Aaron Judge hits 61, the Dodgers win 107, a lotta Manfred Man games, Sister Jean's nasty cheese, war crimes, the weather, business dystopia, Bob Dylan, and Van Hagar
2. Eddie was a high point in Guitar God evolution and deserves all the praise he gets (including for his harmonies with Anthony), while Roth was more sui generis (unless you count Jim Dandy) -- but if you liked what DLR was doing he was as much of a draw as Eddie IMO.
Edward wasn't the "whole" show. And I say this as a total Edward geek. He was the engine, sure, and he was clearly the primary creative force behind the music. He deserves all the accolades he gets, and probably more given the extent to which his influence extended way beyond the boundaries of the band.
That said Alex is a criminally underrated rock drummer, and a massive part of the reason VH music swings the way that it does. Without his feel, and that brotherly connection with Ed, that band would never have been the same.
And that leads to the questions of "how is he doing it?" - and I repeat what I said in the past that I think he's as clean as Ken Griffey Jr - and "how can it be duplicated?" Which is to say, are there any other 6-8 hulks out there?
There is actually an attempt at an interesting article about what Judge is up to on The Athletic - in short, he made adjustments to his stance and his training habits. Alas the article gets into the sort of nitty gritty that makes me prefer saying "he's swinging and making solid contact." I really should be careful what questions I ask.
The interesting thing about your list is just how much Maris still stands out. A good player, for sure, but he really wasn't any of the others, someone who had one year where the ball was a beachball and never before and never again.
Liz Truss wishes she had gone and stood in a hurricane and got slapped with a tree, instead of going on local radio this morning and getting hammered in a multitude of regional accents over the titanic mess she has made in the 3 weeks since she killed the Queen.
It's also sad/nice/expected to see the Red Sox PR machine springing into action with the 'we would love Xander to remain part of the Red Sox into the future' etc etc - just setting us up for the fall when he refuses to take the inevitable, low-ball (probably in Pounds) offer in the offseason.
Far too much spin-doctoring for one 24hr period for me.
As I've mentioned before, me only begotten dotter is vacationing in the mother country at the moment, enjoying the hell out of the parity quid. She and her husband Chris were originally going to go over a few weeks ago but they changed their plans to give Truss a chance to rape the pound and for the Queen to be planted, ie, for all the stores and restaurants to be open again. Yesterday she had lunch with our beloved cousin Timmy for whom she used to work when she was living in London as a drama student and deputy chief docent of the Titanic exhibit at the Dome in Greenwich, back when Sterling was holding its own in the $1.60 range. Timmy isn't benefiting by paying for the meal and drinks but my offspring is blithe about pressing him for more expensive dishes, arguing that the dollar IS REALITY and he shouldn't be fooled by how his Amex bill is going to come back the same as always while hers will seem Lilliputian by comparison when it shows up next month.
Incidentally, I also get a kick out of how much the queue of cars trying to escape Russian conscription resembles the queue of lorries at Dover when the sheer idiocy of Brexit really began to kick in.....
i know the UK is a hot mess right now but the Premiere League games are going again, right, and isn't that all we need them for across the pond these days? Craig can go back to fawning over the Bees and we can eagerly await a Kop of Coffee with our spot of tea. I hope future king William starts thinking about hairpieces or maybe asking Harry to save him some.
I'm not a fan of backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforthball. It's as boring as a Neanderthalhitterball game. But I do love me a T20 at the Oval or a test match at Lords (my late father in law was a trustee at Lords and da missus and I had our wedding reception there).
Well, you can find any number of cricket rules web sites and just acquaint yourself with the basics. Then you can treat yourself to CLR James' masterpiece about the game, "Beyond a Boundary." It's the "Boys of Summer" of Cricket; really gets to the soul and history of it. And I'd top that off with the film version of "A Fire in Babylon," a documentary about the rise of the great West Indian teams of the late 20th Century, where you can see that passion in action. And of course, find some games on the net to watch.
Is it safe to say faux Thatcher has already failed? How long until the no confidence vote? She is going to cause so much suffering with her cheerful incompetence.
She's also not nearly as intelligent or canny, and will unfortunately make an even bigger mess. God save the Kingdom. She's the wrong truss for Britain's fiscal hernia.
WAR is inherently context neutral. But WPA basically does just that. Escobar was given 0.76 instead of 1, with Smith and Diaz on the pitching side being the other main contributors.
That's interesting. I was only kidding on the WAR thing, but it did have me wondering how it would work if it was based on game results, which is apparently what WPA does.
So if you added up the player's WPAs, positive and negative, for the winning team would the total be exactly 1.00? And for the losing team the total be exactly -1.00?
It seems the Mets win expectation was down to 4.7% right after the Marlins went ahead 4-0 in the 7th. Escobar had 3 run scoring hits between the 7th and the 10th. That's not easy to do.
Yup, that's exactly right on the math. And then you can sum all of those up cumulatively for a season to get to wins (or losses) added. Judge has 8.0 WPA on the season to 10.4 BR-WAR, leading in both. Ohtani has done more damage in lower leverage situations, so there's a larger disparity in WAR vs. WPA (9.2 vs. 5.4).
One problem with using WPA is that - assuming my understanding is correct - its current iteration assumes that almost all value is contributed by the batter and pitcher. If a baserunner goes first to third on a single, that accrues to the batter. If a shortstop makes a stop deep in the hole and nails the runner by a step, that accrues to the pitcher. (Minor exceptions: Stolen bases are an exception and I'm not sure how the PB / WP difference is allocated, but neither of those are big movers in the course of a season.)
After the Nats botched a run down and allowed the tying run to score in the 8th, it looked like another late game fade - but they actually held it together with help from the Manfred Man.
DC isn’t Georgia, but the Nats have (EDIT: four) games with the Phillies starting (EDIT: Friday), including a split doubleheader on Saturday - and it’s supposed to rain. A lot. If possible, the NL wild card race could get even weirder.
Not really sure who wants to see Van Halen without Eddie Van Halen, but Queen is still touring after Freddie Mercury died so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every time I hear someone talk about going to a concert of a band whose heyday was in the 70s, I always mime a PA announcer: "JONES COUNTY FAIRGOERS, GIVE IT UP FOR FOREIGNER's bassist and four guys you've never heard of!"
Minor correction: Nats and Phils are off today, and only scheduled to play four in soggy DC this weekend. I fully expect one game of Saturday's split DH to move to Friday, before the deluge, and to maybe see the Phils back in DC on October 6 for one or even two games.
Followup - you were right! They are moving Saturday night's game to Friday afternoon and leaving the Saturday afternoon game in place. I guess the idea is that the worst of the rain will be overnight Saturday. I actually have a ticket to Sunday's game because Mary and I would always go to the last home game of the season - but I'm not going if it's gross.
The Who toured with Zack Starkey playing drums. Lynyrd Skynyrd has kept touring with the younger brother of the lead singer who died. (They're playing Allentown, PA tomorrow!) Two of the four founding members of CCR started touring as "Creedence Clearwater Revisited" from the 1990s without John Fogerty (who was still alive, but had better things to do) or Tom (who was not alive, and hence did not).
Apparently a bunch of different groups (Yes, Quiet Riot, Canned Heat, Thin Lizzy, and Heart, to name a few) keep touring without ANY of their original members. I personally have seen the Monkees without Mike Nesmith and the Four Tops without Lawrence Payton. Good music is good music. Let folks make a living.
Yeah, apparently they're not the founding members though. I had no idea! And something I read made it sound like Ann went off and did her own thing, but that appears not to be the case.
Your point is taken though. They may not have founded the group, but their distinctive style and sound were what made the group successful and famous, so I could see folks being less than enamored of going to see a "Heart" concert without either of them.
Still though, would Crazy On You or Barracuda or Magic Man be terrible with, say, Lita Ford and Susan Tedeschi playing and singing them? Probably not.
I don’t want Craig to get in trouble with the corporate entity that paid for naming rights so let me correct him. It’s White Flight Field or WFF, not White Flight Park.
CJ Abrams could be a nice piece for the Nats rebuild. But looking at him makes me wonder if it’s his mom’s turn to bring the orange slices for after the game. Has he turned 12 yet?
Jake Odorizzi isn’t missing bats. There was only one swing and miss in his 3 plus IP last night. That outing fits well with the rest of his ATL starts. If Strider’s oblique is still wonky, the team will rely on Bryce Elder and bullpen games in October? Yuck.
Maris Junior made the rounds with McGwire in 98 and Dad was feted then. That was enough.
I saw Van Halen live maybe ten years ago. It was the only time I'd ever seen them, and my main reaction was that David Lee Roth had lost his fastball, his curve, and his slider, because from the opening number (Unchained) he just didn't seem to remember the words to most songs. I can see now that he was like that as far back as 1983 and likely earlier.
I suppose Sammy might've been better on vocals, but Van Halen without DLR wasn't Van Halen to me, and Van Halen without Eddie isn't a thing. I'll just stick to everything up through 1984, with the first four albums in heavier rotation.
My first concert was VH during the Diver Down tour in 82 or 83. I’ll keep my memories as is.
Some years ago, DLR was hired to play a corporate gig for a major Wall Street company. There was some kind of screwup and half his backing band didn’t show. A college classmate who did a little session work on a couple of songs that got airplay in the 90s then went into investment banking ended up playing bass.
I like some of the stuff on Diver Down, but I'll always remember a paraphrase of the final words to the Rolling Stone review of the album:
"Van Halen likes to say there's a little Van Halen in all of us. Unfortunately, there's too little Van Halen in this album."
They did at least an EP's worth of covers throughout their career: You Really Got Me, Ice Cream Man, You're No Good, Pretty Woman, Where Have All The Good Times Gone?, and Dancing In The Streets, and half of them were on Diver Down, so Rolling Stone kind of had a point.
Man, DLR is frustrating, huh? It’s like, dude, can you just hold it together, remember the words, try to sing a LITTLE, appreciate that you’re a key member of a band with one of the best guitarists of all time, and make us all happy? Doesn’t seem like it would’ve been that hard.
It's been said he's more of an entertainer than a singer, and on some level I can respect that, but I didn't realize just what that meant till I saw them live.
The closest parallel for me was Joe Piscopo's impression of late career Sinatra just making up words in a skit where he was singing TV theme songs.
It’s crazy that no one could carry DLR’s, uhhh, leopardskin jock strap, while the dude was just up there going “wuzzah wuzzah” by the end. EVH — who seemed to be a fairly challenging person — must’ve been like, “dude, can you just try?”
The first concert I went to without my parents (I use this caveat because as a lifetime resident of the northeast, I was baptized at Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen concerts starting at an age where I was far too young to appreciate it) was a Van Hagar reunion tour in like 2003 and my biggest takeaway was that Van Halen was absolutely the Eddie show. Having grown up in a "The only real Van Halen is with DLR" house, I quickly realized at that concert that as long as Eddie was doing 20-minute solos, the singer didn't matter all that much (or, at least it didn't 25 years after the songs came out)
I missed out on seeing Van Halen in their prime by way of living in some very out of the way places from 81-85. I did see Van Hagar twice, and they were great shows. But I was a fan of Sammy's solo stuff before his Ferrari mechanic got him the tryout with the VH brothers.
At the time, I was excited when I heard Sammy was replacing Dave, because I thought that Dave was responsible for the pop-influenced direction the band was heading in based on what 1984 was. Sammy would set things right, I thought, and Eddie and Sammy together would melt our faces.
Then I heard the first licks of Love Comes Walking In and Eat ‘Em And Smile, and I’ve never felt so wrong.
Sorry Craigster, the Manfred Man is the bastard child of the Neanderthal Hitter. He came along at the same time as the spread of the infection to the National League and is a product of the same idea: th fan base has become too dim, impatient and un-discriminating to enjoy the game in its original form and wants a conclusive result as quickly as possible. Both are forms of premature ejaculation, kinda like Faye Dunaway entertaining William Holden as briefly as possible in "Network."
According to local media types, the Sox are 13:12 in his starts and "he has given them everything expected"... So, you know, expectations. He also wants to come back next year, so maybe he can borrow Sister Jeans chair?
Considering Barry Bonds walked 177 times the year he hit 73, and Mark McGwire walked 162 times the year he hit 70, there's not a lot of room for Judge fans to complain about not him getting pitches to hit. (Judge is at 106) Any player hitting home runs at a record rate like these guys is of course going to get pitched around.
Did not know about that Dylan book. Maybe I ask for a birthday present this year.
I looked at the forecast for ATL this morning, and it's changed for the better. Accuweather is saying rain tomorrow night but gone by Saturday, and Weather.com is not even forecasting rain. Since this depends on the path of a hurricane, this could change in a hurry. But the likelihood all three games can be played over the weekend is pretty high.
And that win for the Mets last night really makes a difference. If they win just one game in ATL, they take the season series and would be in first place in the event of a tie. Of course, nothing is ever that simple for the Mets, but this promises to be a humdinger of a weekend and last night is a good way for the Mets to enter it. And if they do win the division or go deep in the playoffs, the "Escobar Game" will be the stuff of legend. (Frankly, even if they don't win the division or go deep, this season has had more special moments than we've seen in ages. Escobar's turnaround since coming off the IL has been a thrill ride.)
I really want to be more wowed by Judge's amazing season, but all the "this is the real record" crap and the de facto embrace of that by the media is making it hard. It's not the real record. Yes, it's the AL record, but as we noted, that doesn't really mean much anymore. Let's appreciate this for what it is instead of what it isn't. (Anyone notice, BTW, that the Yankees are on fire again?)
Is the real turning point of the season Brett Baty getting hurt? If he hadn't, it's possible Escobar is riding the bench while the Mets let the rook do his thing? Probably not but bad timing for poor Baty. BTW amazing that the "yankees are choking" thing completely vaporized. They got it turned around pretty fast, but both NY teams have to see how their pitching does in October and have to continue to hit in a timely smallball fashion with a few big knocks where needed (Alonso needs to stop chasing everything).
Baty will have his chance, and he really wasn't there yet.
Not going to complain too much about Alonso. More concerned, as usual, with the DHs. And also the Mets might not get Marte back any time soon. His finger is still too sore to hit with.
Yeah, Baty (first typoed this as Baby!) was called up not because he was ready but because the Mets needed a warm body and he was readier (or more versatile) than Vientos.
There was, with both, a certain degree of "they might be ready for the Show" though that didn't pan out. I wonder where they end up going forward. Escobar is still under contract next year, and Guillorme has a lot of team control left. I have seen suggestions of Vientos as a DH, but where does Baty go? (I know they avoided this like crazy, but I am not entirely averse to trading some prospects to fill holes, though I would expect the Mets to work the free agent market first.)
There is, of course, precedent for a situation in which a hurricane threatens a division series with major playoff implications (Ike). Selig's solution was to move the games to a stadium more than a thousand miles from the smaller market home team's stadium to a stadium within driving distance of the larger market away team.
So if history is any guide, congratulations to the Mets on their upcoming no hitter at Citizens Bank Park.
One of my favorite things of the last few days is "how much PTO does Roger Maris Jr have that he can follow the Yankees around?" It seems he's in the business of his Dad, running "61 Outfitters," so this is just another day on the job it seems. Nobody's going to take up your "ignore the other 3 guys" argument though. Let's celebrate the greatness that is Aaron Judge and keep it at that.
Nobody likes to see walks, so it was disheartening to see Judge walk so much, but many of those walks turned into runs scored by the Yankees, which didn't help hapless Toronto much the last 2 out of 3 games.
Did Rich Hill serve up one of Maris' home runs?
Chalk me up as not interested in a Van Hagar Ghost tour, but i'm down to see any of the G3 guitarists, in fact Satriani is touring and I want to take my son. Flying in a Blue Dream is an old personal favorite, both the song and album.
BTW the Michael Kay 61st HR call had a great callback to Phil Rizzuto in how he called Maris' 61st. Some may find that cheesy but as someone who once stood next to the scooter at a urinal at cooperstown on hall of fame induction day, i found it quite endearing.
A single walk is dull. A walk followed by another walk followed by two more is a run. And if it's my team being walked, I am fine with it. I am also fine with three walks and a home run.
I actually watched on MLB Network - did anyone else think the replay of the camera on Kay as he made the 61 call (where he's super aware that the camera is there) was awkward as hell even by YES standards?
In case anyone missed the lede, thanks to DudeMan for pointing out (as I came here to do but late), Maris Jr is *selling 61 merch* so yeah, it's in his best interest to push the "61 is the record" narrative.
Also, as *among the most skeptical Yankees fans eva* (TM pending) -- how many of us watched Rog Jr and Mrs Judge and thought EVERY time: there was a crew of about 8 in that box the other day and then there were 2. Vax rules anyone????!!???
As far as the whole real home run record thing, I very much fall on the “the real home run record is 73” side of things but I understand the reason a lot of people don’t and I don’t begrudge them if they personally want to discount the steroid guys.
I treat their claims with as much respect as I do the NCAA's assertion that Louisville didn't win the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. I saw the game, it happened, and if you want to penalize the school for something after the fact, go right ahead - but that doesn't change the fact that Louisville beat Michigan to win that game.
Bonds is the single-season MLB HR record holder. I don't really care if people want to whine about it or use the word "real" to describe someone who isn't the real record holder; that's their business.
But you do really care, that’s the thing. That’s the difference between what I said and you said. I believe Bonds is the single season record holder but I genuinely don’t care that others see it differently due to steroid use. Doesn’t effect me, I understand what the issue is. “I don’t really care if people want to whine about it” shows you do care, or you wouldn’t have used the term “whine” to belittle them.
HR-specific cheating by players they don't like is the third rail, of course. Those folks generally don't complain too much about players illegally using amphetamines or pitchers doctoring the ball.
I am both a Dodgers fan and a Giants fan (I contain multitudes). While the Giants have made me very very sad this season, the Dodgers have been my baseball happy place for many many seasons. They spend, yes, but they generally spend wisely and mostly make excellent trades.
Also 73 will always be more than 61 or 62. Sorry math is math. I watched Bonds take many an at bat and that man was a maestro. A generational athlete not just a generational baseball player.
2. Eddie was a high point in Guitar God evolution and deserves all the praise he gets (including for his harmonies with Anthony), while Roth was more sui generis (unless you count Jim Dandy) -- but if you liked what DLR was doing he was as much of a draw as Eddie IMO.
Edward wasn't the "whole" show. And I say this as a total Edward geek. He was the engine, sure, and he was clearly the primary creative force behind the music. He deserves all the accolades he gets, and probably more given the extent to which his influence extended way beyond the boundaries of the band.
That said Alex is a criminally underrated rock drummer, and a massive part of the reason VH music swings the way that it does. Without his feel, and that brotherly connection with Ed, that band would never have been the same.
Certainly in the context of "he's 19 home runs ahead of the next guy!" Judge deserves to be, er, judged entirely on his own merits.
And that leads to the questions of "how is he doing it?" - and I repeat what I said in the past that I think he's as clean as Ken Griffey Jr - and "how can it be duplicated?" Which is to say, are there any other 6-8 hulks out there?
There is actually an attempt at an interesting article about what Judge is up to on The Athletic - in short, he made adjustments to his stance and his training habits. Alas the article gets into the sort of nitty gritty that makes me prefer saying "he's swinging and making solid contact." I really should be careful what questions I ask.
The interesting thing about your list is just how much Maris still stands out. A good player, for sure, but he really wasn't any of the others, someone who had one year where the ball was a beachball and never before and never again.
Definitely need that addition if I'm going to put it in my yard out here in California.
Liz Truss wishes she had gone and stood in a hurricane and got slapped with a tree, instead of going on local radio this morning and getting hammered in a multitude of regional accents over the titanic mess she has made in the 3 weeks since she killed the Queen.
It's also sad/nice/expected to see the Red Sox PR machine springing into action with the 'we would love Xander to remain part of the Red Sox into the future' etc etc - just setting us up for the fall when he refuses to take the inevitable, low-ball (probably in Pounds) offer in the offseason.
Far too much spin-doctoring for one 24hr period for me.
As I've mentioned before, me only begotten dotter is vacationing in the mother country at the moment, enjoying the hell out of the parity quid. She and her husband Chris were originally going to go over a few weeks ago but they changed their plans to give Truss a chance to rape the pound and for the Queen to be planted, ie, for all the stores and restaurants to be open again. Yesterday she had lunch with our beloved cousin Timmy for whom she used to work when she was living in London as a drama student and deputy chief docent of the Titanic exhibit at the Dome in Greenwich, back when Sterling was holding its own in the $1.60 range. Timmy isn't benefiting by paying for the meal and drinks but my offspring is blithe about pressing him for more expensive dishes, arguing that the dollar IS REALITY and he shouldn't be fooled by how his Amex bill is going to come back the same as always while hers will seem Lilliputian by comparison when it shows up next month.
Incidentally, I also get a kick out of how much the queue of cars trying to escape Russian conscription resembles the queue of lorries at Dover when the sheer idiocy of Brexit really began to kick in.....
i know the UK is a hot mess right now but the Premiere League games are going again, right, and isn't that all we need them for across the pond these days? Craig can go back to fawning over the Bees and we can eagerly await a Kop of Coffee with our spot of tea. I hope future king William starts thinking about hairpieces or maybe asking Harry to save him some.
I'm not a fan of backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforthball. It's as boring as a Neanderthalhitterball game. But I do love me a T20 at the Oval or a test match at Lords (my late father in law was a trustee at Lords and da missus and I had our wedding reception there).
Serious question: I want to learn more about cricket, given the passion it engenders in billions of people, Where should I start?
Well, you can find any number of cricket rules web sites and just acquaint yourself with the basics. Then you can treat yourself to CLR James' masterpiece about the game, "Beyond a Boundary." It's the "Boys of Summer" of Cricket; really gets to the soul and history of it. And I'd top that off with the film version of "A Fire in Babylon," a documentary about the rise of the great West Indian teams of the late 20th Century, where you can see that passion in action. And of course, find some games on the net to watch.
Thank you! I shall do and report back ...
Ok, anyone but me read this in an English accent?
Truss is Margaret Thatcher without good PR and more fascist tendencies.
Mini-Maggie is on a hiding to nothing. I guess Argentina need to be watchful in case Liz tries to go the same path to salvage her reign.
She's already got black pudding. What does she need morcilla for?
Is it safe to say faux Thatcher has already failed? How long until the no confidence vote? She is going to cause so much suffering with her cheerful incompetence.
John Oliver called her something like "dollar-store British Leslie Knope", and that seems to fit better than any other (family-friendly) term.
She's also not nearly as intelligent or canny, and will unfortunately make an even bigger mess. God save the Kingdom. She's the wrong truss for Britain's fiscal hernia.
My hair is smarter than Truss.
If you drive in all 5 of your team's runs in a 5-4 win, does that increase your WAR by +1? That replacement guy isn't about to drive in 5, right?
We could scrap WAR and go back to VIRBI, victory important runs batted in. Almost as fun as GWRBI.
Rob Neyer Likes this. ;-)
WAR is inherently context neutral. But WPA basically does just that. Escobar was given 0.76 instead of 1, with Smith and Diaz on the pitching side being the other main contributors.
https://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2022-09-28&team=Mets&dh=0
That's interesting. I was only kidding on the WAR thing, but it did have me wondering how it would work if it was based on game results, which is apparently what WPA does.
So if you added up the player's WPAs, positive and negative, for the winning team would the total be exactly 1.00? And for the losing team the total be exactly -1.00?
It seems the Mets win expectation was down to 4.7% right after the Marlins went ahead 4-0 in the 7th. Escobar had 3 run scoring hits between the 7th and the 10th. That's not easy to do.
Poor McNeil. He goes 2-4 with a walk, but has a negative WPA on the day because when he came up in a high leverage situation he made an out.
Yup, that's exactly right on the math. And then you can sum all of those up cumulatively for a season to get to wins (or losses) added. Judge has 8.0 WPA on the season to 10.4 BR-WAR, leading in both. Ohtani has done more damage in lower leverage situations, so there's a larger disparity in WAR vs. WPA (9.2 vs. 5.4).
One problem with using WPA is that - assuming my understanding is correct - its current iteration assumes that almost all value is contributed by the batter and pitcher. If a baserunner goes first to third on a single, that accrues to the batter. If a shortstop makes a stop deep in the hole and nails the runner by a step, that accrues to the pitcher. (Minor exceptions: Stolen bases are an exception and I'm not sure how the PB / WP difference is allocated, but neither of those are big movers in the course of a season.)
Oh yes, it totally ignores defense and non-SB baserunning. It's not a great tool, but it can be a fun one.
After the Nats botched a run down and allowed the tying run to score in the 8th, it looked like another late game fade - but they actually held it together with help from the Manfred Man.
DC isn’t Georgia, but the Nats have (EDIT: four) games with the Phillies starting (EDIT: Friday), including a split doubleheader on Saturday - and it’s supposed to rain. A lot. If possible, the NL wild card race could get even weirder.
Not really sure who wants to see Van Halen without Eddie Van Halen, but Queen is still touring after Freddie Mercury died so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every time I hear someone talk about going to a concert of a band whose heyday was in the 70s, I always mime a PA announcer: "JONES COUNTY FAIRGOERS, GIVE IT UP FOR FOREIGNER's bassist and four guys you've never heard of!"
Minor correction: Nats and Phils are off today, and only scheduled to play four in soggy DC this weekend. I fully expect one game of Saturday's split DH to move to Friday, before the deluge, and to maybe see the Phils back in DC on October 6 for one or even two games.
I sit corrected… And now the post is corrected!
Followup - you were right! They are moving Saturday night's game to Friday afternoon and leaving the Saturday afternoon game in place. I guess the idea is that the worst of the rain will be overnight Saturday. I actually have a ticket to Sunday's game because Mary and I would always go to the last home game of the season - but I'm not going if it's gross.
The Who toured with Zack Starkey playing drums. Lynyrd Skynyrd has kept touring with the younger brother of the lead singer who died. (They're playing Allentown, PA tomorrow!) Two of the four founding members of CCR started touring as "Creedence Clearwater Revisited" from the 1990s without John Fogerty (who was still alive, but had better things to do) or Tom (who was not alive, and hence did not).
Apparently a bunch of different groups (Yes, Quiet Riot, Canned Heat, Thin Lizzy, and Heart, to name a few) keep touring without ANY of their original members. I personally have seen the Monkees without Mike Nesmith and the Four Tops without Lawrence Payton. Good music is good music. Let folks make a living.
Heart still has Ann and Nancy Wilson, so they're still Heart.
Yeah, apparently they're not the founding members though. I had no idea! And something I read made it sound like Ann went off and did her own thing, but that appears not to be the case.
Your point is taken though. They may not have founded the group, but their distinctive style and sound were what made the group successful and famous, so I could see folks being less than enamored of going to see a "Heart" concert without either of them.
Still though, would Crazy On You or Barracuda or Magic Man be terrible with, say, Lita Ford and Susan Tedeschi playing and singing them? Probably not.
Jim Cantore wins the prestigious Holly Ellenbogen Prize this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdtR-X5PGjQ [after 20 seconds]
I don’t want Craig to get in trouble with the corporate entity that paid for naming rights so let me correct him. It’s White Flight Field or WFF, not White Flight Park.
CJ Abrams could be a nice piece for the Nats rebuild. But looking at him makes me wonder if it’s his mom’s turn to bring the orange slices for after the game. Has he turned 12 yet?
Jake Odorizzi isn’t missing bats. There was only one swing and miss in his 3 plus IP last night. That outing fits well with the rest of his ATL starts. If Strider’s oblique is still wonky, the team will rely on Bryce Elder and bullpen games in October? Yuck.
Maris Junior made the rounds with McGwire in 98 and Dad was feted then. That was enough.
I saw Van Halen live maybe ten years ago. It was the only time I'd ever seen them, and my main reaction was that David Lee Roth had lost his fastball, his curve, and his slider, because from the opening number (Unchained) he just didn't seem to remember the words to most songs. I can see now that he was like that as far back as 1983 and likely earlier.
I suppose Sammy might've been better on vocals, but Van Halen without DLR wasn't Van Halen to me, and Van Halen without Eddie isn't a thing. I'll just stick to everything up through 1984, with the first four albums in heavier rotation.
My first concert was VH during the Diver Down tour in 82 or 83. I’ll keep my memories as is.
Some years ago, DLR was hired to play a corporate gig for a major Wall Street company. There was some kind of screwup and half his backing band didn’t show. A college classmate who did a little session work on a couple of songs that got airplay in the 90s then went into investment banking ended up playing bass.
I like some of the stuff on Diver Down, but I'll always remember a paraphrase of the final words to the Rolling Stone review of the album:
"Van Halen likes to say there's a little Van Halen in all of us. Unfortunately, there's too little Van Halen in this album."
They did at least an EP's worth of covers throughout their career: You Really Got Me, Ice Cream Man, You're No Good, Pretty Woman, Where Have All The Good Times Gone?, and Dancing In The Streets, and half of them were on Diver Down, so Rolling Stone kind of had a point.
Man, DLR is frustrating, huh? It’s like, dude, can you just hold it together, remember the words, try to sing a LITTLE, appreciate that you’re a key member of a band with one of the best guitarists of all time, and make us all happy? Doesn’t seem like it would’ve been that hard.
It's been said he's more of an entertainer than a singer, and on some level I can respect that, but I didn't realize just what that meant till I saw them live.
The closest parallel for me was Joe Piscopo's impression of late career Sinatra just making up words in a skit where he was singing TV theme songs.
It’s crazy that no one could carry DLR’s, uhhh, leopardskin jock strap, while the dude was just up there going “wuzzah wuzzah” by the end. EVH — who seemed to be a fairly challenging person — must’ve been like, “dude, can you just try?”
I get the impression both of them were so drunk for any given show that trying was a big ask. Though Eddie pulled off performing while drunk better.
The first concert I went to without my parents (I use this caveat because as a lifetime resident of the northeast, I was baptized at Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen concerts starting at an age where I was far too young to appreciate it) was a Van Hagar reunion tour in like 2003 and my biggest takeaway was that Van Halen was absolutely the Eddie show. Having grown up in a "The only real Van Halen is with DLR" house, I quickly realized at that concert that as long as Eddie was doing 20-minute solos, the singer didn't matter all that much (or, at least it didn't 25 years after the songs came out)
I saw them on what must have been their second tour. Eruption, and all that. I was impressed. Guys worked their asses off to put on that show.
I missed out on seeing Van Halen in their prime by way of living in some very out of the way places from 81-85. I did see Van Hagar twice, and they were great shows. But I was a fan of Sammy's solo stuff before his Ferrari mechanic got him the tryout with the VH brothers.
At the time, I was excited when I heard Sammy was replacing Dave, because I thought that Dave was responsible for the pop-influenced direction the band was heading in based on what 1984 was. Sammy would set things right, I thought, and Eddie and Sammy together would melt our faces.
Then I heard the first licks of Love Comes Walking In and Eat ‘Em And Smile, and I’ve never felt so wrong.
Eat 'em and Smile is the true "1984" followup. And I say that as a guy who liked the rockier numbers on "5150" just fine.
Sorry Craigster, the Manfred Man is the bastard child of the Neanderthal Hitter. He came along at the same time as the spread of the infection to the National League and is a product of the same idea: th fan base has become too dim, impatient and un-discriminating to enjoy the game in its original form and wants a conclusive result as quickly as possible. Both are forms of premature ejaculation, kinda like Faye Dunaway entertaining William Holden as briefly as possible in "Network."
And Roger Maris Junior was right. Deal with it.
Ehhh, Maris sr hit 14/61 HRs off of teams that didn’t exist the year before.
Still a nice 1961 season despite his 16 doubles in 700 PAs.
Rich Hill pitched 6 shutout innings? You mean he's still playing?
According to local media types, the Sox are 13:12 in his starts and "he has given them everything expected"... So, you know, expectations. He also wants to come back next year, so maybe he can borrow Sister Jeans chair?
If he develops a knuckleball he can probably pitch at least 7 more years.
Orioles put forth a AAA lineup because in Hyde's galaxy brain, they had a couple of long games recently and today is an afternoon game.
Considering Barry Bonds walked 177 times the year he hit 73, and Mark McGwire walked 162 times the year he hit 70, there's not a lot of room for Judge fans to complain about not him getting pitches to hit. (Judge is at 106) Any player hitting home runs at a record rate like these guys is of course going to get pitched around.
Your point mistakenly presupposes that the people with these complaints are in any way constrained by facts and reality.
Did not know about that Dylan book. Maybe I ask for a birthday present this year.
I looked at the forecast for ATL this morning, and it's changed for the better. Accuweather is saying rain tomorrow night but gone by Saturday, and Weather.com is not even forecasting rain. Since this depends on the path of a hurricane, this could change in a hurry. But the likelihood all three games can be played over the weekend is pretty high.
And that win for the Mets last night really makes a difference. If they win just one game in ATL, they take the season series and would be in first place in the event of a tie. Of course, nothing is ever that simple for the Mets, but this promises to be a humdinger of a weekend and last night is a good way for the Mets to enter it. And if they do win the division or go deep in the playoffs, the "Escobar Game" will be the stuff of legend. (Frankly, even if they don't win the division or go deep, this season has had more special moments than we've seen in ages. Escobar's turnaround since coming off the IL has been a thrill ride.)
I really want to be more wowed by Judge's amazing season, but all the "this is the real record" crap and the de facto embrace of that by the media is making it hard. It's not the real record. Yes, it's the AL record, but as we noted, that doesn't really mean much anymore. Let's appreciate this for what it is instead of what it isn't. (Anyone notice, BTW, that the Yankees are on fire again?)
Is the real turning point of the season Brett Baty getting hurt? If he hadn't, it's possible Escobar is riding the bench while the Mets let the rook do his thing? Probably not but bad timing for poor Baty. BTW amazing that the "yankees are choking" thing completely vaporized. They got it turned around pretty fast, but both NY teams have to see how their pitching does in October and have to continue to hit in a timely smallball fashion with a few big knocks where needed (Alonso needs to stop chasing everything).
Baty will have his chance, and he really wasn't there yet.
Not going to complain too much about Alonso. More concerned, as usual, with the DHs. And also the Mets might not get Marte back any time soon. His finger is still too sore to hit with.
Yeah, Baty (first typoed this as Baby!) was called up not because he was ready but because the Mets needed a warm body and he was readier (or more versatile) than Vientos.
There was, with both, a certain degree of "they might be ready for the Show" though that didn't pan out. I wonder where they end up going forward. Escobar is still under contract next year, and Guillorme has a lot of team control left. I have seen suggestions of Vientos as a DH, but where does Baty go? (I know they avoided this like crazy, but I am not entirely averse to trading some prospects to fill holes, though I would expect the Mets to work the free agent market first.)
There is, of course, precedent for a situation in which a hurricane threatens a division series with major playoff implications (Ike). Selig's solution was to move the games to a stadium more than a thousand miles from the smaller market home team's stadium to a stadium within driving distance of the larger market away team.
So if history is any guide, congratulations to the Mets on their upcoming no hitter at Citizens Bank Park.
One of my favorite things of the last few days is "how much PTO does Roger Maris Jr have that he can follow the Yankees around?" It seems he's in the business of his Dad, running "61 Outfitters," so this is just another day on the job it seems. Nobody's going to take up your "ignore the other 3 guys" argument though. Let's celebrate the greatness that is Aaron Judge and keep it at that.
Nobody likes to see walks, so it was disheartening to see Judge walk so much, but many of those walks turned into runs scored by the Yankees, which didn't help hapless Toronto much the last 2 out of 3 games.
Did Rich Hill serve up one of Maris' home runs?
Chalk me up as not interested in a Van Hagar Ghost tour, but i'm down to see any of the G3 guitarists, in fact Satriani is touring and I want to take my son. Flying in a Blue Dream is an old personal favorite, both the song and album.
BTW the Michael Kay 61st HR call had a great callback to Phil Rizzuto in how he called Maris' 61st. Some may find that cheesy but as someone who once stood next to the scooter at a urinal at cooperstown on hall of fame induction day, i found it quite endearing.
A single walk is dull. A walk followed by another walk followed by two more is a run. And if it's my team being walked, I am fine with it. I am also fine with three walks and a home run.
I certainly hope you got a “HOLY COW!” during that Cooperstown bathroom trip
remember the rules. you don't talk, you don't look down - it's kind of like fight club rules
I actually watched on MLB Network - did anyone else think the replay of the camera on Kay as he made the 61 call (where he's super aware that the camera is there) was awkward as hell even by YES standards?
In case anyone missed the lede, thanks to DudeMan for pointing out (as I came here to do but late), Maris Jr is *selling 61 merch* so yeah, it's in his best interest to push the "61 is the record" narrative.
Also, as *among the most skeptical Yankees fans eva* (TM pending) -- how many of us watched Rog Jr and Mrs Judge and thought EVERY time: there was a crew of about 8 in that box the other day and then there were 2. Vax rules anyone????!!???
As far as the whole real home run record thing, I very much fall on the “the real home run record is 73” side of things but I understand the reason a lot of people don’t and I don’t begrudge them if they personally want to discount the steroid guys.
I treat their claims with as much respect as I do the NCAA's assertion that Louisville didn't win the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. I saw the game, it happened, and if you want to penalize the school for something after the fact, go right ahead - but that doesn't change the fact that Louisville beat Michigan to win that game.
Bonds is the single-season MLB HR record holder. I don't really care if people want to whine about it or use the word "real" to describe someone who isn't the real record holder; that's their business.
But you do really care, that’s the thing. That’s the difference between what I said and you said. I believe Bonds is the single season record holder but I genuinely don’t care that others see it differently due to steroid use. Doesn’t effect me, I understand what the issue is. “I don’t really care if people want to whine about it” shows you do care, or you wouldn’t have used the term “whine” to belittle them.
That's fair - it certainly would be less annoying for me if the whining would stop.
I feel the same. 73 and 762 are the records. But many fans are REALLY turned off by the (suspected) cheating. It's third rail for them.
Just ask them about the exclusion of black people.
What do you mean? I'm talking steroids, not the purity/legitimacy of pre-integration records.
HR-specific cheating by players they don't like is the third rail, of course. Those folks generally don't complain too much about players illegally using amphetamines or pitchers doctoring the ball.
you don't bejudge them? lol. lol, I'll be here all week.
perhaps you, unlike Rog Jr, don't sell merch with "61" embroidered on it.
I am both a Dodgers fan and a Giants fan (I contain multitudes). While the Giants have made me very very sad this season, the Dodgers have been my baseball happy place for many many seasons. They spend, yes, but they generally spend wisely and mostly make excellent trades.
Also 73 will always be more than 61 or 62. Sorry math is math. I watched Bonds take many an at bat and that man was a maestro. A generational athlete not just a generational baseball player.