Callaway, fisticuffs, naked men scurrying into pipes, kings being killed in brawls, forgotten Australian funny men, a win-vulturing Uber driver, and Star Wars
Yasmani Grandal was with the Padres for a while, and then with the Dodgers, so we saw him a lot in NL West matchups. Our household routine: "Hey, Grandal's up!" "Who's up next?" (deep movie announcer voice) "GRANDAL'S MOTHER".
Beowulf! I'm enough of a dork that I make a similar joke most times I'm watching Grandal play (and he had a decent short run with the Brewers, so... yeah).
I'm taking it this means she was Grendel's mother in that Beowulf movie.
If you're doing a super-short Beowulf synopsis it starts something like "B rose to fame bc he took out Grendel - but then after Grendel, you get Grendel's momma, and she's pissed..."
The Force Awakens was fun but really just A New Hope with everything bigger. I am one of the people who loved The Last Jedi. It wasn't perfect but I'd put it in the top tier of Star Wars movies. But Rise of Skywalker was such a load of steaming bantha poodoo.
Say what you will about the prequels, and there are A LOT of bad things to be said about them. At least Lucas had a clear vision of what he wanted the overarching story to be. The writing, direction, and execution? Well, it wasn't great. To say the least. Which in a way makes them even more disappointing since everything for a good trilogy was there.
A lot of TLJ wasn't great. But a lot of it was. I loved Luke as a jaded old man, and the idea of Rey coming from nothing. It makes the Force a lot more random. I wish Abrams had run with that.
"Okay, see, there's this galaxy where they've mastered interstellar travel and have lasers that can vaporize entire planets. But they also sometimes use weapons tech that was outmoded before the first Iraq War, because reasons."
Rian Johnson really screwed over Finn as a character. His entire arc in The Force Awakens is about deciding to stay and be a part of something bigger than himself, because it's the right thing to do, and then he wakes up near the start of The Last Jedi, and it's like The Force Awakens was just a dream, with him immediately trying to run away again. John Boyega has talked about after enjoying the experience of making The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi soured him on being a part of Star Wars.
My elevator pitch for fixing the prequels is simple: Darth Maul (who was an awesome villain and was given such a terrible death that the animated series had to retcon it) spends 2-1/2 movies just straight murdering Jedi. He is finally killed when, like, eight Jedi team up against him, but Padme is mortally wounded in the fray, and Palpatine convinces Anakin the Jedi are at fault for her death. Also, Anakin is maybe 16 years old when Obi-Wan meets him, which reduces the *ick* factor of his relationship with Padme. Everything else can be largely the same. Boom. Sorted.
I think there's SOME great storytelling in both those animated series, but also a massive amount of filler. I know that is probably close to unavoidable with series that are asked to come up with 10-20 episodes for numerous seasons, but it would be nice if there was a "director's cut" type version that stripped each series down to 1-2 hours per season, and loses the rest. I don't ever need to watch another episode that is just some droids on a wacky adventure together.
Ahsoka has a great story arc, but yeah, the overarching story, the actual Clone Wars, is hindered by being hard to care all that much about, because so few of the characters involved are made to matter.
I for one am excited that Prime will be getting the MGM library. I want my streaming services to have the classics, and it's a little known fact that Prime has a lot of classics, far more than Netflix. Only HBO Max is better. So with any luck, soon I will have tons and tons of great old movies. As for original content, most of it doesn't appeal in the least, and when it does, it usually gets cancelled.
So regarding illegal substances, is this something new, or have pitchers always done it and everyone looked the other way when it wasn't Gaylord Perry? If the latter, I am not really sure it's time to change how this is approached.
I don't know about always, but in the recent past, going back to the 90s, it has been common. But there has been an explosion of usage with the discovery of spin rate metrics.
The substances improve grip, so pitchers have always liked that to improve control. Hitters and the game writ large, has turned a mostly blind eye because of the control benefit. As the realization that pitchers could use these substances to not only improve control but improve movement, the tide has started to turn against the pitchers. It's one thing to be able to miss batters, it's a problem when you miss bats
It's also a problem when you don't know where the ball is going you just know you're spinning it really fast (which is to say HBP is up quite a bit too, with some recent gnarly examples of dudes getting beaned).
my hypothesis is that the spin rate discovery has encouraged pitchers to attempt exploitation. If you are using something you try to spin even more, maybe losing control.
the flip side is the "crackdown" on substances this year has scared certain pitchers and led to loss of control.
I have no data, but that is where I would start looking.
Pitchers and teams both. There's a reason the Astros prioritize high spin rate FB pitchers and then have them pitch at the top of the zone. The crackdown is always gonna be tough because if you really enforced it across the board you would nail SO MANY pitchers. MLB doesn't wanna do that so instead we get selective/random enforcement. That is a bad, bad model.
MLB is leaning hard into the idea that teams shall not be scheduled to play more than fourteen innings in any one day.
This being the only trip the Reds are making to DC this year, last night's suspended game is scheduled to resume at 2:05pm today in the bottom of the fourth, and will be allowed to run its full nine inning course.
However...
The game that was regularly scheduled for this evening will still be played at 7:05pm as planned, but will now be truncated to seven innings.
Last night's score notwithstanding, I wonder if it had been suspended and resumed today in like the 8th inning if the regular game would still be truncated or if there's a line somewhere?
Charlie and Dave just said during Nats warm-up that if the game is suspended before it gets to an official game, that’s when they shorten the second game… Don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense and I’m inclined to trust them.
Maryland quickly followed Ohio's lead, because Gov. Larry Slogan, err, Hogan, has never had an original idea in his life. They're giving out $40K a day for 40 days, then $400K on July 4.
I’m such a fan of this overall. A lot of the same people who underestimate COVID risk are the people who overestimate their risk of winning a sweepstakes. Just plain love it, plus I’m already entered into it.
In other news, here’s to “naked guy doing belly slides and hiding in the tube” being the ONLY tarp drama the Nats’ grounds crew experienced last night!
I can't pinpoint the game (it MAY have been Griffey's Reds debut on Opening Day 2000) but I was once at Riverfront* Stadium during a rain delay, and the same thing happened: guy runs around on the tarp, and then crawls inside the tarp tube to temporarily "escape" while the cops awkwardly stand around and peer inside, trying to talk him out.
I couldn't help but notice that as the Reds moved to GABP in 2003, the tarp tube now has end caps, making that maneuver impossible. Poor job of advance scouting by the Nats! :-)
It was pretty windy on the east coast last night, so rolling the tube off the tarp might’ve resulted in an even bigger disaster with the tarp flying around.
Not that the Keystone Cops put that much thought into the decision...
Back in the early 80's I was attending high school in southeastern Pennsylvania. Arlen Specter visited during some type of school meeting with all 200 of us were sitting in the gym bleachers. I don't remember why he was there or what he said, but I distinctly remember it was so far over the heads of a bunch of Amish country high schoolers that we all sat there, silent and slack-jawed. I don't know where I was going with that, but it's my only Arlen story, so there you go.
The first example of "Improv rather than long-term plot planning in mass media leading to great art" that leaps to mind for me is Vince Gilligan's work on BREAKING BAD. Listening to the show's podcast as the final season was coming out was remarkable. It seemed they planned almost nothing and had done so for every season. They would simply come up with cool ideas and trust that it would all work out. Which it mostly did.
Your next novel should be titled, “This is baseball’s dirty little secret....no THIS is baseball’s dirty little secret...no wait...*exhale* Here are 750 pages of transgressions all sold under the umbrella of baseball’s dirty little secret....volume one.” Maybe workshop that with Craig the Succinct.
Well, he thinks he doesn't have to apologize to the ones who didn't come forward because they were apparently OK with it. No harm, no foul, in his view.
(I know it's a small, tiny, insignificant thing here, but for editors and former editors (me) this jumps off the page and sits in our collective craw. We immediately think something like: I wonder how many people read this shite before it was issued. You would think 15-20 but maybe, since it's crap, only two and neither one said, "Hey, slick, you don't capitalize 'clubs.'"
We knew this, but MLB could not care less about this ENTIRE issue.
As crappy as that statement was, it was far better than MLBs. Someone needs to tell MLB that they don't have to thank people in a statement about discipline. In fact it's better not to thank people you should be punishing for allowing this type of behavior to exist and actually thrive.
I wondered why all of the articles I saw on the MGM/Amazon deal focused on the Bond franchise. Bond is a big deal, but I thought MGM had much more famous stuff. But apparently they had already sold that off.
Doesn't MGM own The Apprentice? Give Jeff Bezos control of the outtakes that allegedly have Mr. Trump using racial slurs. I'm sure after Mr. Bezos was routinely castigated by the former President that he wouldn't think of releasing those clips.
FWIW, Red Sox broadcaster, Jerry Remy says he’s all for pitchers using substances to get a better grip on the baseball, and he’s one of those “unwritten rules/this is how we did it back in my day” guys. His concern is with how hard pitchers throw these days hitters should be happy they are getting a better grip on the baseball so the ball goes where it’s supposed to. You don’t want a guy throwing upper 90s and having the ball leave his hand a fraction of a second too soon and go straight at the batters head. Move the mound back 6-12 inches and come up with a list of acceptable substances pitchers can use.
If all the substances did was gave pitchers better control of their fastball, I think everyone would be OK with it. The problem is it allows pitchers to put ungodly, unhittable spin on the ball too.
Well, pretty frequently stated by pitchers, who always say that hitters have told them this; position players seldom say it unprompted, but in response to "pitchers say that hitters would rather they do this than have balls fly out of control at their heads". Remy's relatively rare in that regard, although I think he just anticipates that framing now.
I wonder, if MLB had the guts to blanket-ban all doctoring substances, if you'd see a return of more outcomes than K/HR/BB? Maybe the impact of gunk on the game has been the most consequential in recent years?
Craig, I’d be interested to read about your thoughts on where the Star Wars franchise could have went with the last 3 ? A full column dedicated to that would be fantastic!
Yasmani Grandal was with the Padres for a while, and then with the Dodgers, so we saw him a lot in NL West matchups. Our household routine: "Hey, Grandal's up!" "Who's up next?" (deep movie announcer voice) "GRANDAL'S MOTHER".
Beowulf! I'm enough of a dork that I make a similar joke most times I'm watching Grandal play (and he had a decent short run with the Brewers, so... yeah).
Did you try googling "Grandal's mother"? Even tho it's not quite the correct spelling, it should come up...
I'm taking it this means she was Grendel's mother in that Beowulf movie.
If you're doing a super-short Beowulf synopsis it starts something like "B rose to fame bc he took out Grendel - but then after Grendel, you get Grendel's momma, and she's pissed..."
HAHAHA
The Force Awakens was fun but really just A New Hope with everything bigger. I am one of the people who loved The Last Jedi. It wasn't perfect but I'd put it in the top tier of Star Wars movies. But Rise of Skywalker was such a load of steaming bantha poodoo.
Say what you will about the prequels, and there are A LOT of bad things to be said about them. At least Lucas had a clear vision of what he wanted the overarching story to be. The writing, direction, and execution? Well, it wasn't great. To say the least. Which in a way makes them even more disappointing since everything for a good trilogy was there.
"Chewie...we're home." Yeah, right in the feels.
A lot of TLJ wasn't great. But a lot of it was. I loved Luke as a jaded old man, and the idea of Rey coming from nothing. It makes the Force a lot more random. I wish Abrams had run with that.
"Okay, see, there's this galaxy where they've mastered interstellar travel and have lasers that can vaporize entire planets. But they also sometimes use weapons tech that was outmoded before the first Iraq War, because reasons."
Rian Johnson really screwed over Finn as a character. His entire arc in The Force Awakens is about deciding to stay and be a part of something bigger than himself, because it's the right thing to do, and then he wakes up near the start of The Last Jedi, and it's like The Force Awakens was just a dream, with him immediately trying to run away again. John Boyega has talked about after enjoying the experience of making The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi soured him on being a part of Star Wars.
My elevator pitch for fixing the prequels is simple: Darth Maul (who was an awesome villain and was given such a terrible death that the animated series had to retcon it) spends 2-1/2 movies just straight murdering Jedi. He is finally killed when, like, eight Jedi team up against him, but Padme is mortally wounded in the fray, and Palpatine convinces Anakin the Jedi are at fault for her death. Also, Anakin is maybe 16 years old when Obi-Wan meets him, which reduces the *ick* factor of his relationship with Padme. Everything else can be largely the same. Boom. Sorted.
I think there's SOME great storytelling in both those animated series, but also a massive amount of filler. I know that is probably close to unavoidable with series that are asked to come up with 10-20 episodes for numerous seasons, but it would be nice if there was a "director's cut" type version that stripped each series down to 1-2 hours per season, and loses the rest. I don't ever need to watch another episode that is just some droids on a wacky adventure together.
Ahsoka has a great story arc, but yeah, the overarching story, the actual Clone Wars, is hindered by being hard to care all that much about, because so few of the characters involved are made to matter.
Today, and in all such matchups, we are all Beaver Faithful. Or Sith faithful. One or t'other.
Craig, you are up too early. Earlier than me!
I for one am excited that Prime will be getting the MGM library. I want my streaming services to have the classics, and it's a little known fact that Prime has a lot of classics, far more than Netflix. Only HBO Max is better. So with any luck, soon I will have tons and tons of great old movies. As for original content, most of it doesn't appeal in the least, and when it does, it usually gets cancelled.
So regarding illegal substances, is this something new, or have pitchers always done it and everyone looked the other way when it wasn't Gaylord Perry? If the latter, I am not really sure it's time to change how this is approached.
I don't know about always, but in the recent past, going back to the 90s, it has been common. But there has been an explosion of usage with the discovery of spin rate metrics.
The substances improve grip, so pitchers have always liked that to improve control. Hitters and the game writ large, has turned a mostly blind eye because of the control benefit. As the realization that pitchers could use these substances to not only improve control but improve movement, the tide has started to turn against the pitchers. It's one thing to be able to miss batters, it's a problem when you miss bats
It's also a problem when you don't know where the ball is going you just know you're spinning it really fast (which is to say HBP is up quite a bit too, with some recent gnarly examples of dudes getting beaned).
my hypothesis is that the spin rate discovery has encouraged pitchers to attempt exploitation. If you are using something you try to spin even more, maybe losing control.
the flip side is the "crackdown" on substances this year has scared certain pitchers and led to loss of control.
I have no data, but that is where I would start looking.
Pitchers and teams both. There's a reason the Astros prioritize high spin rate FB pitchers and then have them pitch at the top of the zone. The crackdown is always gonna be tough because if you really enforced it across the board you would nail SO MANY pitchers. MLB doesn't wanna do that so instead we get selective/random enforcement. That is a bad, bad model.
MLB is leaning hard into the idea that teams shall not be scheduled to play more than fourteen innings in any one day.
This being the only trip the Reds are making to DC this year, last night's suspended game is scheduled to resume at 2:05pm today in the bottom of the fourth, and will be allowed to run its full nine inning course.
However...
The game that was regularly scheduled for this evening will still be played at 7:05pm as planned, but will now be truncated to seven innings.
Last night's score notwithstanding, I wonder if it had been suspended and resumed today in like the 8th inning if the regular game would still be truncated or if there's a line somewhere?
So the fans who bought tickets to tonight's game are going to get a 22% refund?
On the contrary - the game will be 28% more exciting!
Charlie and Dave just said during Nats warm-up that if the game is suspended before it gets to an official game, that’s when they shorten the second game… Don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense and I’m inclined to trust them.
FWIW, I don't think the first "Share" link works right. But the second does.
Maryland quickly followed Ohio's lead, because Gov. Larry Slogan, err, Hogan, has never had an original idea in his life. They're giving out $40K a day for 40 days, then $400K on July 4.
If these giveaways inspire vaccine( and math)-averse people to get their shots, I’m all for it.
I’m such a fan of this overall. A lot of the same people who underestimate COVID risk are the people who overestimate their risk of winning a sweepstakes. Just plain love it, plus I’m already entered into it.
In other news, here’s to “naked guy doing belly slides and hiding in the tube” being the ONLY tarp drama the Nats’ grounds crew experienced last night!
I can't pinpoint the game (it MAY have been Griffey's Reds debut on Opening Day 2000) but I was once at Riverfront* Stadium during a rain delay, and the same thing happened: guy runs around on the tarp, and then crawls inside the tarp tube to temporarily "escape" while the cops awkwardly stand around and peer inside, trying to talk him out.
I couldn't help but notice that as the Reds moved to GABP in 2003, the tarp tube now has end caps, making that maneuver impossible. Poor job of advance scouting by the Nats! :-)
*apologies to the fine folks at Cinergy
It was pretty windy on the east coast last night, so rolling the tube off the tarp might’ve resulted in an even bigger disaster with the tarp flying around.
Not that the Keystone Cops put that much thought into the decision...
Sorry.
Yes, and we should just be thankful the cops didn’t start shooting the streaker from opposite ends of the tube
TIL what a tarp tube is. Also - that guy should share his glutes routine.
Back in the early 80's I was attending high school in southeastern Pennsylvania. Arlen Specter visited during some type of school meeting with all 200 of us were sitting in the gym bleachers. I don't remember why he was there or what he said, but I distinctly remember it was so far over the heads of a bunch of Amish country high schoolers that we all sat there, silent and slack-jawed. I don't know where I was going with that, but it's my only Arlen story, so there you go.
The first example of "Improv rather than long-term plot planning in mass media leading to great art" that leaps to mind for me is Vince Gilligan's work on BREAKING BAD. Listening to the show's podcast as the final season was coming out was remarkable. It seemed they planned almost nothing and had done so for every season. They would simply come up with cool ideas and trust that it would all work out. Which it mostly did.
Your next novel should be titled, “This is baseball’s dirty little secret....no THIS is baseball’s dirty little secret...no wait...*exhale* Here are 750 pages of transgressions all sold under the umbrella of baseball’s dirty little secret....volume one.” Maybe workshop that with Craig the Succinct.
But then..they wouldn’t be baseball’s unwritten secrets! So nothing to argue fruitlessly about...
Mickey only apologized to the women who came forward ? You mean these were the only ones ?
Well, he thinks he doesn't have to apologize to the ones who didn't come forward because they were apparently OK with it. No harm, no foul, in his view.
And that, my friend, is the problem
No punishment for the Clubs.
MLB capitalized "Clubs" in its statement.
(I know it's a small, tiny, insignificant thing here, but for editors and former editors (me) this jumps off the page and sits in our collective craw. We immediately think something like: I wonder how many people read this shite before it was issued. You would think 15-20 but maybe, since it's crap, only two and neither one said, "Hey, slick, you don't capitalize 'clubs.'"
We knew this, but MLB could not care less about this ENTIRE issue.
TY for letting me vent.
As crappy as that statement was, it was far better than MLBs. Someone needs to tell MLB that they don't have to thank people in a statement about discipline. In fact it's better not to thank people you should be punishing for allowing this type of behavior to exist and actually thrive.
I wondered why all of the articles I saw on the MGM/Amazon deal focused on the Bond franchise. Bond is a big deal, but I thought MGM had much more famous stuff. But apparently they had already sold that off.
Doesn't MGM own The Apprentice? Give Jeff Bezos control of the outtakes that allegedly have Mr. Trump using racial slurs. I'm sure after Mr. Bezos was routinely castigated by the former President that he wouldn't think of releasing those clips.
that would be delicious.
FWIW, Red Sox broadcaster, Jerry Remy says he’s all for pitchers using substances to get a better grip on the baseball, and he’s one of those “unwritten rules/this is how we did it back in my day” guys. His concern is with how hard pitchers throw these days hitters should be happy they are getting a better grip on the baseball so the ball goes where it’s supposed to. You don’t want a guy throwing upper 90s and having the ball leave his hand a fraction of a second too soon and go straight at the batters head. Move the mound back 6-12 inches and come up with a list of acceptable substances pitchers can use.
If all the substances did was gave pitchers better control of their fastball, I think everyone would be OK with it. The problem is it allows pitchers to put ungodly, unhittable spin on the ball too.
Remy isn't the only one. It is a pretty frequently stated comment from active players, managers, and announcers.
Well, pretty frequently stated by pitchers, who always say that hitters have told them this; position players seldom say it unprompted, but in response to "pitchers say that hitters would rather they do this than have balls fly out of control at their heads". Remy's relatively rare in that regard, although I think he just anticipates that framing now.
I wonder, if MLB had the guts to blanket-ban all doctoring substances, if you'd see a return of more outcomes than K/HR/BB? Maybe the impact of gunk on the game has been the most consequential in recent years?
Craig, I’d be interested to read about your thoughts on where the Star Wars franchise could have went with the last 3 ? A full column dedicated to that would be fantastic!
My only real surprise with the Callaway announcement was that it didn't drop at 4:30 pm on the Friday of a holiday weekend.