leokitty posted:

This is a really wonderful profile piece about a kid from South Africa who plays baseball you should all read.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

There are so many good lines in that piece but my absolute favorite is


I love the humor of (mostly Yankees) juxtaposed with the classical analogy. It makes me smile every time.

quote:

The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance; it has been a marriage, composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories.

seiferguy posted:

Citoball isn't swinging at pitches as hard as you possibly can and take no pitches, it's Cito Gastion in a back room injecting steroids into his players' rear end. The gig is up, which is why he's retiring at the end of the season.

Fag Boy Jim posted:

please rename the Cy Young award the "Pedro Martinez' 2000 Season Award"

Crazy Ted posted:

College newspapers are absolutely wonderful places to go for horrible, godawful journalism.

leokitty posted:

I just read a post on Fangraphs that is "Mariano Rivera is a good pitcher because he does whatever he wants with his pitches" (not as true for the two seamer but you get my point). I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by the color maps but it contains zero new info.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/riveras-cutters-working-the-count/

e: There's a chance I'm also tired of seeing 7,000 articles about Mariano. It's like everyone's backup. Hey, let's put up something about how Mariano is a freak

Copernic posted:

Deathlove posted:

Ryan loving Theriot. Thank God they got Blake DeW-AW gently caress.

FairGame posted:

This is older (1991) than a bunch of people in this thread, but I just learned of its existence today. 1991 doesn't seem like that long ago, but goddamn is it kind of creepy.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/14/sports/sports-of-the-times-sorry-but-magic-isn-t-a-hero.html

quote:

If one definition of "hero" is model or ideal, as Webster's Third New International Dictionary attests, Magic Johnson is hardly a model or ideal to anyone with a sense of sexual morality.

Crazy Ted posted:

Tim Keown: STEP ON UP!

quote:

And then he sees Kobe shooting an assault weapon on TV, along with Jimmy Kimmel and those other "ordinary" people, including an overweight girl wearing glasses and a revenge-is-mine smile as she fires into a building. (She's apparently in the throes of a self-esteem bump, but it doesn't take much of a leap to see her as a geek settling things with a gun.)

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

http://www.murraychass.com/?p=2621

yeah that happened

quote:

At the beginning of the 2004 season, a buddy and I engaged in a debate about whether Jeff Bagwell used steroids. While initially not convinced that Bagwell used steroids, circumstantial evidence points not only to the conclusion that Bagwell used steroids, but also to the conclusion that he stands at the center of the baseball world as the steroid ring leader, the root of all steroid usage in the league. In fact, all major league steroid use can be traced directly to the Houston Astros first baseman.

Unbeknownst to the general baseball public, steroid use began in earnest with the 1992 Astros. Up to that point in his career, Bagwell had not yet developed his power-stoke, and in 1992 he set out to do something about it. Bagwell began pumping iron maniacally, and juicing up, and the difference quickly became evident. Bagwell's teammates were immediately impressed with his increase in size and production and demanded that he share the wealth.

Tender Bender posted:

Also how is the pop-up an embarrassing moment for A-Rod, did they intend to put that in an "A-Rod's most ownage moments" slideshow?

LARGE THE HEAD posted:

So, who has read ESPN's Fiction Issue? What do you all think about it?

I can't be too hard on a company that bills itself as Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, but it's pretty fascinating stuff so far. Miguel Batista's short-fiction piece was a clever story and an interesting read.

chutwig posted:

I am really enjoying some of the comments on this page in which people attempt to come up with new Murray Chass blog headlines:

SANDY KOUFAX- YOU COULD HAVE PITCHED ON YOM KIPPUR IF YOU HADN'T SINNED SO MUCH
MARGE SCHOTT WAS GOOD IN THE BEGINNING, BUT SHE DID NOT GO FAR ENOUGH
KIRK GIBSON- THE SLOWEST HOME RUN TROT I'VE EVER SEEN

stuart scott irl posted:

how long am I allowed to keep posting these because lol


SILENT CAL, A NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO YOU

I don’t remember ever learning anything about Calvin Coolidge when I was in school, other than the fact that he was called Silent Cal, because he never said much.
Recently, I’ve come across some of his famous quotes and I now plan to find a good Calvin Coolidge biography to read.
One of my favorites is: “Any man who does not like dogs and does not want them about, does not deserve to live in the White House.”
I’m a big time dog lover and couldn’t agree more with that. I think you could do a good job of weeding out the bad presidents by finding the ones who didn’t get dogs until they were in the White House and realized it was the smart thing to do politically.
Here are some more quotes from Calvin Coolidge that make me think that we need a guy who thinks like him in the White House today.

Tom Van Riper posted:

Move the Dodgers Back to Brooklyn
Apr. 21 2011 - 6:07 pm | 1,268 views | 0 recommendations | 3 comments
By TOM VAN RIPER
Dodgers Uniform Script

Image via Wikipedia

How fitting that the Los Angeles Dodgers are wearing throwback uniforms for today’s home matinee against the Atlanta Braves. Throwbacks that include a “B” on the blue cap instead of the “LA” that all but the crankiest old Brooklyn fans have grow accustomed to.

Hopefully Bud Selig was watching, because the obvious solution to his Dodgers-Mets problem was right there on his television screen. Really, it’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook: move the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, and dissolve the Mets. Yeah, we know, as much as Angels owner Arte Moreno has been trying to make Los Angeles his solo baseball empire, leaving that big T.V. market with just one team won’t do. No problem – the virtually homeless Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays can fight each other tooth and nail to see who gets to move in. That would leave a net contraction of one team, a result that Selig has bandied about before for his over-expanded league.

Mets owner Fred Wilpon, Selig’s pal and a former Brooklyn Dodger fanatic, won’t even mind. His new pad, Citi Field, already pays more homage to the Dodgers than to the Mets. Maybe he can even become a part owner, which he’s shortly to become with the Mets anyway. It’s the move New Yorkers have been waiting and praying for since Walter O’Malley abandoned them for the west coast a couple of generations ago.

Vilified as O’Malley was back east, you really couldn’t blame him. In 1957, America was on the move. Brooklyn was the past, L.A. was the future. With his fans moving to the suburbs, and no deal with New York for a new downtown Brooklyn ballpark by Atlantic Terminal train station, what was left for O’Malley at Ebbets Field, that beloved but creaky old ballyard tucked far into Brooklyn’s crumbling residential streets? Especially when sunshine, rich land and plenty of parking awaited him off the freeway at Chavez Ravine?

But those who remind us that what goes around comes around are right. Fifty-four years after the Dodgers headed west, the cities’ rolls have reversed. Los Angeles, with its smog, bum economy, suffocating state debt and off the charts traffic, is the past. Brooklyn, with its hipsters, gentrification, revitalized brownstone neighborhoods, reformed Coney Island waterfront and soon-to-open Barclay’s Center, is the future. When the New Jersey Nets finally move in, fans are going to see the NBA in Brooklyn as the coolest thing that’s ever happened in sports.

The only thing that could be better? The prodigal son Dodgers return. That’s the sports story of the century, maybe of all time. A retro style, nouveau Ebbets Field right alongside the Barclay’s Center, completing the transformation of a depressing area into a sports nirvana. Make no mistake, fans would flock there every night. It beats Citi Field, a soulless building that’s as close to a dump as a new park can get (really, you get the feeling that the Mets looked around at the new-old style parks in Philadelphia, Colorado and elsewhere and decided, “ok, we’ll build one of those, too, just not as nice.”)

Then there are the cable riches of New York and the limitless marketing opportunities behind one of best nostalgic acts of all time. As long as the new owners go easy on the borrowing and steer clear of any Bernie Madoff types, the franchise would flourish. Note to the Dodgers: Fifty-four years is a nice run in the sun. But L.A.is looking a bit worn these days, and so are you. The town may be an upgrade for the Rays or A’s, but you’re the Dodgers. Time to thank the Mets for holding down the fort, and go home.