youtu.be/wbL2lMn34… “Oh Sheila” - Ready For The World I’m sticking with this 1985 thing for another week. A week after hitting #1, this was #4 this week in October 1985. There’s a lot to discuss. Prince’s influence is all over this. So much so that even now people think he wrote the song.[1] While the band wrote it themselves, it sure sounds like something Prince would have cranked out and passed on to one protege or another.
Twenty-four hours can make a huge difference in the mood of a sports fan. Wednesday morning I think most of us Royals were down. Not because the Royals dropped game one to the Giants. I bet a lot of us figured it would be a tough task to beat Madison Bumgarner. But James Shields getting rocked early wasn’t in the plan. The Royals returning to their early July flailing at everything mode of offense wasn’t in the plan.
Well, here we go. The series that was never supposed to happen is about to begin. The Royals will play for the World Series championship over the next four-to-seven games. Wildest dreams, Cinderella story, “…tears in his eyes, I guess…”, etc., etc. I’ve read a couple posts already this morning that spoke of how surreal this is. Even after a week of rehashing how they got here, it’s still hard to believe that any of this has happened, and is continuing to happen.
As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been a little off my game the last couple weeks. This crazy Royals run has messed with my internal rhythms. Not that I’m complaining. But this past week I’d say three-quarters of the stuff I read was about them and their run. So not much to choose from. Of all the “The Royals Made the World Series” columns and articles I read, it should be no surprise that Joe Posnanski offered one of the best, and most touching.
youtu.be/djV11Xbc9… “Take On Me” - a-ha One of the most memorable videos ever, no? Also the song that was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts exactly 29 years ago. You know, the last time the Royals were in the World Series.
Once again, I’m at a loss. How did any of this happen? How did they go from losing four straight after the All-Star break, falling to 48–50, to this? How did they go from reasonable people screaming that they should be trading James Shields at the trading deadline to this? How does a manager who is routinely, almost daily, mocked for his in-game decisions push the right button over and over again once the playoffs began?
One last (brief) boat ride for the year. Which was preceded by one last boating adventure for the year. Saturday we planned on getting the boat out of the water for the year. We actually went down Friday night so we could get an early start and have everything wrapped up before I covered a sectional soccer game in the afternoon. Bright and early we got up, got the trailer hooked up, the girls in life jackets, and headed down for the quick jaunt over to the marina.
Some late evening links while watching the NLCS. Much lower stress than watching the ALCS, that’s for sure! While we’re on the subject, Joe Posnanski used the classic Royals and Orioles teams of the 1970s as a jumping off point for this fine piece. Going all the way back to 1977 Let’s switch from one of the greatest sports writers of the current age to a profile of one of the greatest beat writers in the history of modern sports.
youtu.be/Naf5uJYGo… “Hey Ladies” - Beastie Boys Free. James. Brown. Twenty-five years ago the Beasties blew everyone’s minds with the follow-up to Licensed To Ill, the legendary Paul’s Boutique. I’ve always been proud to say I loved it and embraced it from day one. That’s not to say I completely understood it, but neither did I dismiss it like so many people who wanted more of the frat boy nonsense that made up Ill.
Unloading some things I’ve scribbled down in the notebook over the last few weeks. I’ve always wondered why there are so many hand-made signs selling mattresses at most major intersections. This isn’t just an Indiana thing, is it? I know mattresses cost a bundle, but a mattress is at the top of the list of things I would never buy based on an ad posted to a utility pole.
Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon - Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido As you know, if you follow along with these posts faithfully, I like to give graphic novels a try a couple times each year. In this case, I went with the trade paperback of a comic series I’ve heard praised in many places. Hawkeye was supposed to be the comic book for people who don’t read comic books.
Lost in the rush of the weekend and baseball is the obligatory birthday post for L., who turned six on Friday. She had a nice birthday. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence or if the teacher rigged the drawing[1] but she was also the star student in class last week, which meant it was all about her all week and she got to bring treats in on Friday.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t happen. The team that wasted opportunities, that was full of guys who failed to fulfill their potential, that maddeningly clung to out-dated ways of playing the game, that team was not supposed to do this. Maybe win a game, perhaps two, sure. But not sweep out the Best Team In Baseball. Not by winning two-straight in Anaheim, both on the strength of outstanding pitching, fine defense, and extra inning home runs from the two guys who most symbolized the recent failures of the Royals, Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer[1].
I did not forget about sharing some links for the week. I found this site, Emergent, which is kind of a Snopes or Urban Legends for news events. It looks at news stories that have been reported around the Internet and shows whether the claims have been verified or not. A useful site since I think we all see a headline or repost of something several times each week that later turns out to be not true.
youtu.be/nCBASt507… “Run To You” - Bryan Adams I was thinking about the music I was listening to back in the fall of 1985, the last time the Royals were in the playoffs. I know most days that fall the first thing I did after getting home from school was put on the Miami Vice soundtrack. I was listening to a lot of Tears for Fears, too. This song came a bit later in the fall, as winter approached.
Man, where to begin? How do you write about a game like that? Do you write about all the ups and downs, all the twists and turns, the nearly five hours of mood swings first? Or do you try to put it into context, attempting to compare it to other games over the years, across different sports, to figure out where it stands in your personal pantheon of greatest games ever?
We’ve been waiting on this day since October 28, 1985, the day after the last Kansas City Royals post-season game. On that morning, I went off to school, two months into my freshman year of high school. There was a buzz in the air from the Royals winning the World Series the night before. We were putting the final touches on packing up the duplex my mom and I had lived in for five years, along with all of my step-dad’s items he had moved in over the summer, preparing to move into a brand new house the following weekend.
Twenty years ago I developed a theory about sports. This theory stated that sports teams, or the coaches and administrators that lead them, can sell their souls to the devil in exchange for short-term success. I came up with this theory after Missouri went 14-0 in Big 8 play in 1994. While they had some fine talent, Melvin Booker and Jevon Crudup most notably, no one expected them to run away with the conference title that year.
First up, an important announcement. This Saturday NBC will begin showing old Saturday Night Lives at 10:00 PM Eastern, 90 minutes before the regular broadcast. This week’s episode will be the legendary show when Richard Pryor hosted in 1975. The episodes will be edited down to fit the one-hour time block before your late local news. It will be fascinating to see if and how NBC edits some of the skits from these old shows.
youtu.be/b0DTBOQOd… “Duel” - Swervedriver I spent 30 minutes or so yesterday watching a bunch of bad videos from the early-to-mid 1990s. And I mean bad in every way. They were poorly produced in their original form and had been uploaded to Youtube in terrible quality. Good songs, horrible videos. This popped up as I was working through that list. Fortunately it’s not of terrible quality, because this is one of the great semi-lost tracks of the decade.
It goes back to 1978, I believe. Football was the first sport I discovered, but baseball followed soon after. We lived in southeast Missouri at the time, in the heart of Cardinals country. But on a trip to Kansas City that summer, my uncles and the boyfriend of one of my cousins introduced me to the Royals. I still remember repeating the name “George Brett” over-and-over to myself so I wouldn’t forget it after the boyfriend explained to me that Brett was not only the Royals best player, but one of the best players in all of baseball.
My favorite dumb sports controversy of the weekend was Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder whining about Auburn allegedly stealing K-State’s offensive signals during their game on Thursday. What an ass. (K-State fans, please note, I think any coach in any sport whining about their opponent stealing signs is stupid. If it was Charlie Weis I would be writing the same thing. Then again, I think most of what Charlie Weis says is stupid, so that might be a bad example.
Our girls have a stupid new game that is driving us crazy. It all began back in late July, early August. We went to the mall one Sunday to try on new shoes for the school year. With all the local schools set to begin, the mall was packed. I spent most of the time making sure our girls stayed together, didn’t get in anyone’s way, and were ready to try shoes on when the harried salespeople brought their stack of options out.
A bevy of links this week. Rolling Stone gets it wrong a lot. But it’s good to see that there are enough Gen Xers on the staff these days to proclaim 1984 as the best year for pop music ever. Have fun reading through their top 100 singles for the year. Man, was Prince on fire back then. 100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year While on the topic of music, Matt Gemmell writes about all kinds of topics, but mostly technology related issues.
youtu.be/5stvvnDbC… “Public Enemy No. 1” - Public Enemy Holy crap! Always the best live act in hip hop, Public Enemy can still throw down nearly thirty years after releasing their first album. As I watched this, especially the closing moments when Jimmy Fallon comes on stage, I thought back to where the music and TV worlds were when Yo! Bum Rush The Show came out in 1987. Public Enemy was not, nor was any other hip hop act, getting invited onto The Tonight Show.
And now for some girls sporting notes. M. ended her kickball season last night. Her team got another big win (45-11 after trailing 9-4 to begin the second inning) to end their season at 6-1. Unfortunately, that was not enough to make the championship tournament. Only the four division winners go into the tournament. And their one loss came to a team that went 7-0. That single loss was a bummer.
Mannnn do I have a fun story to share. I just hope I can do it justice. To set things up, I’m two-thirds of the way through a three-week run with our 3A school, IC, who is currently 4-0 and ranked #7 in the state. Two weeks ago I had them against last year’s runners-up from class A, and IC manhandled them by 30 points. Last week, against an 0-3 team, IC won by nearly 50.
I have a whole mess of sports thoughts piled up, so let’s kick it off by running through probably the craziest 10-15 minutes of sports I’ve lived through in awhile. Last night I had to multitask for my sports. I had the Colts-Eagles game on TV. And because the Royals were playing the White Sox, which are blacked out in Indy, I had MLB Gameday on my laptop with the game also on my phone so I could punch up the audio any time the game got interesting.
Not as many things to share this week. Who do you think the greatest American athlete of the current age is? LeBron? Peyton? Tiger, before his fall? Ian Crouch argues it’s the perpetually underrated and unfairly maligned Serena Williams. I’m not sure I agree, but I’ve always liked Serena and I think she’s in the conversation. For fifteen years, over two generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly uncherished national treasure.
youtu.be/gZi-dw03f… “Alex Chilton” - The Replacements Nearly 30 years after being banned from NBC for their notorious drunken performance on Saturday Night Live, The Replacements returned this week and performed on The Tonight Show. Sure, it’s only two of the original members. And they’re clean and sober and that sense of danger that was key to their early performances is gone. But it’s still a great song. And, in case you don’t know who Paul Westerberg is singing about, one of the finest power pop songs ever, written and sung by the late Alex Chilton.