October 26, 2007
The Asdrubal Carrera Hall of Fame, open to anyone in unique possession of a particular first name among Major League baseball players. (Inspired by one of Tim McCarver's flights of fancy during the ALCS).
You may be familiar with Honus Wagner, Eppa Rixey, Boog Powell or Yogi Berra. But have you heard the storied diamond exploits of Firpo Mayberry, Zoilo Versalles, Pi Schwert or Bevo LeBourveau? OK, then how about Mysterious Walker, The Only Nolan, or Phenomenal Smith?
For some dinnertime fun over the holidays, discuss the relative merits of Urban Shocker, Twink Twining, Pussy Tebeau, Bris Lord, Boob Fowler, Crazy Schmit, Creepy Crespi, Cuddles Marshall, Vinegar Bend Mizell, Stubby Clapp and Buttercup Dickerson. (Unfortunately, 12 other players keep Rusty Kuntz off this list.)
Other stunningly yclept combatants include Ambiorix Burgos, Alamazoo Jennings, Welcome Gaston, Chicken Hawks, Sixto Lezcano, Wheezer Dell, Yam Yaryan, Yo-Yo Davalillo, Admiral Schlei, Boss Schmidt, Brick Smith, Brickyard Kennedy, Broadway Jones, Cannonball Titcomb, Baby Doll Jacobson, Sweetbreads Bailey, Zaza Harvey, Bubbles Hargrave, Pickles Dillhoefer, Double Joe Dwyer, Cowboy Jones, Coot Veal, Mul Holland, Live Oak Taylor, Skyrocket Smith, Kaiser Wilhelm, Kewpie Pennington, Possum Whitted, Snooks Dowd, and Mox McQuery.
See the list for links to each player's Baseball Reference page.
Seriously, I wanted to fucking kill FOX during the whole crap about the fucking tacos. They spent more time discussing the damn tacos than they did the Colorado Rockies.
I know that the world fucking series doesn't have the excitement level of a Sox-Yankees game, but there still are two teams playing. Stop talking about irrelevant bullshit, and the inspiring story about how the Red Sox batboy stuck with the team all season.
Excuse me, that should have been Tacoby Bellsbury.
I particularly love the irony of their promos: "There's only one October, and every pitch of the World Series will be on FOX"... If there's one thing that I know to be true about the WS on FOX, it's that they'll stretch those already-longer 2:30 commercial breaks well into the first pitch about 3 innings per game.
Q: You mentioned the significance of October 16th for Red Sox fans (in a bad way) with the Boone home run in 2003, the 19-6 loss in 2004 and the Game 4 loss to Cleveland in 2007. Guess what else happened on October 16th? In 1941, Tim McCarver was born!!
--Timmy, Groton, Conn.SG: You couldn't make this stuff up. You really couldn't. At the rate we're going. I'm waiting to see McCarver pop up in a Chevy commercial right as John Cougar Mellancamp is giving out free Taco Bell tacos and "Transformers" DVDs to poor people from the bed of a Chevy Silverado.
"John, here's the thing about our country -- it might be a country that belongs to folks like you and me, but the key to this country is that we fought two major World Wars in the 20th century, and each time, we defeated foes who could have potentially conquered democracy inside our borders. Had we NOT won those wars, this might not be our country right now. (Dramatic pause.) But we DID win those wars. And when you win wars, usually, with very few exceptions, you get to keep your country. That's why ... this is ouuuuuuur country."
I'm seriously thinking of starting a fund to get the baseball contract given back to NBC.
It gets worse every year. There were times when the Rockies were at bat when they didn't show a graphic saying who was at bat, and Buck and McCarver refused to mention it.
I seriously think that the entire production crew would have exploded had the world series been between Colorado and Cleveland. They would literally have nothing to talk about, except for all of the stupid promotions. Which would probably equal even more cut aways from the field during at-bats.
It has to be bad for baseball and shrink the viewer base. For as much as Bud Selig comments endlessly on the integrity of the game, and his historical heroes, he has to know that these semi-exclusive contracts, with the horrible coverage is alienating most fans, and making kids less knowledgable about the game, and hence, less likely to follow it as adults. This crap doesn't even make business sense.
And, to go back to the OP, there was a very important omission: one Stubby Clapp
Here's my question: who are the defenders? Is there anyone out there advancing even a tepid defense of their aggressive incompetence?
The overpromotion, missed plays and other manifestations of greed are galling but are not the main problem. My brother and I were trying to hash out exactly what it is that makes Buck/McCarver so unenjoyable. The ones most referred to are McCarver's senile inattention to the details of the game, Buck's sanctimony matched with McCarver's crotchety Old Schoolery, and McCarver's tendency to relentlessly hammer on a single point that is often irrelevant and uninteresting if not completely untrue.
The main thing for me, though, is that McCarver manages to make the game painful for fans of each team by focusing on mistakes and hazards, not on accomplishments and opportunities. One recent example: Coco Crisp made a stellar diving slide to catch, going hard into the wall, for the last out of the ALCS. The cameras are panning around the jubiliant home crowd, the celebrating players, and the emotional face of the valiant but defeated Indians -- and McCarver starts hammering away about Crisp having a potential leg injury and the effect on the Sox going into the World Series. Does this deserve mention? Yes. Right then, and over and over? No. Does it contribute to the experience of a Sox fan, palliate the bitterness of a Tribe fan, or edify the casual listener? Nope, certainly not, and unlikely.
The stunning thing is that people who live in Hollywood / LA surely know better. They get to listen to one of our national treasures -- Vin Scully -- announce every Dodgers game. (Except those broadcast on Saturday, that is).
Here's an article that includes Vin Scully's call of Hank Aaron's #715. Amazing.
It's baffling. Everyone my age or older has heard national broadcasts by Scully, Uecker, Costas, Jack Buck, etc. Ten Years ago was hardly ancient history. And yeah, everyone hates FOX and ESPN, yet they seem to just have a monopoly on the baseball coverage (aside from TBS, ugh). From the promotions, to the talking about distracting, awful storylines, to Scooter, almost every aspect of their broadcast is awful (exept that, despite the broadcast team's silence, the pitch trax totally shows off how horrible MLB umpiring has become).
Scully calls the 9th inning of Koufax's perfect game: audio / transcript. Keep in mind he composed this live on air.
I love Jon Miller's broadcasts, and Joe Morgan's adventures in Sabermetrics don't kill me the way it seems to do most fans. After that crew quality ESPN announcers are pretty thin on the ground, though.
And I have to toss this in on the subject of Koufax; it's from the retrosheet mailing list:
[... I] was just looking at Koufax's pitch counts from earlier in his career. Take a look at 1961:
-- 35 starts (and 7 relief appearances..a nice touch.)
-- Went 120 pitches or more: 18 times (and 29 of his 42 appearances weremade on 3 or less days of rest)
-- Went 130 pitches or more: 11 times
-- Had a run of 13 starts in a 53 day period where he threw 1624 pitches, averaging 125 pitches per start...basically, 125 pitches every four days, for almost 8 weeks.
-- On September 15th, threw 133 pitches in a complete game win. On September 20th, threw 205 pitches in a 13 inning complete game win, and took his turn 3 days later on September 24th. Oh...I forgot to mention, he was asked to RELIEVE on September 17th, presumably to "get a little work in". Threw 34 pitches, got the win in 2 innings of work. In the space of six days, he made two starts and a relief appearance, got 3 wins, and threw an astounding 372 pitches.1961 is not an unique year in Sandy's career. In 1960, for example, he had a 5 start, 23 day run where he threw 48 innings and made 785 pitches, an average of 157 pitches per start.
Koufax, at the top of his salary range, made about $25 per pitch. Roger Clemens this year earned about $10,000 PER PITCH. Put another
way, Clemens made more per INNING this year than Koufax ever made in a season.I wish I knew where I could get my hands on pitch data for 1965-1966. I'll bet it's a hoot.
-- Bob Oefinger
-----------------------------------------
For those of you who might not know, there is a famous story about Koufax pitching the 7th game of the 1965 World Series on two days rest. If you read Koufax' biography by Jane Leavy (_A Lefty's Legacy_) she talks about how he was into some pretty serious pain killers (Butazolidin I think, a drug that has been banned in race horses for years) and capsaicin (a heating agent made from chili peppers) that he slathered on his sweatshirt to keep his arm warm.
Anyway, Koufax had a rough first inning (walked a
couple of guys) and Roseboro came out to talk to him. Koufax said he didn't have his curve ball that day. Roseboro said something to the effect of "F..k it. Go with the fastball." Koufax, who only had two pitches and telegraphed them, then proceeded to get out of that inning and complete a three hit shutout, striking out 10, with one pitch that Twins hitters such as Killebrew, Allison, and Oliva knew was coming. You can get the video of the game at mlb.com for about 4 dollars or so. The most amazing thing I've
ever seen.-- Jack Solock
mrflip, no response to valatan's pitch trax comment?
For my part, I don't think I've ever seen a ball thrown inside the "strike zone" on the Fox Pitch Trax (independent of whether it was called ball or strike).
I mean at some point to look at the MLB gameday data to get a sense of how good the umpires are and figure out what the hell is up with the Pitch Trax.
MLB umps are actually pretty good I think. There's an operational strike zone, which doesn't match the rulebook, but it's usually consistent.
Really? Papelbon got a pretty different strike zone from everyone else last night, according to my eye, which may have been distorted by the camera angle. Not that it would have mattered with the Rockies hitters obviously swinging as hard as they possibly could on anything they remotely liked. I've noticed a bunch of drift with the umpires as of late. It's probably always been that way (I remember all the Maddux/Glavine strike zone arguments from the mid-nineties), but they seem to be getting pretty inconsistent to me, and it seems that, in general, the strike zone tends to widen as the game goes later.
It's just you. Papelbon threw exactly two called strikes, which MLB Gameday showed as just fine.
Oki threw a couple of borderline inside pitches for called strikes (#4 and #5 to Sr. Spilborgho in 7th, #3 to Taveras in 8th), but compare Jimenez' #1 to Lowell in the 2nd, his #2 to Ortiz in the 5th, or Schilling's #1 to Atkins in the 1st. The ump established a slightly wide strike zone but enforced it consistently, from what I can tell.
By the way, here's a story of Red Sox fan's experience with this season that I found a bit heartwarming.
I still want to name the child "Panda Bear" but the wife won't let me...
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Oh, and if you haven't heard: YOU get a taco. YOU get a taco. EVERY-BODY-GETSA-TACO. Thanks Jacoby Ellsbury!
posted by mrflip at 04:57AM CST on October 26