainstay of Royals Review, has decided to call it a day after eight years of blogging about the Royals. During that time, Royals Review grew from just some guy’s blog to a team site on the fledgling SB Nation network to perhaps the most popular Royals blog around.

With the management formerly of Royals Authority taking the helm, things should be in good hands. Still, it is hard for many of us to imagine following the Royals without the incentive of knowing the referents for Will’s next brilliantly-written combination of anger and comedy. How will we get through the season without more Royals Bibliomancy or Mitch Maier’s Letters Home From Baseball Camp, or expressions of irritation over Royals prospect Wil Myers spelling his first name incorrectly.

Will has been a huge inspiration. Don’t hold it against him, but, while I never “worked” at Royals Review, I probably would not be blogging today if it were not for reading Will’s stuff. Will’s posts garnered attention far beyond Royals fandom — I think the first “big break” his blog received was when Keith Law linked to it in one of his ESPN chats. I cannot summarize Will’s work, but that is the nature of all good art. So as a tribute to Will (or “Freneau,” a moniker he adopted in recent times in tribute to a poet from the era of the Revolutionary War) and as a public service, I will briefly go through just a few of McDonald’s best moments of the last few years.

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The author, in his capacity as a member of this country’s Leisured Poor, recently made a journey to the Duck Pond at Warner Park in Madison, Wisconsin — baseballing home of the Madison Mallards of the summer college wood-bat Northwoods League. This is something I’ve done before — both with the internet’s Common Man and also the internet’s Jackie Moore — however, in the present work, I’d like to address, specifically, what a Mallards game reveals about the ideal ballpark experience.

There is, of course, reason for me to delude myself into the opinion that a Mallards game represents something close to the ideal ballpark experience. Both (a) living in Madison and (b) having no car, my options for live baseball are limited. The Brewers are about 75 or 80 miles to the east; the Beloit Snappers (Low-A affiliate of the Twins), about 50-55 miles south. As such, the Mallards represent my only real opportunity for live baseball.

Even so, games at Warner Park satisfy the criteria that I (and I’m guessing many fans) consider when evaluating the quality of live baseball as entertainment — have, perhaps, helped me to understand what those criteria are, in the first place.

Criteria like these:

Proximity — As in, how far the stadium/park is from my house, in minutes. And also how easy it is to park or commute via public transit, too.

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It is, I believe, uncontroversial to suggest that the object for a base-and-ball pitcher is to prevent runs. It is slightly more — but still not very — controversial to suggest that, per DIPS theory, the best way for a pitcher to prevent runs is to record strikeouts while avoiding walks and home runs.

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My greatest acquisition from this past weekend’s trip (alongside the internet’s Common Man) to TwinsFest in Minneapolis was not, if you can believe it, the baseball which now bears the authographs of (both!) Chris Herrmann and Alex Wimmers, nor the memory of a brief, but spirited, exchange with the very bad J.R. Richard. Rather, it was an introduction to the oddity that is the 2010 edition of Upper Deck baseball cards.

Apart from the autograph stations, the main attraction of TwinsFest is the copious amounts of baseball-related memorabilia being sold by the only slightly less copious number of baseball-memorabilia vendors. The Common Man has already documented his inability to restrain himself wherein the coveting of baseball cards is concerned. For the present author, however, the event represented the first time I’d thought of baseball cards at any length since probably 1992.

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“Oh how those Nipponese love their baseball!”

– James Sakamoto of the Seattle Japanese-American Courier

Yesterday I, along with Carson Cistulli and The Common Man, attended the second annual Bud Selig Distinguished Lecture in Sport and Society. This year’s presentation was titled “One Base at a Time: Baseball and the Nikkei People,” a lecture presented by Samuel O. Regolado (nephew of Rudy) of California State University-Stanislaus.

The lecture series has been designed and supported with the intent of going beyond the men and teams who comprise sports but to examine the communities behind the sports. In many ways, the games we watch and play are a reflection of us as a people (maybe it is, in fact, just society). Specifically, Regolado’s lecture looks at how baseball was a key component of the communities of the first generations of Japanese immigrants in America used baseball as part of their assimilation into American culture.

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“That the abyss is bottomless is the bad news. The good news is, it must also be topless!”
-David James Duncan, The Brothers K

I learned to enjoy feeling sorry for myself just after I hit puberty. Whenever my dad would yell at me or one of my friends would do something mean, I’d wail and storm and taste my tears and love every second of it. I remember seeing Claire Danes cry and that, of all things I could possibly envy, was what I aspired to most: to cry that hard, to mean it that much. It got worse as I got a little older and met girls with eating disorders or who took anti-depressants. Illogically, but earnestly, I put them all on tall pedestals. I read books like Girl, Interrupted and Prozac Nation, The Bell Jar and The Virgin Suicides. I tried making myself throw up a few times. I listened to sad songs exclusively, once making a tape for myself to fall asleep to that consisted only of Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” over an over again on both sides. (Yikes.) A lot of this weirdness wore off as I grew up. Most importantly, I stopped romanticizing mental illness. But I still love crying, and sad songs, and I think more than a little bit of that self-victimizing sap inside of me has remained. Which explains a lot about why I like baseball so much more than I like any other sports. Baseball is basically a giant stage for failure, disappointment, and sadness. And that’s exactly what makes it so goddamn beautiful.

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The headline from The Associated Press reads: “No fan rally planned for Texas Rangers this year.” Last October, the Rangers were lovable losers. This October, they’re heartbreakers; failures. Now I’m no Texas supporter, but I can’t help but feel for the Rangers. What a way to lose. I’d prefer it if there was another fan rally.

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When I think about the end of baseball season, I think about the soul-crushing Canadian winter: I know it’s coming, there’s nothing I can do to delay the inevitable, it gets worse every year, and there’s no way I can possibly prepare myself; it is utterly depressing. It’s a long season, no doubt, and now there’s only one game left. Where does the time go?

Below, 27 of my inner-most thoughts on baseball — game six, the World Series, and more — as we prepare to say goodbye …

1. About last night: That was some silly, silly shit. I can’t really describe it any other way. It didn’t make sense. The comedy of errors, on the field and in the dugouts; the home runs and the lead changes; the many final at-bats of Albert Pujols’ Cardinals career; Mike Napoli’s ankle; Nelson Cruz in right field; Matt Holliday’s wrist; God telling Josh Hamilton he was about to hit a home run. I mean, I like to think of God as being a pretty busy cat, but even he was enthralled by last night’s baseball game. And can you blame him? It had it all.

2. I don’t think I can call what I watched last night simply a “baseball game.” That doesn’t do it justice. It was so much more. It was theater. I almost felt underdressed, watching the 10th inning on television at home.

3. I saw a billion similar tweets as the drama unfolded: “If you’re not a fan of baseball after this …” and “If anyone ever tells you baseball is boring …” etc., etc. Look, nothing’s changed: Some people are morons. They think baseball’s boring. They don’t appreciate the game. We don’t need them. To hell with ’em.

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Not suitable for work — or so says “society.”

I’ll begin this piece by directing the reader’s attention — if he hasn’t directed it there yet himself — to Ryan Campbell’s two-part interview with Oakland right-hander and 2011 AL FIP leader Brandon McCarthy from Friday. While there are a number of things to enjoy about the McCarthy-Campbell piece, the most notable for our purposes is McCarthy’s sense of self-awareness and his capacity both for understanding and articulating what it is that makes him successful (and, conversely, what has caused him to fail in the past).

While McCarthy’s voice is an entirely welcome one in these pages, he — and the interview in which he participates — are exceptional specifically because this sort of self-awareness and -understanding appear to be rare in baseball.

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Situated in the farthest reaches of Angels Stadium on July 9th, as part of this summer’s SABR fesitivites, a number of things occurred to me: this hot dog, with all this mustard on it, is delicious; this beer, with all this beer in it, is delicious; Mike Trout is secretly asking me to be his friend from right field or, like, a mentor-type person.

One thing that didn’t occur to me is where either of the teams playing — i.e. the Angels and Mariners — where either of them stood in the AL West or Wild Card standings.

The peculiar thing about this is that, a mere two-plus months later, the season was/is over — and, in the case of Seattle, has been over for some time. In the meantime, playoff races have materialized, have dissolved, have re-emerged in unlikely places, and have come to what can only be referred to as a “glorious, pulsating climax.”

Again, all in fewer than three months.

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