Month: November 2014 (Page 2 of 2)

⦿ Friday Links

I failed to share links last week, so I’ll do it the way I originally planned and get caught up on a Friday.


Still a few baseball things to get through. I’ll begin with a tech tip that could have been very useful when the playoffs began. But save it somewhere safe for next year.

Jason Snell explains how to combine the video and crowd noise of the national TV broadcasts with the audio of the local announcing team. It’s pretty great, if you have good local announcers.

How to make TV sports announcers shut up


Will Leitch updated his most tortured baseball fan base list this week. (Kind of) surprisingly, the Royals only fell one spot after their October run.

Most Tortured Fans In Baseball: 2014


Jim Caple took a very interesting look at how playoff shares get divided up by baseball teams. There are some good stories in here.

Money talks: The postseason share


Finally, this is an absolutely stunning article that is both about Greg Maddux, and not about him at all. It’s also about baseball and friendship and addiction and tragedy and survival and guilt and moving on and, really, one thousand other things beyond one of the greatest pitchers to ever heave a sphere.

Ironically, sadly, or perhaps just coincidentally, I was reading it between innings the night that Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras died in a car accident.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Greg Maddux


Moving on, what if Prince and Morrissey sat down and discussed how to handle recording and releasing music in the post-iTunes world? Kenneth Partridge imagines that conversation and how the two 80s icons could help get each other’s mojo back.

What Morrissey and Prince could teach each other about the music business


Rolling Stone has a long interview with Stephen King, something he does not do very often these days. If you’re a fan, it’s a must read.

I liked this passage, which might just make an awful lot of sense.

…we’ve been listening to the stars for 50 years, looking for any signs of life, and there’s been nothing but silence. When you see what’s going on in the world today, and you have all this conflict, and our technological expertise has far outraced our ability to manage our own emotions – you see it right now with ISIS – what’s the solution? The only solution we see with ISIS is to bomb the shit out of those motherfuckers so that they just can’t roll over the world. And that’s what’s scary about that silence – maybe all intelligent races hit this level of violence and technological advances that they can’t get past. And then they just puff out. You hit the wall and that’s it.

Stephen King: The Rolling Stone Interview


Last week word broke that a fragment of Amelia Earhart’s plane was found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. Since then, there has been some questioning of whether the methodology used to identify the part means it actually came from her plane. Still, it’s crazy how people are still looking for her plane, and many of us are still interested, nearly 80 years later.

Amelia Earhart Plane Fragment Identified


Finally, not of interest to everyone, but a Miami Heat NBA preview article focused on my man Mario Chalmers, who just might be the most confident dude to ever play the game. These stories aren’t new, but I always love hearing how he thinks he’s the best player in the game. It makes me laugh every time.

Don’t Blame It On Rio

Friday Vid

http://youtu.be/9SaHXd4RhDs

“Brill Busters” – The New Pornographers
We’re just about a month away from when I’ll begin unveiling my 20 favorite songs of the year. The top ten is pretty locked in. The second ten has some flux in it. And then there’s a third group of 10–15 songs that I’m still debating whether they deserve to slip into the top 20.

This song falls somewhere between 15 and 35 right now. It’s pretty great, but doesn’t really break any new ground for the always excellent New Pornographers.

Crank it up and enjoy.

October Books

A rash of baseball books read between games and even during commercial breaks.

Wild Pitches – Jayson Stark
Stark has been one of ESPN’s baseball ‘insiders’ and columnists for nearly two decades, and had been covering baseball nationally long before that. This is a collection of his favorite columns from his ESPN years. I should have read the back cover and realized that before I checked it out. I thought it would be more a collection of his thoughts on baseball with a few columns sprinkled in. I’m not a huge fan of his writing style, so I didn’t love it.

A Great And Glorious Game – A. Bartlett Giamatti
A must read for any baseball fan, especially his essay on the end of the season, “The Green Fields of the Mind.”

Bob Feller’s Little Black Book of Baseball Wisdom – Bob Feller with Burton Rocks
Another very slim book that seemed perfect for passing time between innings. In brief sections Feller shared memories of his career, his thoughts on pretty much every aspect of the game, and life in general.

It’s a hoot, a term I believe Feller would approve of. Although published in 2001, it feels like it was written in the 1950s when Feller was still playing. Which is both great and terrible. It’s great because it harkens back to that mythical golden age of baseball when every red-blooded American boy dreamed of nothing other than playing in the World Series. It’s terrible because it feels hopelessly dated (Feller insists any woman that has children should stay home, because the best thing you can do for a child is be home when they get home from school).

And his co-writer did not do him many favors in cleaning up the content. A good editor could have been useful. There are so many inane observations and explanations. For example, when writing about Jimmy Foxx, “He died fairly young and his nickname “Double X” was because his last name had two x’s in it.”

Really? I would not have figured out that’s how he got his nickname. And Feller is always “deeply saddened” about the death of every player who came before him, or played with him. At one point he simply throws in a sentence about the daughter of a friend that has no context to the paragraph that surrounds it. Sloppy work.

But then there are the wacky, 1950s-ish sayings that made me laugh out loud. Like this one, for example: “I see a lot of advertisements on how to pick up five or ten miles per hour on a fastball by going to a certain clinic. Not true! It’s a lot of malarkey.”

Malarkey! Love it.

The Guerrilla Factory – Tony Schwalm
Finally, a book that was most assuredly not about baseball. I saw this one on a shelf in the library and it touched on a childhood fascination with the US special forces. Here Schwalm tells his story, from his days as a tank officer in the US Army in the mid–1980s through his efforts to become a Green Beret over the next decade or so. It’s a pretty interesting journey.

What made this book good was that Schwalm was an English major in college. I wouldn’t say it is high literature, but it’s quite well written. And although he has spent his entire adult life in the military and has a great love for the service, his educational background separates him from the average jarhead. He wasn’t just in the Army to blow things up, and was drawn to the Green Berets by the community building efforts they often have to do on the ground. His one deployment as a Green Beret was not behind enemy lines but rather in Haiti in the 1990s as the country was disintegrating. The troops he commanded prevented local militias from causing chaos, but also helped build basic facilities in villages, helped to settle disputes, rescued dozens during a terrible flood, and generally provided stability to an area that desperately needed it.

When I was 11 or 12, I thought I wanted to be a Green Beret after I found some of my uncle’s old National Guard gear packed away in my grandparents’ attic.[1] That’s pretty laughable looking back. But after reading Schwalm’s accountings of the brutal training soldiers have to go through to earn their Green Beret, it’s even more ridiculous to imagine me trying to do that.


  1. Why I made the jump from National Guard to special forces, I can not explain.  ↩

R’s: Wrapping It All Up

I’m glad I was not alone. I heard from many of my friends who are Royals fans last Thursday. The common theme was we all felt like garbage following game seven of the World Series.

I was able to shake off the funk by late in the day, as I began to see the big picture again.

It sucks that one game can wipe out many of the good feelings built up in the 14 (or 176) games that came before it. Usually I’m lamenting this focus on the last game of the year in March. I wasn’t sure how to handle it in October. I hate that that’s how we judge sports these days. You’re only as good as the last game of your season. Good, even great teams, are shat upon if they have a bad night at the wrong time of the schedule.

But I got over it. Mostly. It’s easier now to look back on what was a fabulous run and enjoy it for what it was. Unexpected. Unexplained. Exhilarating. Amazing. Sure, they came up a little short. That run, though, was what we had craved since 1985. And we got it, disappointing end or not.

I don’t know that I can write much different from what I’ve already written. So I’ll clear out the notebook with some things I jotted down during the last glorious month of baseball.


How did this run affect me? Well there’s one very clear way of measuring it. I gained at least five pounds since the playoffs began. I’m generally a one beer a night guy. With that beer often comes a handful of pretzels or mixed nuts.

For the last month, though? Most nights were 3–5 beer nights. And I don’t drink watered down “lite” beers. Theses are full-bodied, full-caloried craft beers. I also kept the can of nuts or jar of pretzels close and worked through them as the game progressed.

What’s frightening is I was quite active through most of the month. I was taking at least one long bike ride each week.[1] I also began running on a local cross country course, something I had never done before. Throw in a couple strength training sessions each week and I was certainly burning calories. I hate to see what the scales would show had I not been working out.


The morning after game seven I was explaining to S. what happened in the bottom of the ninth. I used the term “Little League home run,” which she quickly shouted back at me. “LITTLE LEAGUE HOME RUN?!?!” I laughed and broke it down for her.

That reminded me of one of our favorite moments from when we were dating. We were watching a Royals game at her apartment in Kansas City. Or, rather, I was watching a Royals game and she was probably doing something productive next to me. Joe Randa hit a shot down the line at Fenway and I shouted “STAY FAIR!”

S. looked at me and asked, “STATE FAIR?!?! What the hell does that mean?”

She also was confused when I yelled “WOLF!” at the TV during basketball games.

Little League home run definitely goes on that list.


Credit where due. I’ve been one of the knuckleheads who has slagged Ned Yost often over the past few years, when his decisions seemed to be holding back a team that was ready to contend. He wasn’t perfect in the playoffs; few managers are. But I think he did a very solid job during October. Sure, a move here or there got questioned, but for the most part he was on point. He seemed to enjoy the moment, which I think rubbed off on his players.

The concept of chemistry is a tough one. Good teams always have good chemistry, right? To whatever extent a manager can affect a team’s chemistry, I think Ned helped the Royals in this post season. And while perhaps he should have pulled Jeremy Guthrie an inning earlier, Ned did not lose game seven for the Royals.


I don’t know that I had a favorite Royal when the season began. I wanted it to be Eric Hosmer, but by August I was on the verge of loathing him. It was probably Alex Gordon, but Alex’s streakiness at the plate drives me bonkers.

I know I’m not the only one who fell in love with Lorenzo Cain through the playoffs. He was the team’s best, and most consistent hitter in the regular season. He played great defense from April through September. And he played hard.

Then he took all that to a completely different level in October. He was a freaking man all month long. He made a career’s worth of highlight catches. He could somehow be both aggressive at the plate and work long at-bats. He seemed to always find a way to slash the ball into an open spot in the defense.

That dude played his ass off on the playoffs. I hope it was not an aberration but rather a sign of things to come for him.


I thought back, after the World Series ended, to how this season began. We were in Kansas City over St. P’s spring break. When the Royals and Tigers began things in Detroit, we were eating lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s. Somehow I ended up sitting facing away from every TV, so I my head shot around each time there was a roar of cheering for a Royals hit.

As the game progressed, we took the girls to a few sites around the city and I followed the game on my phone. During the game, I bought the Royals hat I’ve been wearing all season. We were just pulling into the parking lot at our hotel when Wade Davis and Greg Holland combined to blow the game. It wasn’t a promising start. Amazing how far they all came from that first game.


Finally, among all the memories of the last month, one of my favorites will always be how I shared this with friends. The Royals run got me to check, and post to, Facebook more than once a week. During most games I was frantically sending iMessages back-and-forth with people in Kansas City, people who were often inside the stadium.

I became a much bigger Royals fan the summer we moved to Indianapolis. It wasn’t just their crazy run that put them in first place for two months of that summer, although that made them interesting. Rather it was how the Royals allowed me to stay in touch with a wide swath of friends. My KU friends and I would always have the Jayhawks to send emails and texts about. But the Royals brought in friends who went to other schools, or who had no strong college affiliations. Since I’m not a Chiefs fan, the Royals were my best way of showing my hometown pride as well.

Since we moved I’ve been back for one KU basketball game, and that was in Kansas City. I’ve been to one KU football game. But I’ve been back for close to 20 Royals games in 11 years. That said, it’s been two years since I’ve been back to the K. That needs to change next season.

Anyway, it just made all this extra special that I was able to go through this run with so many friends back in KC. I’m jealous of everyone who got to go to games, but thankful for them sharing their experience with me.


  1. The longest was 19.5 miles.  ↩

Halloween Wrap Up

Worst Halloween ever?

As far as the weather was concerned, I think the answer was a resounding yes here in central Indiana.

It was just a nasty night. It was cold, wet, windy, and miserable. Temps were in the mid–30s, the winds were gusting at close to 30 MPH, which made the steady rain come down sideways. There really was no way to stay dry. So none of us were disappointed when the rain turned to snow. At least then it was coming down in chunky flakes rather than sheets of water.

Two years ago it was just as cold, but it was dry. Last year we had severe storms blow through, but they came with enough warning that the city and neighborhood pushed trick or treating back a night, to a gorgeous fall evening. This year topped those in terms of shitty weather.

I’m not sure the girls minded. They didn’t love it, but they were also undeterred to get out and get some candy. We joined with our neighbors plus some of their friends and had a pack of 15 or so kids. In the time we were out, I didn’t see another 15 kids total. It looked like most families were bagging it. And, judging by how many people did not answer their doors, I think they were just handing the candy they bought over to their kids and then turned the lights off.

Fortunately our kids tired of the weather pretty quickly. We didn’t spend much more than half an hour outside. We hit all the neighbors, swung by the home that turns their garage into a haunted house, and then cruised over to my sister- and brother-in-law’s where we warmed up and refilled before heading home.

We had left a bowl of candy with a note telling kids to take a few pieces at our front door. When we got home, it was still nearly full. I told our girls that they’ll always remember this Halloween, when most kids wimped out and stayed home but they went out.[1]

Oh, costumes. M. went as a girl Minion from Despicable Me, C. was Madeline Hatter from the Ever After High series, and L. went as Scooby Doo.

And now the holiday season is upon us. We actually bought a new Christmas wreath for our front door today. Just over three weeks away from watching the Cheers “Thanksgiving Orphans” episode and buying a Christmas tree a few hours later.

Reminds me of January 1, 2000, a Saturday. John N, Sean M., and I headed out, thinking “It’s Saturday. We should go to all the places we normally go.” Only no one was out, still recovering from ringing in the new millennium. We’re still pretty proud of our performance that night.  ↩

Stats

October 2014

  • Ryan Adams – 126
  • The War On Drugs – 43
  • Frightened Rabbit – 35
  • The Twilight Sad – 27
  • The Cranberries – 24
  • Public Enemy – 23
  • Dum Dum Girls – 21
  • Wussy – 20
  • Mojave 3 – 15
  • The Long Winters – 14

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.

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