D's Notebook

Month: April 2014 (Page 2 of 2)

The Young Phenom

April 10, 2014 /

Tuesday night I did something I haven’t done in years. I took out a baseball scorebook I had stashed away1 and kept score for a game I watched on TV.

I keep score a few times a year for baseball and softball games that I’m covering for the paper. But I can’t recall the last time I decided to keep score for a game I was watching from home.

It’s one thing to do it when I need all the details for a story and box score that I will submit to be published with my name attached. The quicker pace of high school games makes that process easier as well.

It’s another thing, though, to tackle a 2.5 — 3 hour Major League game when you have the distractions of kids, other channels, checking Twitter, and maybe playing a quick round of an iOS game between innings.2

I thought Tuesday was a good night, though, because it was Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura’s first start of the year. Something about him reminds me of when Dwight Gooden first came up to the Mets in 1984. For the next 3-4 seasons, when Dr. K was pitching, it was must-see TV. Although this wasn’t Ventura’s first big league start – he started three games last September – this felt like a good night to document what happened to hold on to and look back upon years down the road.

Who knows how his career will go. Maybe he’ll be amazing, like Gooden, for a short span then burn out. Maybe he’ll have a long, solid career but never be the absolute ace some expect him to be. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll match those Pedro Martinez comparisons and be the dominant pitcher in the game for a long stretch.

It ended up being a fine night to keep score. Ventura was amazing. He made Wil Myers look foolish three times. He completely froze Evan Longoria, one of the best hitters in the game, on a called third strike. And he kept Tampa Bay in check all night. His only flaw was racking up too many pitches, limiting himself to only six innings, giving up just two hits and striking out six.

Tampa’s Chris Archer was nearly as good, though. The 25-year-old went seven innings, working around six hits and two walks and getting out of two bases-loaded jams.

The Rays bullpen escaped another bases-loaded threat by the Royals in the 8th and then scraped a run out in the ninth to win 1-0.

Perhaps, ten years from now, I’ll pull out the scorebook and look back on the night that two of the best pitchers in the game went up against each other on an early-April night when both of them were just beginning to discover how great their talents were.

  1. A fine little piece of work from Eephus League that I backed on Kickstarter a few years back. ↩
  2. Mostly self-imposed distractions, I admit. ↩

Beisbòl

April 8, 2014 /

A bit behind thanks to our travels and visitors last week. But I have to offer up some MLB predictions.

First, though, I must link to this fine story about the 25th anniversary of Major League. It arrived during that brief glut of baseball movies in the late 1980s.1 You can argue it is the best. I’m more of a Bull Durham guy, but Major League isn’t far behind.

I did not know this:

  1. THE ENDING WE KNOW ISN’T THE ORIGINAL ENDING
    There’s an alternate ending to “Major League” that was actually the film’s original ending, but it tested so poorly, Ward re-wrote it. In the original ending, cheapskate owner Rachel Phelps reveals that she never wanted to move the team to Miami. She actually believed in the team and was playing the villain role to help them rally together. After spending the whole movie hating her, viewers weren’t ready for that swerve. This ending was included in a 2007 DVD re-release of the film, so some people may know the story.

‘Major League’ turns 25 — here are 15 things you didn’t know about the movie

OK, predictions. As always, half-assed and quarter-considered.

American League

East: Tampa

Central: Detroit

West: Anaheim

Wild Cards: Texas, Oakland

Playoffs:

  • Oakland over Texas
  • Tampa over Oakland
  • Detroit over Anaheim
  • Detroit over Tampa

National League

East: Washington

Central: St. Louis

West: Los Angeles

Wild Cards: San Francisco, Atlanta

Playoffs:

  • San Francisco over Atlanta
  • St. Louis over San Francisco
  • Washington over Los Angeles
  • St. Louis over Washington

World Series

St. Louis over Detroit. Yawn.

Kansas City wins 83 games and falls just short of making the playoffs.

  1. Others were Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and Eight Men Out. ↩

Dilemmas

April 7, 2014 /

What a crappy night, at least for people who share my rooting interests.

On the one hand you have Kentucky, aiming for their ninth national championship with a team full of precocious freshmen who have suddenly found an extra couple of gears in March. Great story on many levels. But John Calipari is, arguably, the most reviled coach in the college game. Will all the hype his freshman class got before the season – remember that 40-0 talk? – we’ll never hear the end of it if they pull this off. And he just did the same thing two years ago. There’s no way I can pull for Kentucky.

Then you have UConn. For the second time in four years an unspectacular Huskies team has made a run to the title game on the strength of an unstoppable guard and a supporting cast that does just enough to win. For some, a UConn win will be a story of redemption after the school was banned from the tournament for a year because its recent academic performance. I guess the year off didn’t really hurt them, did it?

The bigger deal for me is UConn winning their fourth title, jumping past KU on the total NCAA titles list.1 That sting will be extra strong knowing UConn’s third title came in 2011, the year when KU had a golden path to the title game and tripped on VCU in the Elite Eight. We can complain about the UTEPs and Rhode Islands and Bradleys and Bucknells and even Northern Iowas. But that VCU loss was the worst ever KU tournament loss.

I don’t think I can root for UConn either.

Looks like I’m watching baseball tonight. It damned well better not be raining in Kansas City…

  1. KU, of course, claims two titles from before the NCAA era. Which I’m down with. But I also understand that is a list no official media outlet uses. ↩

March Books

April 6, 2014 /

The Secret History – Donna Tartt
I know Tartt is one of the hot American novelists of the moment, with her novel The Goldfinch getting a lot of acclaim last year. I believe this, her debut, came on the qualified recommendation of Brother in Books, Dave V. He had a mixed view of the book, but suggested I begin with it if I was going to read Tartt’s other stuff.

It’s a frustrating book. I use that description because it is a story where there are no characters worth rooting for. It takes place in a small liberal arts college in Vermont, sometime in the late 80s/early 90s. While the main character/narrator, Richard, comes from humble origins, most of his classmates are spoiled rich kids who drive BMWs, own vacation homes, jet off to Europe, and go through booze like mad men (and women). Although Richard barely has money to buy new clothes, he always manages to find his way into whisky and cocaine.

He gets pulled into a new circle of friends, and things quickly get complicated. Crazy complicated. Here’s my other frustration: I just didn’t buy how things progressed. I couldn’t decide if it was silly or lazy, but the lack of logic bothered me.

I’ll probably get to The Goldfinch at some point, but I’m not terribly eager to after reading this.

Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s – Jeff Pearlman
Pearlman has written about the 1990s Dallas Cowboys, the mid-1980s New York Mets, and Walter Payton. The Showtime era Los Angeles Lakers seem like the perfect next subject for him to tackle.

Everything about this book is what you would expect. There were plenty of internal dramas in the years between the drafting of Magic Johnson and his first retirement in 1991, when he tested HIV positive. Some were about ego and role (Magic vs. Norm Nixon, Magic vs. coach Paul Westhead, the team against Pat Riley towards the end of his time as coach), others about personality (Kareem Abdul Jabaar against the entire world), and some about drugs (Spender Haywood being the biggest example).

The book is presented as an insider look at all the drama and debauchery that came with being the franchise that helped to recast the NBA in the early 80s, playing in a city where image and beauty were paramount. And while I’ve never read any books about the Lakers before, nothing in here really surprised me. So there’s nothing terribly original here. It’s more a collection of everything we already knew, or assumed, collected into one volume.

It’s not terrible. It’s fun and entertaining. But it’s also not going to sit in the pantheon of great books about legendary sports franchises.

The Circle – Dave Eggers
A fantastic concept: A new employee at The Circle, a thinly disguised fictional rendering of Google, gets sucked into the world of hyper-social media, where every aspect of your life is shared, everything voted on, everything seen as a tool for monetization. As she grows her career, and her ideas get adopted, The Circle expands its reach and eventually begins to take over basic functions of society traditionally left to government.

There’s lots to work with there, right? The erosion of personal privacy rights, not just because of corporate or government infringement, but because we willingly give them away to be a part of the latest, coolest social technology platform. The sacrifices we make in order to make our lives “easier” and “richer” thanks to technology. The cult-like adherence to corporate philosophies demanded by some employers. The insistence that everyone join the vanguard as we march into the future.

Throw all that at Eggers, one of the best writers of our generation, and it should be gold.

I’m not sure his heart was in it, though. Or perhaps he rushed through the book. It feels incredibly clumsy at times, not the carefully considered work I expected from him. Although it checks in at nearly 500 pages, it seems like he skips through important developments far too quickly. And, worse, many parts were telegraphed in advance. Each turn in plot that should surprise fails to have an impact because it seemed obvious.

There are some points to ponder in here. But this should have been so much better.

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who – David M. Ewalt
One of those books on the New Release shelf that called my name as I strode past. Ewalt, an editor for Forbes magazine, looks at the development of the role playing game industry, focusing specifically on Dungeons & Dragons. Interesting, light hearted, and perfectly toned. It made me want to find some dice and roll up a few characters.

 

A Quick Trip Recap

April 2, 2014 /

A whirlwind of a weekend.

Leave Indy early Saturday, just ahead of a quick burst of snow, heading west through rain and dreary skies. Our traditional lunch stop at the St. Louis Bread Company in Maryland Heights. Into sun and warmth in western Missouri. Finally arriving at our home base for the weekend in Overland Park.

That evening, dinner with friends from S.’s days as a resident. Minsky’s pizza and Boulevard beer.

Sunday morning, an early trip to Legoland in Crown Center. We were a little frustrated by the ticket purchasing and entry process, which takes way too long. But once inside, the girls loved it. I thought the area where many of the architectural landmarks of Kansas City are recreated using Lego was fantastic.

I tried to push a couple of my favorite spots for lunch, but the girls weren’t having it. So, much to my chagrin, we ate at Kona Grill. I say chagrin not because Kona isn’t good; it’s perfectly fine. But we have one about 10 minutes from our house. We can go there any time. The saving grace was it was a gorgeous day so we were able to eat outside. Followed that with a quick stroll around the Plaza and swings by S.’s and my old apartments. Sadly M. remembered that there had been an explosion not too far from S.’s old place so we had to point out the remains of the late J.J.’s as we drove by.

Next, our friends the Belfords were kind enough to host the big get-together of the weekend. We saw lots of good people there. The catching-up is always far too brief, but I’m grateful we get the chance to do it. It was fun watching the 50 or 60 kids that were running around.

All three girls were pretty quick to find kids to pal around with. But M. was especially funny to watch. See was super excited to see her old friends Caroline and Mia. Then throw new friend Liza, who she had met before but not spent much time with, and suddenly there was a flock of 7-9 year old girls acting like they were the oldest of friends.

Everyone was worn out as we headed back to the hotel, but we needed some food. Fortunately, there was a D’Bronx right around the corner. First time I’ve had a hot Wild Bill in six or seven years. And it was taaaaasty.

Monday, lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s. As much as I wanted to go with one of my usuals, it was a burnt end day, and I had never sampled their burnt ends before. So I got the platter. They were awfully damn good.

We did some light shopping afterward. Well, light at first. The girls got new outfits at the Gap since it was warmer than we expected and we hadn’t brought clothes for the heat. Dad got another KU shirt for his collection.

I also made a rather controversial choice for my hat for the spring. I bought a plain Royals hat. I honestly don’t remember the last time I had a (replica) hat like the team wears. I’ve had a whole swath of KC Monarchs hats. I’ve had a couple “fashion” Royals hats in non-traditional colors. But it seriously may have been since high school, or even middle school, since I had the royal blue cap with the white KC on the front.

The Royals promptly blew a two-run lead and lost their season opener 4-3. Blame the cap.

Then it was over to Oak Park Mall, where the shopping got serious at the American Girl Doll store. We didn’t plan on going, so the girls had not brought their dolls. They still managed to spend some money despite that hurdle. They also rode the two-story carrousel, which they thought was amazing. And I ran into a guy who grew up across the street from me. Which wasn’t awkward at all as he A) recognized me and I did not recognize him, B) he remembered my name, and C) I now realize he’s probably either mildly autistic or has Aspergers or something. It was an odd conversation. At least it wasn’t one of the hundreds of scorned women I left in my wake during my single days! Amirite?!?!

And, finally, Monday night we visited the Nesbitts of Jackson County, or at least a good chunk of them.

We were up before the sun Tuesday, to ensure we didn’t get stuck in rush hour in Indy on the way home. We rolled into the neighborhood after seven-and-a-half hours, a new record with kids in the car.

We are grateful for all our friends who took time to host us and/or spend time with us. These trips don’t happen often enough, nor last long enough. In fact, as I write this on Tuesday night, I’m realizing I only took a few photos all weekend, and those are mostly of the kids in front of things in Legoland.

The girls had a great time. In fact, between the weather – they think every day in Kansas City is sunny and 70 – their friends, and the American Girl doll store, they think it’s the best place ever. C. even said when she grows up she’s going to live there.

And now we’re in the midst of the mad dash to get the house ready for the girls’ four-year-old and two-year-old cousins who are visiting from Denver.

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