Tag: MLB (Page 3 of 5)

A Few Baseball Notes

October 10, 2019 / DB

Each year as we pass through October I enjoy the memories that pop up in my Facebook feed from Octobers past. Specifically the Octobers of 2014 and 2015, when the Royals were keeping me up late so many nights as they won two-straight American League pennants.

Then there were the memories from years after the R’s run, when I joked about not thinking I would still stay up late to watch baseball when, in fact, I was staying up until 1:00 watching more crazy, extra-inning games.

Not this year, though. I have been casually watching games over the past week. But I generally check out around 11:00/11:30 regardless of the state of the game. I don’t have enough invested in any team this year plus I’m a few years older and have a harder time justifying being miserable the next day for a game that I don’t really care about.

The bitch of that is the meds that the good doc put me on to fight my poison ivy rash keep me from sleeping for more than two hours at a time at night. So I’ve been waking up around 1:30 or so, coming downstairs to read for awhile as my body resets, and checking the scores.

When I did that Thursday morning I was shocked to see that the Dodgers blew their lead and the Washington Nationals had advanced to the NLCS with a dramatic, extra inning win. I was not shocked to see that Clayton Kershaw was responsible for the Dodgers giving up their lead.

Although he’s had a few amazing post season performances, there is no doubt that he is now the biggest postseason…I’m struggling for the right word here…failure/frustration/goat/disappointment of his generation. One of the three or four best pitchers of his era and he consistently comes up short in the biggest moments of October. Of course, playing for the Dodgers he may still have four or five more chances to finally win a World Series even as his skills are slowly fading. That leaves him with, at best, a chance to have a John Elway-like career in terms of postseason success. It’s going to be hard to wipe away all those failures, though.

Good for Howie Kendrick for hitting the 10th inning grand slam that sent the Nats through. Seems like he’s been a very solid, but never great, player forever. I like that he has such a big moment to cap his career.

I also missed yesterday’s other game 5, the one in Atlanta between the Cardinals and Braves. L wanted me to pitch to her so we spent half an hour in the front yard hitting before I remembered that the game had started. I checked the score between pitches, saw the Cards were up 10–0, and knew I didn’t even have to turn it on.

I was pleased that this was finally the year that the Twins-Yankees matchup turned out differently. Oh, wait, it didn’t.

My World Series champ pick has been Houston. So I’m a little surprised they are facing a game five against Tampa today. Which also bums me out because that series going long means their rotation won’t be aligned ideally to face the Yankees should they advance. If things open up for the Yankees, I’ll probably dive back into the Netflix queue for the rest of the month.

Weekend Notes

October 29, 2018 / DB

A strangely busy yet boring fall break weekend.

L had a soccer tournament to wrap up her season. This came after not playing for two weeks and, unfortunately, it really showed. The girls, and L especially, were just not on their game.

Friday we played our opening game at 7:45 under the lights. The windchill was in the upper 30s, there was a stiff northerly breeze, and it was raining steadily. All-in-all a miserable night to do anything outside. We were playing a team we beat 2–1 in the regular season. Surprise, surprise, we got another, nervy, 2–1 win. We played our second round robin game Saturday against a team that beat us 8–1 to begin the season. We hung in for the first half and went into the break down just 1–0 on a freaky goal that went off our defender, off our goalie’s hands, and then off her foot into the goal. We melted down in the second half and lost 5–0.

Still, we made it through to the semis and took on a team we tied 3–3 during the regular season. We played really well for the first 25 minutes, mostly controlling the game. L had our only decent scoring chance and put it off the post. But right before half time we fell apart again, the last five minutes being played deep in our defensive end. The second half was the same: we could not get possession and were constantly scrambling in the back to clean things up. Our defense finally paid for being out of position and we let one through midway through the half. We never got a decent scoring chance after that and our season ended with a 1–0 loss.

L just had nothing all weekend. I don’t know if it was the weather – Saturday was cool and the field was still sloppy; Sunday it was warmer but very windy – if she wasn’t feeling well, if the two weeks off ruined her soccer stamina, or if she had just checked out mentally. Whatever it was, these were probably the three worst games she’s ever played. She just showed no energy, shied away from going after the ball, wouldn’t make runs when we had the ball, and basically played extremely out of character for her.

As a coaching parent, it was very frustrating. I let her have it a few times Sunday when she would just stand and watch where she used to get in the middle of the action and make things happen. Afterward I had to remind myself that we played three good defensive teams this weekend – she had scored just one goal against them in three regular season games – and all three were older teams. For playing most of the season against girls two years older than her, she still had a really good season. I think it was her lowest goal-scoring season ever, but she still had 9 or 10 in 10 games. Most importantly, I think she understands the areas she needs to get better in if she wants to keep playing. She needs to learn how control the ball better. How to do more than just do a series of fakes and step-backs when a defender cuts her off. How to pass the ball to others when the defense keys on her. Rather than play a winter sport, she’s most likely going to do some individual training with a local high school coach. I expect between that, and maybe a growth spurt that helps her compete against bigger girls, she’ll be just fine the next time she plays in a league.[1]

I was secretly relieved we lost in the semis. If we had advanced we would have played the team that smoked us Saturday again, and their coach is an annoying tool. Plus right around the time of the championship game we had wind gusts over 50 MPH, so that would not have been fun.

Oh, and we had a basketball game yesterday, too, which would have made playing soccer again rough.

L looked just fine at basketball, at least in the first half. She scored four, ran the floor well, played decent D. In the second half she looked pretty gassed, though, and kept losing the ball when she brought it up against pressure. They won – almost blowing a big lead but hanging on late – and are now 5–1 with one game to play before the tournament begins.

Whew. No surprise that she was pretty tired and sore last night.

M cheered for the final time yesterday. Our 7th/8th grade football team lost 7–6 in the City semis. She was bummed she’s done with cheer. She really enjoyed it, although I think it was mostly the hanging out with her friends that she liked more than the cheering part. She’s made some comments about wanting to cheer in high school. We’ve pointed out that in HS you need to have tumbling/gymnastics experience, which she has zero of. So we’ll see where that goes. I think the majority of her St. P’s friends that go to high school with her will likely not cheer either.

Speaking of high school, we got the final pieces of paperwork in for her application last week. Now we wait about three weeks before we hear. Her shadow day is tomorrow.

OK, onto other stuff from the weekend.

Hey, KU won a Big 12 football game! We’re tied for last place with the tie breaker over TCU! If the season ended today, we would be 9th! I was not able to watch the game between soccer, a visitor stopping by, and then a family party that took us away from home. I was following along online and via text updates from friends.[2] I think I’m glad I wasn’t able to see the final moments of the game. It would have been sooooooo KU football to leave a second on the clock then mess up the squib kick and give TCU a chance to kick a winning field goal. In fact, I’m shocked that didn’t actually happen. But, hey, KU has three wins this year. They really should have four if not for the mysterious absence of Pooka Williams week one. That won’t be enough to save David Beaty’s job, but at least you can argue there’s been progress. The big question is what is he leaving behind. If he is fired, how many non-seniors will decide to leave? He kind of messed up recruiting so he/the next coach will have very few scholarships to give out for next year, so it’s imperative that the program hang onto as many of the young guys as possible. Do that and you can start to squint hard enough to believe a good coaching hire this winter and a good recruiting class next year means mediocrity isn’t too far in the future. Ah, mediocrity! How I’ve missed you!

Five game World Series are strange beasts. A team winning 4–1 makes it seems like it was a boring series. The Royals-Mets series in 2015 proved that wrong, with two extra-inning games and a third that had a lead change in the 8th inning. I think this year’s will go down as fairly boring, although games three and four were the exceptions to that.

No, I did not stay up for all 18 innings of game three. Hell, I went to bed at the end of the 9th. Although, strangely, I could not sleep and kept waking up. After I saw the score Saturday morning, I was convinced my body knew there was an epic game going on in LA and wanted me to go downstairs and turn the TV back on. Game four was thoroughly enjoyable to a non-partisan fan. Dodger Stadium was coming unglued after Yasiel Puig’s home run in the 6th that put LA up by four. But, man, these Red Sox are relentless, and once they got that first run back, you knew the game, and the series, was over. The 9–5 final made it look like another blow out. But those last four innings were fun to watch.

I was really hoping for a seven game series, and not just to stretch the end of the season. I wanted to see how Alex Cora managed his pitching staff over seven games. I loved the way he mixed and matched all series to get his best arms on the mound in any situation. But I wondered if they could keep that up if the series had returned to Boston. David Price was simply amazing last night, and all series for that matter. I’m not a huge fan of his; he often seems like a joyless, bitter human being. But that performance last night was fantastic.

She’s making noises about taking the spring season off from competitive soccer and playing CYO soccer. I’ve tried to tell her CYO soccer is kind of a disaster, but she really wants to play with a couple friends who aren’t skilled enough to play in her league anymore. We’ll see… ↩
The ESPN app feed glitched in the fourth quarter for about five minutes. It would update down and distance but not the clock. People were texting me that there were 30 seconds left but the app still said 6:00+. I have a friend who was following the game from Spain and she said it did the same thing to her. I think the app couldn’t believe KU was about to pull off the W. ↩

ASG ’18

July 18, 2018 / DB

This has been the summer of my baseball discontent. We’ll get into the reasons for that in a moment. Despite that, I still sat down for my annual viewing of the MLB All Star Game last night. Granted, because of errands, watering the grass, and kids controlling the TV, I wasn’t able to tune in until the 4th inning. Which seemed appropriate for this season. Hey, at least I turned it on!

I never got going with baseball this year. The season began with the Royals alternately getting crushed and rained out over the first week. Also, there was a sporting event in San Antonio that week that occupied much of my attention.

Soon came spring break prep and spring break itself. After our return, spring sports. Next looking at houses and getting ready to move. A few times in April and May I would try to turn on a Royals game, only to be thwarted by our endless network issues we were experiencing at the old house.

The team was shitty, I was busy, and the feed locked up constantly. It was easier to do other things where I had watched the Royals every night for the past five or six years.

If the Royals were just bad I may have tried harder to build the habit back up. But, man, they’ve been terrible. I figured there would be bad stretches this year but I’m still waiting for the first good stretch. There’s almost a majesty to how bad they’ve been. And it will likely get worse as the team tries to move a few pieces over the next couple weeks and begins calling up more guys who have no business playing in the major leagues.

So rather than devote too much time to the big league club, I’ve been following the experts on Twitter and paying attention to blurbs in other sources about the next crop of prospects. As I followed Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Yordano Ventura a decade ago, now I’m tracking Nicky Lopez, Nick Pratto, Khalil Lee, and Seuly Matias.

I don’t have a ton of confidence that Dayton Moore is going to get much back for Moustakas or any other players he decides to trade this month. But I’m hopeful that this year’s draft was solid and next year’s very high pick will result in the next future superstar for the organization. And hopefully it won’t be another 25-year wait for them to be in a pennant race again.

Once I turned on the game, it eventually got pretty fun. At least if you like home runs in dramatic situations.

Otherwise I was, as usual, annoyed with Fox mic-ing up players every inning. I was annoyed with commercials for football. And I became annoyed with Joe Buck’s endless slobbering over all the “good guys” in the game. At first I kind of chuckled, because who doesn’t love Jose Altuve? But a few innings later Buck had labeled at least three other guys as “as good a guy as you will find in the game.” Everyone he labeled may, indeed, be a great guy. But it felt forced and pushed upon Buck from above rather than organic.

I was also a bit put off by the endless pushing of connections between the game and the military. Listen, honoring the troops is awesome and anyone who serves deserves respect and recognition. But it seemed like every five minutes here came another forced military tie-in to the game.

That combined with Buck’s identification of all the good guys in the game seemed like a concerted effort to say “Hey, we’re not the NFL!” Which, as much as I’ve grown to dislike the NFL, feels unnecessary.

I could expound further on this topic, but I think Drew Magary wrote way better than I can about it just last week in his weekly politics column for GQ. I recommend checking it out.

Patriotic Correctness Will Doom Us All

Game Seven

November 2, 2017 / DB

What a letdown. After all the craziness and joy of the first six games of the World Series, game seven was an absolute dud.

It held some early promise. After the Astros scored two in the top of the first, the Dodgers seemed poised for their own first-inning rally, loading the bases before Lance McCullers Jr. wiggled out of the mess he made. Then Houston added three more runs in the second, chasing Yu Darvish, and the Dodgers again tried to rally, putting two on. Those runners were wasted, though, and the game settled into a slow slog toward the inevitable. For the first hour or so it seemed like we were on pace for another barnburner like game four. Sadly it was not to be.

Major props to Houston for solving their biggest problem of the post season – an ineffective bullpen – at the perfect moment. Brad Peacock, Francisco Liriano, Chris Devenski, and Charlie Morton were nearly flawless in locking down the Dodgers for seven-plus innings. I kept waiting for the Dodgers to string together a 3–4 hits to make it interesting, but they just could not figure out the Astros’ arms.

Which is a shame, because this series, between these teams, deserved some nervy moments late in the game.

There’s something especially cruel about the baseball season ending this way, at least for the losing team. The Dodgers flirted with the best record of all time for a good stretch of the summer. They won the division that produced both NL Wild Card teams by a ridiculous margin. They got through the playoffs relatively easily and then to the final game of the World Series. Then they were basically hopeless after the second inning. But baseball is a funny sport, and even the best teams have awful nights throughout the season. Sometimes those nights come in an elimination game, which sucks.

Let us not forget that Houston had just as impressive of a regular season. They battled from behind to beat the Yankees in the ALCS and provided some incredible moments during the World Series. They are a very likable team and are a lot of fun to watch. They’re probably going to be really good for awhile. This was not an upset.

I like to say that players, franchises, and cities never “deserve” championships simply because they’ve played for a long time, had a long era of poor records, or have been through devastation of one kind or another. But I think Justin Verlander and Carlos Beltran are both very worthy of grabbing the late career title. The Astros burned their organization down and built it back up, losing over 100 games three straight years in the process. They were remarkably lucky with so many of their top picks not just making the big leagues, but turning into stars. And the Houston area, after Hurricane Harvey, is a sentimental favorite to get the city’s first World Series title. I was pulling for the Dodgers because L was, but I had no problem with the Astros winning.

Now time for some college hoops…

Game Five

October 30, 2017 / DB

No where does recency bias rear its ugly head more than in sports. Whatever game we just watched always drowns out the games of the past.

That acknowledged, last night’s/this morning’s game five of the World Series is surely one of the most entertaining games in the history of the game. I did not watch every pitch. I didn’t turn the game on until the girls went to bed, when the game had just entered the bottom of the second. I didn’t miss a pitch after that, though.

Seeing the Dodgers up 3–0 I figured that Clayton Kershaw was set up to blow through the Astros lineup as easily as he had done in game one. Maybe I’d even get to bed right around 11:00 again.

Pause for a moment while I laugh at myself, and please join in and laugh at me, too.

There. Soon the Dodgers were up 4–0. A blink of an eye later, the game was tied, Kershaw was out of the game, and the ballpark was rocking.

And then Cody Bellinger untied the game with a 3-run shot.

And then Jose Altuve freaking crushed one and we were tied again.

And it just kept going. Astros seem to take a commanding lead and even add an insurance run. Then the Dodgers mount a furious ninth-inning rally to tie it again. In the 10th, the Dodgers hit a couple absolute rockets that are a fraction of an inch on the bat from being a double and a home run. Then the Astros scratch and claw to score the winning run the old fashioned way: HBP, walk, single. All with two outs.

Man, what a game.

But there was much more. Dave Roberts, for some unknown reason, playing for one run in the 7th and having his clean up hitter bunt, which results in Justin Turner, who led the inning off with a double, getting gunned down at third. The Dodgers still scored in that frame, but Roberts prevented what could have been a huge inning.

In the 8th, Chris Taylor thought his third base coach told him “NO, NO!” instead of “GO, GO!” and failed to score on a pop out to right. He may have been out at the plate, but the audio Fox played later showed it was Taylor’s mishearing of his instructions that kept him planted on third. In the bottom of the 8th, Evan Gattis hit a solo homer that seemed meaningless at the time but ended up being huge. In the 9th Yasiel Puig hit a one-handed home run and then Taylor somehow hit a ball that was inches above home plate into center to tie the game.

The pitching uniformly sucked. Seriously, everyone who threw last night should lose their access to whatever special benefits and honors that come with being a big league hurler for a couple weeks. Just an embarrassment to the craft, I don’t care about the pressure of the situation, the bandbox right field fence, if something is weird about the World Series balls, etc. Can anyone get anyone out around here?

The game lasted so long that Fox was caught off-guard and skipped two entire commercial breaks until they could figure something out. This from the network that began inserting six second ads during meetings on the mound.

Oh, and let’s not forget home plate umpire Bill Miller who rocked one of the worst strike zones ever. Houston manager A.J. Hinch summed up everyone in America’s thoughts when he turned to one of his assistants and said, “I don’t know where the strike zone is,” after consecutive Brad Peacock pitches that had been strikes all night were called balls. I’m sure Kiki Hernandez is still trying to figure out how a ball that nearly hit him in the head was called a strike. When even a former pitcher in the broadcast booth says, “That’s not a strike,” at least half a dozen times, you know it’s a rough night for the ump.

But Miller’s bad performance just added to the legend of this game. For the second time this postseason – along with game five of the Cubs-Nats NLDS series – I found myself looking at the clock and thinking, “Screw it, I can’t not see how this one ends.” Thus I was finally climbing the stairs to go to bed at about 1:45 AM. I had to laugh and think of all the DVRs in Houston that will forever have a bunch of random shows that were scheduled to air at 11:30/12:00/12:30 local time that their owners scrambled to record to make sure they got all of the game.[1]

Whether it is one of the best games ever is a whole other question. I’m sure a lot of baseball fans my age would prefer game seven from 1991 if we’re talking about 10-inning thrillers with walk-offs. But to the casual fan, I bet a lot folks would much rather watch last night’s 13–12 Houston win over Minnesota’s 1–0 win 26 years ago. Of course, you could have played all of ’91’s game seven, and then a good chunk of another game in the time it took to play last night’s contest. Good or bad, I think this game represents where baseball is at in 2017. For that alone, it belongs up there with the last two games of the ’91 series, game seven of the 2001 series, game six of the 1975 series, etc.

As ridiculous as a five hour, 17 minute baseball game is, when you pack that much entertainment into it, somehow it was worth every second.

Our DVR has a couple Fox football preview shows from the night of game six of the 2015 ALCS, and then The Simpsons and Two and a Half Men episodes from the night/morning of game five of that year’s World Series. ↩

World Series So Far

October 26, 2017 / DB

It’s been a pretty good World Series through two games. Rather than offering up random notes, I thought I’d share the four most interesting things about the series so far.

1) Game one checking in at 2:28 was perhaps the greatest thing in sports this year. Seriously, I watched an entire World Series game – complete with game one extended introductions – and was in bed before 11:00 Eastern! Clayton Kershaw and Dallas Keuchel deserve a Nobel Prize for their efforts.

2) As I don’t really care who wins (more on that in a second) I do not have to stay up to ridiculous hours when the games do stretch out, as it did last night for game two. When Cody Bellinger’s shot was caught just short of the wall to end the ninth inning, I killed the TV and went to bed. I did not know anything about what were apparently pretty crazy 10th and 11th innings until I woke this morning. As much fun as Octobers 2014 and 2015 were, I’m just fine not staying up until 1:00 AM for baseball.

3) Mary Hart! The former Entertainment Tonight host sits just behind home plate at Dodger Stadium. What makes Hart so great is how into the games she is. Sure, you’ll see her chatting up Larry King and other people around her in the early innings. But when it’s crunch time, she is locked in. Most notably in the 9th inning last night, while everyone around her was on their feet to begin the frame, she was hunched over watching nervously. Maybe she knew something, because Kenley Jansen gave up a game-tying homer moments later. She probably detected a flaw in his delivery and knew he was going to struggle a bit.

Even better, Mary Hart does not flinch when foul balls rocket toward her. Twice last night balls hit the screen directly behind home. Both times others around her put their hands up or ducked. Both times she sat stone still and watched. That’s the sign of a baseball pro and not someone who just shows up for the marquee games.

Also, Mary Hart is almost 67. She appears to be keeping it together pretty well. Bonus points for that. Not that I should, or society should, judge people based on their physical appearance.

4) My rooting interests. I came into the series wanting the Astros to win. Great story, American League team, played an important role in the Royals’ World Series run in 2015 so I have some sympathy for their fans, a couple former Royals in their dugout. Seemed easy. But while watching game one, L said she was rooting for the Dodgers, then said, “So you’ll probably root for Houston to be against me, right?” That hurt a little bit, so I found myself rooting for the Dodgers that night. I guess I’ve settled in as neutral, which is a weird place to be. I prefer to root for someone or against someone so I can get wrapped up in the drama.

A Weekend Without Kid Sports

October 23, 2017 / DB

For the first time since way back in August we had no kid sports this weekend. That meant I got to fully immerse myself in televised sports. There was plenty of baseball, soccer, basketball, and football on our TV, along with a bonus dose of college basketball on my Twitter and email feeds. Some words about all that…

Baseball

Man, what an excellent ALCS. I only say that because the Houston Astros won. Had the Yankees pulled out either game six or seven and moved on to the World Series, I would likely have a different opinion. And be done with baseball for the year.

Thankfully the Astros got some big hits late in each game, some amazing pitching in game seven, and move on to play LA. That should be a dandy of a series and will likely come down to whichever team’s top two starters perform the best. Houston better hope they can keep scoring runs, as I don’t trust anyone in their bullpen in a close game whereas the Dodgers have a lock-down pen if they need to protect a one-run lead late. Feels like Dodgers in six, but I’ll be pulling for Houston.

The cloud that hangs over all of this is that it appears as though the Yankees are about to get really good again for some time. They are loaded with young talent, have more talent high in the minor league system, and the biggest contracts on the payroll all fall off over the next two years. That’s like the perfect storm for building a dynasty. It was nice when they were irrelevant for awhile.

Football

Here we are in year like 27 of the KU football rebuild with no signs of improvement. When KU hired David Beaty three-plus years ago, I was firmly in the camp of having to give him at least four and likely five years to get things turned around. With the hatchet job Charlie Weis did to the program, Beaty had to have the luxury of time to rebuild it the right way.

And while I think it was unrealistic to expect more than a couple wins from this year’s team, what should not have been unrealistic was a team that played better. Not a team that gets blown out by mediocre MAC teams in back-to-back games. Not a team that can’t do the simplest things right. Not a team that often looks thoroughly lost.

There was some optimism, most likely misplaced, coming into this season. A close loss (that should have been a win) against TCU last year. The overtime win against Texas. The preseason Big 12 defensive player of the year. A new quarterback.

Turns out it’s the same old shit. A team that isn’t just overmatched in terms of talent, but looks poorly coached.

That’s the big rub against Beaty. When Mark Mangino took over the program, it took him a few years to increase the talent level on the roster. But he and his staff taught the kids he had how to play smart football. They might not have been able to run with Oklahoma’s receivers, but they were always in the right spot and didn’t make the same mistakes twice. This year’s team shows none of that intelligence or ability to learn. And that’s coaching.

I think Beaty is probably safe this year, simply because athletic director Sheahan Zenger will not be allowed to hire a third head football coach. No matter what he’s done to support the other sports and keep Bill Self happy, he’s the guy who panicked and hired Weis, and then bought into the idea of Beaty and his Texas ties turning the talent base around over hiring a guy with coaching chops. If I were Zenger, I’d be thinking about where I’d want to move my family later this year.

And here’s a thought: quit worrying about hiring some offensive genius. Let’s hire a defensive coach and see how that works. Hell, I’d switch to an option offense, or something crazy like that. Stop competing with, oh, every other program in the country for kids that can play in the various flavors of the spread offense and go back to a 1980s-style running game. It seriously can’t get any worse. Why not try something totally different?

Speaking of jokes, Sunday I got to watch my first Colts game of the year. Those guys are a complete disaster. And as I think Andrew Luck’s injuries are the football gods trying to fix their mistake of allowing the Colts to transition straight from Manning to Luck, I think all the other issues the Colts have are karmic retribution for not taking care of Luck. The latest? First round pick Malik Hooker blew out his knee when he was blindsided by a Jags player yesterday. He’s done for the season. Jacksonville is a rapidly improving team, but they barely broke a sweat in rushing out to a 20–0 halftime lead. A lead that really should have been 35–0. It ended up being the Colts first regular season shutout loss since 1993. Yikes. Oh well, that means more time on Sundays for me.

C actually went to the game with a friend. It was her first Colts game. They had pretty good seats, and she had a really good time. She doesn’t know much about football but knew enough to figure out the Colts sucked. She giggled while telling us stories of Colts fans booing their own team, and Jags fans who were making fun of them. And even she wondered out loud why the roof wasn’t open on the last, beautiful, warm day for several weeks.[1]

Basketball

I’m kind of digging all this buzz about the NBA. Maybe it’s just the right point in the web’s history, but it seems like more major sports sites are devoting more time to the NBA than in the past. There’s a different buzz around the beginning of the season than there used to be. We’ve watched parts of all three Pacers games so far, and a few minutes of other games. Pacers? Not good, but not bad enough to be in the hunt for Michael Porter Jr. or Marvin Bagley or DeAndre Ayton next June. Limbo is the worst place to be in the NBA.

Still, I keep telling myself as soon as college basketball begins, I’m much more likely to watch a Butler game than the Pacers, or some top 25 matchup in college than the Cavs playing Boston. To be a casual, yet devoted, fan of the NBA seems like a pretty daunting task. Which I know is a weird thing to say as a guy who watches 130 Royals games each summer. But that’s one team I have to worry about. If I dive into the NBA, there are a couple games each night I need to try to balance with shows I watch, books I’m ready, and college hoops.

I figure I’ll watch more this year than I did in the past, but I’m not ready to go all-in with the NBA just yet. If the Sixers are on, I’ll watch to try to catch Jojo’s act.[2] Until he gets hurt, that is. If the Warriors are playing in the eastern half of the country, L will want to watch them. And I’ll try to catch Wiggins, Jackson, the Morrii, and the other KU guys when they’re on national TV.

And then there was The Scrimmage yesterday in Kansas City. Yep, Kansas took on Ol’ Mizzou in a “scrimmage” to raise money for hurricane victims. As it was the first meeting between the teams in over five years, it was kind of a big deal. I was intrigued by the scrimmage, as it would certainly show more about KU’s talent than their exhibition games against D2 schools. But not intrigued enough to drop $40 for the pay per view. Not intrigued enough to sit and refresh my Twitter feed non-stop for two hours to get updates, either. But I was paying attention in between doing laundry, prepping dinner, etc.

Sounds like it was a good day all around. Big crowd, lots of money raised. Mizzou showed that Porter Jr. and his buddies are all legit talents and MU basketball isn’t a joke anymore. KU showed that Devonte Graham is a legit All-American candidate and if LaGerald Vick, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, and/or Marcus Garrett can combine to be a poor-man’s Josh Jackson, this team can lose in the Elite Eight again. Oh, and KU looked sloppy late in the first half, fell behind by as many as six, and then dropped the hammer in the middle of the second half before cruising and nearly blowing the lead. It felt like February!

I generally support Bill Self’s stance to not play Missouri. No need to rehash the whys and who’s fault is its again. But this was a good thing. And I would not be terribly surprised if the teams are in the same bracket this coming March.

Well, there was weekend one without kid sports. L actually begins basketball practice next weekend, but no games until December, so I’ll have a few more weekends loaded with TV sports.

Folks were bemused about the parameters the Colts use to decide whether the roof will be open or closed back when the team was winning. Now that the team is awful, folks get enraged about it. In truth, it’s just another sign of how dysfunctional the entire organization is. ↩
I was looking at Embiid shirseys the other night. You can get a game-worn jersey for a cool $7500! ↩

ASG ’17

July 13, 2017 / DB

Some All Star Game, huh!?!? So good that I waited a full day before sharing my thoughts on it.[1]

I’m being sarcastic: the game kind of sucked. Under most circumstances a tense, 2–1 game that goes 10 innings would be highly compelling. But it’s the freaking All Star Game in a year of the juiced ball. We want to see homers soaring through the South Florida air. We want runs, baby!

Worse, unlike a 2–1 game played during the regular season, this wasn’t a tight affair because two pitchers were throwing brilliance at each other. When the managers run a new pitcher out every inning, there’s no one to earn/deserve the credit or build the tension with the viewers.

Anyway, I found myself spending as much time scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, or otherwise checking things on my iPad as I was paying attention to the game. Of course, I might have been doing that anyway even if the game was exciting, so warped has my brain become by constantly flooding it with feeds.

A few observations:

People love to talk about what’s wrong with baseball. The games take too long, there are too many strikeouts, not enough action, etc. etc. etc. I felt like MLB fed into those arguments with how they timed the pregame activities. During Monday’s Home Run Derby, the constant refrain was to watch the ASG “at 7:30 tomorrow on Fox.” Which we all know means the game probably starts right after 8:00, because there are going to be all kinds of extended pregame activities that require airtime. And that’s fine. But then they save the excellent honoring of the Latino Hall of Famers and group first pitch until after 8:00, too. So first game pitch doesn’t come until after 8:20 Eastern, nearly an hour after the broadcast began. When people have 1000 channels of other things they can watch, you can’t stretch shit out like that, especially when it’s just for an exhibition game.
Worse, Fox runs a freaking ad for their own college football coverage immediately before the first pitch. Kind of sums up the current state of American sports.
Fox is always going to push the boundaries in their broadcasts, especially when it gives them a chance to force players and managers to talk to them during the game. I thought it was dumb to have Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci ask the lead off hitters about their approaches seconds before they stepped to the plate. Neither player seemed super excited about it. Those moments summed up the current state of sports media: two of the best baseball writers out there are reduced to asking weak questions of reluctant-to-participate athletes. Having A-Rod walk around the field and talk to players between innings was also dumb.
And I was prepared to think mic-ing up George Springer and Bryce Harper during their defensive innings was dumb. But that turned out to be kind of cool. I thought both players handled it well, gave interesting responses and observations, and – thankfully – it didn’t interfere with action on the field. Until Harper asked Joe Buck a football question. COME ON! You just talked about how great the future of baseball was with all the young guys coming up, then you willingly pivot to the NFL.
I watch a ton of baseball. But 95% of it is the Royals. Without This Week In Baseball, a Saturday game of the week, The Sporting News, or me getting a morning paper with good MLB coverage, I honestly don’t have a great idea of what’s going on around the leagues. So there were several moments of “Who is this guy?” for me. That’s totally my bad. If I put the effort into it, it could still be like 1983 where I had deep knowledge of every player in the game.
Both a shame and unsurprising that there seemed to be more Yankees fans than Marlins fans in the house.
Also a shame that Aaron Judge seems like such a good dude. I always found it easy to root against Derek Jeter, for a variety of reasons. And maybe I’ll hate Judge in due time, especially if he leads the Yankees back to dominance. But for now, I kind of like the guy. You can’t deny being impressed by his unreal first half. We’ll see if he can keep it going.
Pittsburgh’s Josh Harrison wins the best shoes award, going with one gold cleat and one white cleat. Harper’s Jose Fernandez tribute cleats were solid, too. Yadier Molina’s C3PO catching get up was a little much, though.
L watched about the first 7 innings with me. I didn’t really explain the concept of the game to her beforehand, and she doesn’t know a thing about the differences in the leagues. So she was pretty confused for much of the night. “Which team do we want to win? Why is Salvy catching for that guy on the Red Sox? Why isn’t Moose playing now?”
I very much wanted the American League to win, just because that’s the way it’s been since I first watched the All-Star Game back in 1979. But it made me sad that Wade Davis gave up the game-winning homer.
My man Dave V. had a fine comment immediately after Robby Cano’s blast, “That’s some sort of crazy 2012 irony.” For those who don’t get the reference immediately, Cano was booed mercilessly in Kansas City in ’12 when he failed to pick Royal Billy Butler for the Home Run Derby. To the delight of the booing Royals fans, Cano failed to hit a ball out in his turn. Davis may not be a Royal anymore, but as it hurt Royals fans to watch him fail, perhaps Robby got a measure of revenge.
A rather boring game with few memorable moments. And now we have the extended break with no teams returning to play until tomorrow. MLB really knows how to screw itself.

Next week I’ll share some thoughts about the Royals prospects in the last two weeks before the trade deadline and through the second half. Things have changed a wee bit since the last time I wrote about them. Hopefully they haven’t swung back the other way before I get a chance to write.

Which says something, as my ASG post has been a tentpole of my summer content for 14 years. ↩

Baseball 2017, Ya’ll!

April 3, 2017 / DB

Yes! Baseball is here! As I type this, I’m sitting in front of the TV watching the Royals take on the Twins. There’s humidity in the air, we mowed the grass for the first time yesterday, there are mulch piles all around the neighborhood. Spring is here!

Wait, what’s that in the forecast for Thursday? Snow with wind chills in the 20s? Yikes.

Anyway, I’m happy baseball season has arrived. I might be a total fool, but I don’t believe the pessimistic forecasts so many experts have predicted for the Royals of Kansas City. I think they made some smart and good moves over the off season. I think players all up-and-down their lineup are going to have better years than last year. I think the rotation is as strong as it has been in a long time. And while there are concerns about the bullpen, I don’t share them. I think that will once again be an area of strength.

(Note: I wrote this entire post through the first five innings of the game, when it was a tight affair. Shortly after wrapping up the draft, I departed to the kitchen to start making dinner. While we were eating the bottom of the 7th occurred. Fear not, my confidence is still strong after that meltdown! One game does not make a season! Also, as Mr. Superstitious, I will not be eating during any more Royals games this year.)

Still, they are stuck in the same division as Cleveland, one of the 3–4 best teams in the game. A team, like the Royals two years ago, who will play with a laser focus after making it all the way to game seven of the World Series last season.

I think the Royals will stay within shouting distance of the Indians all summer. I think they’ll be right in the Wild Card race until the end. If they can stay healthy and perform the way I think they can, I see no reason why they can’t nab a third playoff spot in four years. And once you get to October, anything can happen.

No one else seems to agree with me. I keep seeing the Royals picked third and fourth in the AL Central, often in the 70s for total wins. The advanced stats projection systems hate the Royals. And I think some of the “experts” are keeping the win total low because they expect the Royals to be sellers at the trade deadline.

All them fools is wrong, I tells ya! It’s going to be another great summer for Kansas City baseball fans! Or at least I hope it still is through early June, when we go back for a weekend series at the K.

Prediction time!

AL East: Boston

AL Central: Cleveland

AL West: Houston

Wild Cards: Kansas City, Texas

NL East: Washington

NL Central: Chicago

NL West: Los Angeles

Wild Cards: St. Louis, San Francisco

I’m skipping the playoff predictions and just going with a World Series pick: Cleveland over Washington. Because the last time Theo Epstein broke a curse, a team from the AL Central broke their own curse the following year.

Curse Breaking Season

October 25, 2016 / DB

Welp, here we go. In about a week, either the Chicago Cubs or the Cleveland Indians will be World Series champions. A week after that, Donald Trump could be the president-elect of the United States of America. Y’all know I’m not a religious man, but if you believe in signs, I think those could be the first two of the three that signal the world is coming to an end! Hopefully since #2 is looking increasingly unlikely, the World Series will stand on its own rather than a portent of doom.

I’m struggling with the plot lines for this Series. I have, over the years, generally dislikes both franchises. I’ve also, somewhat grudgingly, come to admire each team and have enjoyed their runs to this point.

Cleveland didn’t really matter to me when I was a kid. They were always terrible and played in the American League East. When they moved to the AL Central in 1995, the Royals were becoming awful and the Indians were kicking off their era of awesomeness. To the extent that I watched baseball in those first few years after the stoppage of 1994, I rooted against Cleveland. I’m not sure why. I ended up liking a lot of guys on those late–90s teams. Over the years, the Indians just became another team the Royals would have to get past if they were ever to be good again. I had no strong feelings about them, but hoped they would always be one game behind the Royals in the standings.

My dislike of the Cubs had clearer roots. As I’ve said before, when I first became baseball-crazy in the late 1970s, the only daily baseball on our TVs in southeast Missouri were the Cubs and Braves. Both teams were perennial losers. So I rooted for whoever they were playing when I watched games on WGN and WTBS.[1] Years later, when I got to college, it seemed like half of my dorm floor was from Chicago. Add in the year I lived in the Bay Area in high school, and when the Cubs played the Giants in the 1989 NLCS, I became a big Cubs hater.[2] Over the following years, I hated the Cubs for their fans’ lovable losers mentality, the franchise acting poor when they were rich, and because of their endless terrible off-season decisions. Here was a franchise that had every reason to be as consistently good as the Yankees and Red Sox, but could never get out of their own way. And many of their fans seemed to celebrate that fact.

But Cleveland hired Terry Francona a few years back, and the Cubs brought in Theo Epstein, who hired Joe Madden. That changed my thinking a little.

Francona is awesome. If I had to pick a current manager to run my favorite team, he would be one of the three or four I would try to get. He does a great job balancing traditional baseball thinking with newer ideas. He seems like a guy I would love to play for. He’s good with the media. He’s not afraid to take risks in games, but also makes smart decisions rather than rash ones. And his teams generally win.

I thoroughly buy into the Epstein mythology. And Madden is one of the other managers on my short list of best in the game. I still can’t get over how calm Madden was Saturday night, as the Cubs were on the verge of clinching their first pennant in 753 years. There was a close-up shot of him taking a drink of a beverage after the Cubs recorded the first out in the ninth inning. His hands were as steady as could be. My hands get jittery keeping score at youth kickball games. I think I might pass out if I was in his situation!

It’s hard to root against teams that are run by people you admire.

And this Cubs team…man do they have some talented and fun guys on their roster. I would have been just fine with the Dodgers winning the NLCS, but as the series progressed, I found myself wanting the Cubs to win more-and-more.

Dogs and cats living together, I guess.

As for the whole “haven’t won in X years” narrative, after what the Royals went through the past two years, I buy into that more than I used to. I know how much fun those Royals runs were for me and so many of my friends. I can’t begrudge anyone from another fanbase that is unloading demons the way we did in 2014 and 2015. I won’t differentiate between how much suffering Cubs fans have experienced versus Indians fans. I just know when this series is over, there are going to be a lot of very happy people supporting the winners. And that’s pretty cool.

Down to the series itself.

This feels like a relatively easy Cubs win at first glance. Cleveland is all beat up. I still don’t understand how they got by Toronto in just five games. Oh, that’s right, they did what you have to do in modern, postseason baseball: get generally excellent starting pitching, then run out relievers who never, ever allow their opponents any breathing room. You don’t have to have the best starting pitchers in the game. You just need your top three/four starters to all be locked in at that moment.[3] The whole key to the series to me is if the Indians’ starters can keep getting the game to the 5th or 6th inning with a lead so they can turn loose Andrew Miller and his pals in the pen. They must do that to have a shot. If they can’t, the Cubs are going to close this thing out quick.

Then again, the Cubs offense has been a little sputtery lately. Even on the nights they scored runs, there have been notable holes in their lineup. They can’t afford to keep doing that against Cleveland, because being down 3–1 in the 5th could mean game over.

The Cubs seem like a team of destiny because of how Epstein has slowly built this team toward this result. They’ve drafted and developed well. They’ve spent money smartly. They’ve put one of the best managers in the game in charge of things. This is just the next step in the process.

The Indians seem like a team of destiny because they keep overcoming obstacles. They lose most of their starting rotation? They plug in guys, stretch out their bullpen, and keep winning. They lose one of their best hitters? Other guys step up and fill in for his loss. They run into the Big Papi Retirement Tour? They sweep the Red Sox. They have to face a red-hot Toronto team smarting from coming close last year? They shut them down and win in five. This team won’t give a damn about momentum or history or anything else that the Cubs bring to the series.

Still, Cubs in 6.

I later came to realize that, living in St. Louis Cardinals country, an adult probably told me I should hate the Cubs. I have no memory of that happening, but odds are high it did. ↩
I may or may not have run through the halls yelling “CUBS LOSE!” in my best Harry Caray voice after the Giants cliched. ↩
See Kansas City Royals, 2014, 2015. ↩