Trash talk, Scherzer lays an egg, the Cubs are getting sued, home runs are being elaborately celebrated, and we talk about the killing of Jordan Neely, The National, and parking
I have learned that the most devastating thing a Minnesotan can say is "well, THAT was interesting." It's like "bless your heart" but above the 45th parallel.
But how many "opes" have you heard? I've lived in Minnesota nearly my entire life (except for three years in Columbus) and never used or heard "ope." Yet it is supposedly a common saying here. As in, "Ope, let me just squeeze past you there."
Keynan Middleton’s got some balls openly calling a player a “cheater.” Now I’d never heard of him before this and I’m sure there’s other people here who haven’t either. I just wonder if comments like that stand to hurt him later because he’s not established enough. Like if Aaron Judge called Altuve a “cheater” or said he “disgraced the game,” that’s not hurting Judge’s contract last year. Same thing with someone like Corey Seager had he said it in the spring of 2020. They’ve got enough hype and enough of a resume to get away with it. Does a 29-year-old journeyman relieve have the cachet to get away with it?
With that said, I don’t want Middleton issuing some forced apology today. Talk your shit!
Given that cheating, in one form or another, has been part of baseball for a century, it's really something that players are willing to publicly call out other players for cheating. It tells you (or at least me) that what the Astros did was really over the top vs scuffed balls or sticky stuff or runner on second giving signals.
FWIW, Robinson Chirinos played on the 2019 Astros, not the 2019 team. So Keynan Middleton would have to believe the unsubstantiated, really whacky, yet fun to speculate on wearable buzzer rumors to hate Chirinos as a cheater.
Hopefully this is less painful after two trophies in 5 years, but few things give me more spiteful joy than the starring role Correa plays in the 2019 World Series video - literally making breakfast in his kitchen ... though a little baffling that MLB left that in the final cut; it's not like it was live and they couldn't go with something else.
Robinson Chirinos homered in Game 3 of the 2019 Series - I know because I was there and I had just said to my wife that he was a "light hitting catcher." Shut up, dumbass.
Yeah, from that video it was pretty obvious that MLB expected the Astros to win. And although they never came out and said it, I bet they were really glad later that the Nats won!
I love baseball, and I love celebrations, but count me as one of the people nonplussed by the current boom in staged celebrations in MLB. The Nats have decided to go with a powdered wig à la George Washington… and I have seen way more stories about the wig than the actual number of home runs celebrated (one).
PS It really is remarkable how much better a team does when it fields well. The Nats are mostly slap/line drive hitters, and their pitching staff is perfectly cromulent, but they have stopped making the bonehead errors that made them excruciating to watch in previous years. I’ll take it.
PPS if I were the DBacks GM, Pfaadt would have just showed up one day and refused to leave.
Red Sox have a pair of blow up dumbbells they give to the HR hitter, he uses them to high-five the players down the dugout the curl them a few times. Personally, I like the laundry cart celebration from the last few years. That was more organically thought up Palwecki one night early in the season, seemed to just sorta happen.
Yes - I always liked Adam Eaton and Howie Kendrick racing their imaginary muscle cars on the bench as well - or even the goofy dancing the 2019 Nats did whenever someone (including Stephen Strasburg!) went yard.
I also miss the Nats hitting HRs but that's another matter.
There is one, called "Buzzsaw" by former WaPo beat writer Jesse Dougherty (he's great but the book was clearly rushed and just OK) - but I'd love to read "And Now We Dance".
I wrote a short essay with that title for one of my digital time capsule collections of my writings. It, along with seven other essays of mine, is here:
Yes, I have been saving that. (Note: the song is inspired by the Detroit Riots of the Civil Rights Era, and of course I have no desire to trivialize that. But it's really quite a banger, that song.)
Peraza must have injured his ankle in solidarity with Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson.
My only issue with home run celebrations is how much you should go nuts over the commonplace. Even celebrations can get dull. Teams should at least come up with new ways to celebrate during the season instead of doing the same thing every time.
I had not heard about Jordan Neely. I know I don't check the news that often, but this does seem like something that should be the lead on Morning Edition's local segment. How horrifying. Why didn't anyone try to stop this instead of waiting for the cops? And obviously, it's now legal in NYC for white men to murder Black homeless men if no charges were pressed. Really curious if our exalted mayor will show any outrage, given that he's shown the usual level of sympathy of the homeless. Who last I heard were, along with rats, an existential threat to our way of life.
I still get the dead tree Times, even if I regularly read yesterday's paper over my morning coffee. I've seen multiple stories about Jordan Neely, albeit on the inside pages.
Circling back to the discussions of a couple of days ago, Gordon Lightfoot also wrote a song about the Detroit riots: “Black Day in July”. He was really tuned in to social justice themes.
In all seriousness, this is what I love about baseball.
The Tigers ARE bad, barely winning 1/3 of their games going into yesterday (though I suspect they win close to 70 when all is said and done) and the Mets are stacked. And yet we still expect the games to be competitive and a Tigers sweep isn't unlikely.
That was back in the olden days for sure - Tigers & Royals both over .500 in July, 34,000 fans showed up @ Comerica for a 3 hour 14 minute game - all things we may never see again in our lives
This game was at Fenway. Have we adopted the soccer convention of listing the home team first around here?
Richmond VA just eliminated all parking minimums so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. In all my time going downtown for dinners or games or whatever I have never had trouble finding parking, and usually I can find a spot on the street.
Bunch of fights in Northern Virginia about minimums too - there were a few projects that NIMBYs were trying (unsuccessfully) to kill using the parking requirements; now, even Metro is admitting that it doesn't need the lakes/mountains of parking it has been building.
Parking was a huge pain in the ass in my old, extremely dense neighborhood in LA that was built pre-minimums.
Almost all multi-family units with only street parking, many of the units occupied by multiple generations with 3+ vehicles.
This led to an elaborate system of informal parking norms where people would mark off their spots with cones or trash cans, or send their kids out to stand and block spots, etc.
My wife and I consolidated to one car, but it was still a 20-40 minute challenge every night to find parking. Luckily a monthly lot opened nearby and we were more than happy to pay $150 a month for a spot.
That area is now zoned to have no parking minimums and it causes pretty substantial fights between developers and the largely working class immigrant community.
One of those situations where the cost of the objectively correct move for progress is borne by the people who can least afford to weather it.
The one or two times a year that Portland gets snow, the city shuts down until it melts. No salt, few plows, and lots of hills covered in wet, icy snow is a bad combo.
If you encounter a shoveled out space, feel free to take it. The owner is almost certainly not coming back. The car will surely be abandoned on the side of a road somewhere else in the city.
Thanks for the memories on the Red Sox Jays recap. I managed a mom and pop 1-Hour photo shop for a few years in just down the road from that Cracker Barrel off I-93 in Londonderry, NH when I was 20-22. I’ve eaten at it a few times, dated a girl for about 6 months that waited tables there, and I’d agree that Vald Jr. HR took out a car window in their parking lot.
Almost as bad for Mets fans, though there is some sign of players not named Pete hitting them.
Would signing more guys named Pete help?
Or we can rename them Pete Baty, Pete Alvarez, and Pete Vogelbach.
Literally LOL on that one!
Surely you noticed the Angels celebration in the ninth yesterday. Hopefully, someday, you'll get to see if the Cardinals have one.
And on Star Wars Day, Rey.
Well played, kind sir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCqh5ROtQRg
Everybody loves Ray.
Raylan Givens? They’d need much more of a no-bullshit attitude than they have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGh-L4-Crek
@ICameHereToSayThisButKnewInMyHeartItHadAlreadyBeenSaid
You could call me Ray.
Or you could call me Jay…
I have learned that the most devastating thing a Minnesotan can say is "well, THAT was interesting." It's like "bless your heart" but above the 45th parallel.
"Oh fer" is universal: "oh fer fun!" "oh fer true!" "oh fer terrible!" You might say it's the "jawn" of outstate Minnesota .
I know the author's daughter from another online forum. He was a well-respected academic.
Book? I just rely on Fargo. (My friends from MN don't sound a thing like that but can easily shift into Marge Gunderson-speak.)
Uff da!
But how many "opes" have you heard? I've lived in Minnesota nearly my entire life (except for three years in Columbus) and never used or heard "ope." Yet it is supposedly a common saying here. As in, "Ope, let me just squeeze past you there."
It's sort of a parody of "Minnesota Nice", but check out "Golan the Insatiable" anyway - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_the_Insatiable
I think the proprietor has resorted to trolling his subscribers.
Drew Smyly would like a word.
It was funnier to only list inactive pitchers.
The Mets might have trouble with them.....
Eduardo Rodriguez is currently outdueling Verlander, so... this has to be sorted out soon.
Keynan Middleton’s got some balls openly calling a player a “cheater.” Now I’d never heard of him before this and I’m sure there’s other people here who haven’t either. I just wonder if comments like that stand to hurt him later because he’s not established enough. Like if Aaron Judge called Altuve a “cheater” or said he “disgraced the game,” that’s not hurting Judge’s contract last year. Same thing with someone like Corey Seager had he said it in the spring of 2020. They’ve got enough hype and enough of a resume to get away with it. Does a 29-year-old journeyman relieve have the cachet to get away with it?
With that said, I don’t want Middleton issuing some forced apology today. Talk your shit!
The Yankees cheated in a similar way in 2015-16 and I don’t hear a lot of cheating talk about them.
(Not an Astros fan)
Given that cheating, in one form or another, has been part of baseball for a century, it's really something that players are willing to publicly call out other players for cheating. It tells you (or at least me) that what the Astros did was really over the top vs scuffed balls or sticky stuff or runner on second giving signals.
FWIW, Robinson Chirinos played on the 2019 Astros, not the 2019 team. So Keynan Middleton would have to believe the unsubstantiated, really whacky, yet fun to speculate on wearable buzzer rumors to hate Chirinos as a cheater.
Hopefully this is less painful after two trophies in 5 years, but few things give me more spiteful joy than the starring role Correa plays in the 2019 World Series video - literally making breakfast in his kitchen ... though a little baffling that MLB left that in the final cut; it's not like it was live and they couldn't go with something else.
Robinson Chirinos homered in Game 3 of the 2019 Series - I know because I was there and I had just said to my wife that he was a "light hitting catcher." Shut up, dumbass.
Yeah, from that video it was pretty obvious that MLB expected the Astros to win. And although they never came out and said it, I bet they were really glad later that the Nats won!
The Nats made their own video.
I have it ;) Again, I am still surprised that MLB left that Correa stuff in but ::shrug:: - the comedic effect is pretty sweet.
I love baseball, and I love celebrations, but count me as one of the people nonplussed by the current boom in staged celebrations in MLB. The Nats have decided to go with a powdered wig à la George Washington… and I have seen way more stories about the wig than the actual number of home runs celebrated (one).
PS It really is remarkable how much better a team does when it fields well. The Nats are mostly slap/line drive hitters, and their pitching staff is perfectly cromulent, but they have stopped making the bonehead errors that made them excruciating to watch in previous years. I’ll take it.
PPS if I were the DBacks GM, Pfaadt would have just showed up one day and refused to leave.
PPPS Great piece, Lois!
Red Sox have a pair of blow up dumbbells they give to the HR hitter, he uses them to high-five the players down the dugout the curl them a few times. Personally, I like the laundry cart celebration from the last few years. That was more organically thought up Palwecki one night early in the season, seemed to just sorta happen.
Yes - I always liked Adam Eaton and Howie Kendrick racing their imaginary muscle cars on the bench as well - or even the goofy dancing the 2019 Nats did whenever someone (including Stephen Strasburg!) went yard.
I also miss the Nats hitting HRs but that's another matter.
If anyone writes a book about the 2019 Nats (and I dunno, maybe someone has) it ought to be titled “And Now We Dance”.
There is one, called "Buzzsaw" by former WaPo beat writer Jesse Dougherty (he's great but the book was clearly rushed and just OK) - but I'd love to read "And Now We Dance".
I wrote a short essay with that title for one of my digital time capsule collections of my writings. It, along with seven other essays of mine, is here:
https://efanzines.com/MBP/MyBackPages-23.pdf
After that start, after that rotten day, is it time for the Mets to...panic in Detroit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM3fCUmSheY
Yes, I have been saving that. (Note: the song is inspired by the Detroit Riots of the Civil Rights Era, and of course I have no desire to trivialize that. But it's really quite a banger, that song.)
Peraza must have injured his ankle in solidarity with Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson.
My only issue with home run celebrations is how much you should go nuts over the commonplace. Even celebrations can get dull. Teams should at least come up with new ways to celebrate during the season instead of doing the same thing every time.
I had not heard about Jordan Neely. I know I don't check the news that often, but this does seem like something that should be the lead on Morning Edition's local segment. How horrifying. Why didn't anyone try to stop this instead of waiting for the cops? And obviously, it's now legal in NYC for white men to murder Black homeless men if no charges were pressed. Really curious if our exalted mayor will show any outrage, given that he's shown the usual level of sympathy of the homeless. Who last I heard were, along with rats, an existential threat to our way of life.
I still get the dead tree Times, even if I regularly read yesterday's paper over my morning coffee. I've seen multiple stories about Jordan Neely, albeit on the inside pages.
Simon, you should not go looking for Hochul and Adams' comments from last night. Trust me.
Circling back to the discussions of a couple of days ago, Gordon Lightfoot also wrote a song about the Detroit riots: “Black Day in July”. He was really tuned in to social justice themes.
Max Scherzer's Game Score was only 22, his worst for a while.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET201406170.shtml
That was so long ago that the opposing starter has now been dead for more than six years.
Bobby Cox vibe. (Braves were jobbed by a "Yankee Stadium" HR in either 1996 or 1999.)
In all seriousness, this is what I love about baseball.
The Tigers ARE bad, barely winning 1/3 of their games going into yesterday (though I suspect they win close to 70 when all is said and done) and the Mets are stacked. And yet we still expect the games to be competitive and a Tigers sweep isn't unlikely.
That was back in the olden days for sure - Tigers & Royals both over .500 in July, 34,000 fans showed up @ Comerica for a 3 hour 14 minute game - all things we may never see again in our lives
Lois, thank you for writing! I really enjoyed it.
You know you're a Craig veteran when you insist on reading "Doug Fister" as "Dog Fister." Carry on and have a wonderful day!
I'm glad I'm not the only one. At first glance I saw Doug as a typo.
I’m assuming that this was the first time all year Craig proofread his writing
The AI read along feature on the Substack app even does it.
I'll just leave this here for Craig.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/136ldhl/essex_grays_pub_that_displayed_golly_dolls_closes/?%24deep_link=true&correlation_id=890214d5-d083-4207-bfe4-b74a431aa47f&post_fullname=t3_136ldhl&post_index=5&ref=email_digest&ref_campaign=email_digest&ref_source=email&utm_content=post_title&utm_medium=Email+Amazon+SES&%243p=e_as&_branch_match_id=976942979810805318&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAA22Q62rDMAyFnyb7l15i97JBGYOx1xBqrCSmim1smbZvP6Xd9mtgm8N3ONLBk0gqb%2Bt1Jue8rDClFftwWZv03nTWpBMBlheVMfvRB2SomU%2FTkmrMR9N96bler6uffB9nBVlvDV7IXXwY3YOpM1OQonJr9uwmVkWl0A3GjPcCqZ5BJhRwviTGOzkYI%2FMdnL4Feo6FlnRjdKd1RAmWpo35lFyp6fZ9zJkYxccA3ik%2Fvm66rXW71m2OprXd5tCeB7Lt%2BWDRmi2iPQyaS7EIDJU54EzLOAN%2FDZ%2BmD45u6uwUZBpU0YyetelIRZ4QepwT%2BjH875ZYc0%2B%2FnsIqM%2FQxiP6J0sca8cL0Dd4VqL2RAQAA
All that stuff after the /? is tracking information. The much smaller base link works:
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/136ldhl/essex_grays_pub_that_displayed_golly_dolls_closes/
Always wondered what that crap was!
Actually, that link was just to a reddit post. Here's the actual story:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-65471314
Great song, like the counting crows version better.
Red Sox 8, Blue Jays 3:
This game was at Fenway. Have we adopted the soccer convention of listing the home team first around here?
Richmond VA just eliminated all parking minimums so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. In all my time going downtown for dinners or games or whatever I have never had trouble finding parking, and usually I can find a spot on the street.
Bunch of fights in Northern Virginia about minimums too - there were a few projects that NIMBYs were trying (unsuccessfully) to kill using the parking requirements; now, even Metro is admitting that it doesn't need the lakes/mountains of parking it has been building.
Parking was a huge pain in the ass in my old, extremely dense neighborhood in LA that was built pre-minimums.
Almost all multi-family units with only street parking, many of the units occupied by multiple generations with 3+ vehicles.
This led to an elaborate system of informal parking norms where people would mark off their spots with cones or trash cans, or send their kids out to stand and block spots, etc.
My wife and I consolidated to one car, but it was still a 20-40 minute challenge every night to find parking. Luckily a monthly lot opened nearby and we were more than happy to pay $150 a month for a spot.
That area is now zoned to have no parking minimums and it causes pretty substantial fights between developers and the largely working class immigrant community.
One of those situations where the cost of the objectively correct move for progress is borne by the people who can least afford to weather it.
And here I thought “dibs” was strictly a Chicago thing...
It's a Boston tradition that if you shovel out a spot, you can 'save' it. Though it gets taken to pretty silly extremes at times.
That’s a tradition everywhere I’ve lived. Except NorCal, for…reasons.
The one or two times a year that Portland gets snow, the city shuts down until it melts. No salt, few plows, and lots of hills covered in wet, icy snow is a bad combo.
If you encounter a shoveled out space, feel free to take it. The owner is almost certainly not coming back. The car will surely be abandoned on the side of a road somewhere else in the city.
We generally list the winning team first ;)
The 2017 Cubs had a thing where Tommy La Stella or Ian Happ would interview a player who hit a home run as their "celebration." My quick google search came up with this link :https://www.mlb.com/cut4/tommy-la-stella-and-ian-happ-have-been-interviewing-cubs-home-run-hitters-c25130
Certainly it's not the costumes and Viking helmets of today, but it was fun little way to celebrate.
Thanks for the memories on the Red Sox Jays recap. I managed a mom and pop 1-Hour photo shop for a few years in just down the road from that Cracker Barrel off I-93 in Londonderry, NH when I was 20-22. I’ve eaten at it a few times, dated a girl for about 6 months that waited tables there, and I’d agree that Vald Jr. HR took out a car window in their parking lot.