Cup of Coffee: July 18, 2008
Posted by SBG on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 6:30 am
The Twins get back to business tonight and I'm hopeful for the second half, even as I worry that somehow their less than stellar peripherals will catch up with them. Tonight, they start against the Rangers, the team with most runs scored -- and allowed -- in the league. They've got some serious mashers, even as their pitching staff has a collective negative VORP. As a result, they are muddling along just around .500.
Oh by the way, did you hear that they have Josh Hamilton? He like, so almost won that Home Run Derby!
This weekend I'll fix up that Links page. Please place your favorite links in here for me. Do it in this form:
The WGOM: http://www.stickandballguy.com/blog
so that I can drag and drop. I'm looking for Twins Blogs, favorite out of towners, friends of The WGOM, and other sites that you think will be of general interest for the SBG Nation. I retain ultimate decision making authority to determine whether a link gets put on here.
[In case you were wondering, I didn't do anything to make that hyperlink appear other than type the link. So, just type your links in and you, too, will make a snappy hyperlink appear.]
Favorite Out of Towner:
Joe Posnanski http://www.joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog
That's the one link I have in there in that category!!!!
As long as we're covered. Gotta show JoePos some love.
He wrote about dead ballparks the other day - I counted mine up and I've been to 11 dead ballparks (Tiger, Comiskey, Busch, County, Municipal, Memorial, The Met, Olympic, RFK, Riverfront, Three Rivers) and 8 still in use (Dome, Miller, Camden, Wrigley, Fenway, New Comiskey, Kaufmann, and Skydome). I'll end up having missed both NYs and Oakland (though I wouldn't say I've missed it). All of which triggered a nice nostalgic email discussion with my dad and brother. Gee, thanks Joe!
My dead parks:
The Met, County Stadium, Old Comiskey, Busch, Three Rivers, Veterans
Dying:
Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Metrodome
Living:
Arizona, Texas, Wrigley, Kaufmann, Camden
I always kind of liked County in its own crusty, yeasty sort of way. I remember sitting in a section where they were people were just passing around huge bags of peanuts and potato chips. And Molitor hitting a disputed HR over the 362 sign - when the Tale of the Tape was flashed on the scoreboard it said 361.
I liked County Stadium, too. I went to three games there -- sat in the family section, no drinking, but right behind the plate!.
I'm debating whether to even take the kid to the Dome. I probably will at some point, but I'm glad she'll never remember it.
Old Busch, Shea*, Vet in Philly, Metrodome* are my dead parks.
*Circling the drain
I had originally thought I had been to the Vet, but it turns out no. Having been to STL, CIN, and PIT though I think it's an understandable mistake.
Dead: County
Dying: HHH, Yankee
Alive: Wrigley
Oddly, isn't my livest the oldest?
Oh, and
Living Minor: Midway
Dying: HHH, Yankee, Rosenblatt (College World Series)
Dead: RFK
Dead: Kingdome (actually saw that one executed on TV).
Dying: Metrodome
Alive: Petco, Safeco, Angel Stadium, Kauffman.
I also had lunch at Miller Park one time, but that was with a foot of snow on the field in January.
My cousin was the video coordinator for the Seahawks for 9 years. They let him scout out locations and use his video technology to film the Kingdome's demise from many angles.
counting only stadia I attended for baseball
Dead: the Met, Memorial Stadium (Balt.), Jack Murphy (dead to baseball, anyway), old Comiskey, Busch Memorial,
Dying: the Hump, Yanqui,
Alive: the Ted, new Comiskey, Safeco, Wrigley, Fenway, Camden Yards
the Undead: the Mausoleum
embarrased I haven't been to yet: [insert telcom co name here] Stadium
best Minor League parks I've enjoyed: Raley Field (Sacramento); Oldsmobile Park (Lansing -- didn't attend a game, but admired from across the street, where there was a very nice brewpub)
Dead: Met, Memorial, County, Comisky, Candlestick, Fulton Co.
Dying: HHH, Yankee, Shea
Living: Fenway, Anaheim (before remodels), Pac Bell, Dodger, Miller
I've only been to Metrodome
Road trip!
yep
next year my friend and I are going to a game in Chicago or Kansas City
or that is the plan
When I was a kid, my dad would take my brothers and I on baseball road trips in the summer, which is how I've been to so many parks. Montreal was by far the worst - cold hot dogs. Fenway was the best - sunny Sunday afternoon game, deep fried dough (yum) behind the Monster.
Probably my mom's favorite 2 weeks of the year.
Man, don't forget da Palehose http://palehose8.blogspot.com
(btw, Twins reference in latest comic)
Here are mine:
Favorite out-of-towners:
Rany on the Royals (Royals fan of Rob and Rany fame):
http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/
Palehose 8 (ChiSox cartoon):
http://palehose8.blogspot.com/
General Baseball:
UniWatch Blog ([still?] source of the most incoming links):
http://uniwatchblog.com/
The Dugout:
http://wordupthome.com/
Out of towners:
Looking Landing (love them bitter but hilarious M's fans):
USS Mariner
Shysterball
Oh, by the way, Lucy, BabySBG, and I are heading to Cottage View tonight for a viewing of the new Batman movie. I am super excited about this!!!!! Here is the NY Times review.
Just don't give anything away here on the WGOM! I actually have a sitter for Saturday night but decided I couldn't handle getting to the theatre an hour early and being surrounded by 16 year olds so we're going to go to Forgetting Sarah Marshall instead. I'm a sucker for immature comedies.
Pile the kids in the car and head to the drive in. That's living!
If I thought they'd fall asleep, I'd do it. They'd stay awake and watch the movie and have nightmares for months. I'm still paying for taking the 5 year old to Firehouse Dog! I thought that would be safe.
ditto. I'm taking the Boy sunday, prolly to the local IMAX to see it on the zillion-foot screen.
It is showing at the IMAX at Minnesota Zoo. Dilemma. Go to drive-in or send wife and baby to zoo (we're members) while I watch it on big screen (wife would have no interest in that).
True story. I was working at KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids when the first Batman movie came out, the one with Jack Nicholson as the Joker. They hype was incredible at the time. One of the theaters had an early showing, so we sent a reporter to cover it and do a package for the 5:00 news. He got back to the station a little late and they were really pushing deadline, so instead of running in the second news block the producer bumped it to the end of the newscast. They finished editing with just a couple of minutes to spare and ran it to the tape room. So we're sitting in the newsroom, watching it on the monitor, and it's a pretty typical story, people milling around the theater, clips from the film, etc. At the end of the piece the reporter had soundbites with reactions from audience members who had just finished watching. The last soundbite?
"How did you like the movie?"
"Oh, man, it was awesome, just completely awesome, especially at the end when the Joker falls off the tower!"
Five seconds of dead silence. Then the news director turned to us with this totally aghast expression on his face and said, "Did he just give away the ending of the movie?"
That's when the phones started ringing.
Gotta love live TV.
HAHA
great story twayn
Damnit Twayn, now I'm never gonna watch that movie, seeing as how I now know how it ends.
I'm taking Liz for her birthday sometime this weekend. I don't know why, but Batman Begins didn't look appealing to me, so I never saw it first time around. [Stephen A. Smith]HOWEVA [/Stephen A. Smith], The Dark Knight looks incredibly bad-ass. I watched BB online here at work yesterday so I'm caught up.
Batman Begins was awesome, dude. Awesome.
Believe me, I learned the error of my ways.
Don't feel too bad, Andrew. I also skipped BB in theaters and never saw it until last December. Then, I thought it was so awesome that I rewatched it 3 times in a week.
Generally, I really dislike comic book movies, but Christopher Nolan's badassery obviously can overcome the comic book aspect.
Christopher Nolan's badassery
If you haven't seen his debut, Following, I suggest you seek it out. He wrote, directed and shot the thing himself. Handicapped with no budget, forced to shoot over a period of a year because all of the actors had real jobs, it still manages to mark the arrival of major talent. It employs a multi-linear narrative devise similar to the one he used in Memento.
(There's also a scene where one character's apartment door sports a Batman sticker.)
I plan on hitting a matinee next week after the crowds have thinned (a hair, anyway.)
yeah, that's one "reboot" that worked real well. nice to see the franchise on solid footing now
The Dark Knight does not disappoint. I went to the midnight showing last night. It was everything you could want in a Batman movie.
I wanted to do that, too, but it was not in the cards for me.
You can do crazy things like that while you're still in college.
I went to the midnight show as well. Terrible, terrible experience. The theater was completely choked with spastic teenagers, I had the worst seats possible, there were numerous projection problems leading to several minutes of the movie being missed, and I didn't realize I wouldn't get out of the theater until nearly 3am. I will probably never go to another midnight opening again.
Great movie though.
I did the midnight showing of X3 back when it came out. I had pretty much the same experience. Were there fanboys dressed up at all? Because I was sitting pretty close to the world's fattest Wolverine. I'm never going again. If I have my say, we'll go to the 11:30 showing Sunday morning while most people are at church, hangover permitting of course.
There were a couple people dressed up, but not too many. But there was one hilarious moment when the projector went out: There was a guy dressed as Batman near the back of the theater and a guy dressed as the Joker at the front of the theater, and when the lights came on suddenly and it dissolved into anarchy the Joker guy stood up and shouted a challenge to the Batman guy. The whole theater started chanting for them to fight, and eventually Batman caved in and ran to the front to do battle or whatever. I kinda wanted to see what the two nerds would actually do, but right as Batman made it to Joker's row the movie came back on and he returned to his seat.
I badly want to see this movie, but I completely refuse to see huge-hype movies on opening weekend in my get-off-my-lawn age (26). I can't stand the throngs of teenagers that nearly ruin the experience. I'm gonna wait two or three weeks, then hit a matinee in a half empty theatre. I did that with Iron Man, got the seats I wanted and didn't have to deal with a crowd. It was awesome. That, and my girlfriend let me go to that instead of Sex and the City.
My theater experience actually wasn't too bad. Got there an hour early to get decent seats, then had to deal with some people in costume and screaming drunks, but once the movie started there wasn't a word out of anybody.
Andrew, where did you find it to watch on the net? I could find no such source despite a feverish attempt to find it yesterday.
Here you are.
Sheenie and I are likely headed to the Cottage View on Saturday night. I was pretty pumped when I saw yesterday that they're showing Batman.
The drive in is my one source of out of the house entertainment. We leave right about BabySBG's bedtime, so that she's sleeping when we get there. Planning!
It was fun because a) Sheenie had never been before last weekend, b) we could bring the dog, c) we could eat whatever we wanted!
I actually grilled at the Cottage View earlier this year. It was against the rules (you can at ValiHi), but I was almost done by the time they came and told me not to. I do want to have a grilling experience at Vali Hi sometime this summer.
Speaking of JoePos, I just order his book "The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America" yesterday. I've been watching Ken Burn's "Baseball" (thank you Netflix!) and just listening to Buck O'Neill talk inspired me to get the book.
Bonus! it was only $6 for the hardcover
I reviewed "The Soul of Baseball" for the SBG Library. It was a great book. You'll enjoy it I'm sure.
While watching the Ken Burns series, you should be aware that the players they show with the letter "P" on their jersey either played for the Philadelphia Athletics or the Philadelphia Phillies. Oh, they could also be Pittsburgh Pirates.
While the old footage was great, it would have been bettered if titled Ken Burns's "History of Baseball Played in New York City or Boston Unless the Boston Team Happened to be the Boston Braves in which Case We'll Ignore It"
oh yeah, Im aware of that.
I actually thought it was pretty fair until Babe Ruth, then the whole thing becomes New York obsessed
(Im up to the 1950's section now)
There is a show on FSN called 'Baseballs Golden Age' (new episodes are shown Sunday nights). It has some awesome footage of old baseball stadiums and palyers and whatnots
I caught an episode the other day and agree - it was a great, great show.
Ditto. The part I watched was about the Cards during the depression. "Gaslamp Gang" or something like that.
I was wondering if they've got any footage of the Negro Leagues.
I believe it was the "Gashouse Gang".
The footage of the Gashouse Gang playing pepper was great. It was like a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
I remember old Tiger Stadium having a sign behind home plate somewhere that read 'No Pepper'
I was too young to understand what that meant.
Gaslamp Gang:
I havent watched that one yet (Its one my DVR)
as for the Negro Leagues, in "Baseball", there is some footage of the Negro Leagues (looks like a lot of the footage was shot at old Comisky Park in Chiago), and a few reels shot in color
btw,
?? All your base are ours.
Fixed.
awwwwwww.
Some quality academic humor.
here's one special for GreekHouse.
and one for Andrew.
and ubelmann.
I LOVE xkcd. This is my personal favorite.
I have always been partial to this one.
Joe Sheehan (sub. req.):
Amen, brother.
I'm not real high on Beltre. I think he'd be an upgrade over Buscher/Harris but not enough of an upgrade that I'd be willing to pay much in $$ or prospects.