dinosaur jesus

Yeah, he was really good in 1972. He was the Mets' best hitter. Which with the '70s Mets isn't saying much, but still.

I'm pretty sure that's Gordie Richardson.

A Penn State product, like myself. If he makes the big league club, he'll join D. J. Dozier and David Aardsma as the only Nittany Lions to play for the Metropolitans, unless you count Monte Ward back in the 1880s. Luv ya Lions!

June 14, 1980. With two outs in the ninth, Steve Henderson hits a walkoff three-run homer, a line drive that sneaks over the right-field fence. The Mets were down 6-0 after five innings and 6-2 after 8. After starting the season 10-18, they were now 26-27, and would finally reach .500 a month later. They'd finish the season on a 24-52 run, but it sure was fun for a while.

Frayed Knot wrote: MLB's All Constellation Team: *Orion Kerkering Leo Durocher *Hercules Burnett Steve Phoenix * Yes, that's their given first name Boötes Day

Game 159 in 1985, against the Cardinals. If they pull it out in the eighth or ninth, they're tied with three games to go. My version of how things play out has Darling pitching the last game of the season against the Expos, rather than Gooden on three days' rest (which is just what Davey did in the first game against the Cardinals) and Gooden pitching the one-game playoff, winning his 25th and the MVP, Andujar melting down just like he eventually did in game 7 that year, and the the postseason, when they blow through the Dodgers and the Royals, as almost an anticlimax. It could have happened that way. Winning in 1986 made that one hurt less, but 1985 seemed purer somehow (though not as pure as 1984). That 1986 team was almost too good to root for. It gave me an idea of how being a Yankees fan can corrupt your soul.

I got to see him play. I've been bragging about that for fifty years.

Does he love me? i want d'Arnaud. How can I tell if he loves me so? (Is it in his eyes?) Oh no, you'll be deceived. (Is it in his eyes?) Oh no, you'll make believe. If you want d'Arnaud, if he loves you so It's in his kiss (That's where it is).

Timothy Leary's dead No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in Timothy Leary's dead No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in He'll fly his astral plane Takes you trips around the bay Brings you back the same day Timothy Leary Timothy Leary

Damion Easley, Damion Easley Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy Lighten up while you still can Don't even try to understand Just find a place to make your stand, Damion Easley

When you're alone and life is making you lonely You can always go Don Hahn When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry Seems to help, I know Don Hahn Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty How can you lose? The light's so much brighter there You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares Don Hahn Things will be great when you're Don Hahn No finer place for sure Don Hahn Everything's waiting for you So Don Hahn has just been traded to the Mets, he's not hitting, the fans are down on him, Seaver just said something snide to him in the clubhouse, and he's worried that he's just not meant for the Big Apple. So after a loss to the Cubs, where he went 0 for 3, he goes to the Copacabana to see Petula Clark. They met in Montreal, when she was singing backup on "Give Peace a Chance." (He was staying in the same hotel where it was recorded; the ice machine on his floor wasn't working, so he went up to the next floor, heard music coming from down the hall, and went to check it out.) They exchanged a few words, and he's been a fan ever since, but he figures she won't remember a light-hitting backup outfielder. To his surprise, she spots him in the audience, invites him backstage between sets, and dedicates this special version of her smash hit "Downtown" to him. And starting the next day he goes on a tear, hitting over .300 for the next month and becoming the toast of the town. The fans love him, his teammates love him, and even Seaver gives him an approving nod once in a while. All thanks to Petula and one magical night at the Copa.

Well, I couldn't sleep a wink for tryin' I saw the risin' of the sun And all night long my heart was cryin' You're the one, you're the one You're the one, you're the one Youngblood, Youngblood, Youngblood I can't get you out of my mind

Ozzie Smith: 15 All-Star selections, 28 home runs, .536.

That was some Conforto bullshit by Votto. Even more obvious, actually.

I think it does measure the value of individual players, in a way--it's the closest thing we have to an objective measurement of that mythical thing called clutchness. It's true that the players who hit doubles did exactly the same thing; the second player just happened to be in a situation where his double changed the outcome more, so his WPA is higher. In that way it doesn't make him a better player. Other statistics give a better measure than that. But given a relatively equal number of opportunities to increase the team's chances to win, I don't think it's misleading to say that the player with the higher WPA is having a better, or at least more valuable, season. It's imprecise, of course, since opportunities are often not equal. But I think it's a pretty fair measure of what Goldschmidt has done. It's always seemed a weird thing about baseball to me that exactly the same events give completely different results, depending on the order they occur in. Two singles and a home run can lead to one, two, or three runs. An inning with four walks, a stolen base, a wild pitch, and no hits can lead to four runs, or none. It's an insanely context-specific game.

Pitchers aren't going to change their approach just because they're way ahead. They're still trying to pitch. If their game is trying to hit the corners, they're going to keep trying to hit the corners. Otherwise they might as well be throwing batting practice. They're probably also afraid that if they given in and just throw strikes, they'll screw up their approach in future games that might be closer. If pitching was just hitting a target, I think every major league pitcher would do just fine. Shaq hit 90% of his free throws in practice.

Plus Harry Krause didn't blow out his arm. The major league hitters figured him out, but he went on to win 250 games in the PCL. Pitched until he was forty, throwing 200, 300, even 400 innings.

=smg58 post_id=85732 time=1644529035 user_id=62] Baseball is run by people who hate baseball.

I saw it in the theater. I walked out maybe halfway through. I don't know if it was terrible, but it was all wrong. There was no sense of what was interesting about Moe Berg. Paul Rudd wasn't like him at all, physically—Berg was a big, jowly, five o'clock shadow sort of man, a cultured sophisticate in a bruiser's body—and he played him as a naif, an ordinary guy in over his head. Berg's whole whole thing was convincing people he knew more than he did, that he was the only person in the room who knew what was really going on. He was a bluffer, and a bit of a fraud—genuinely brilliant, but maybe not as intellectually accomplished as he let people think. And probably not that much of a spy. So there's a really good idea for a story there—a man who liked being unknowable, saw himself as born to be an international, finding himself in real trouble, with real spies. Is his bluff going to be called? And so on. They also managed to make a movie with Babe Ruth in it no fun at all. How is that even possible?

I thought the whole point of this forum was to show off our special knowledge and capacious brains.

I guess the tradition was started by Stengel, but the Mets seem to have a proclivity for hiring ex-Yankee hacks as their manager. Far as I'm concerned when they do that, they're starting at a disadvantage because I already dislike those guys to begin with: Dallas Green and Willie Randolph started out with two strikes against them as far I was concerned, and they never made their way back to "Meh, he's okay, I guess." There's a world full of guys who don't have any Yankee stink on them at all. Why not give one of those billions of guys a chance? That's some serious grudge-holding. Green and Randolph are the only ex-Yankees they've hired since Yogi, and Green didn't even make it through one full season as their manager. Is that a tradition? And Showalter has had twenty-five years let some of that Yankee stink wash off. I'd make it no more than one strike against him.

No way on Maris. Outside of his two MVP seasons, he was a good player, but never one of the best in the league. He wasn't even close to a Hall of Fame career. Billy Pierce is interesting. He was a great pitcher for about eight years, a pretty good one into his late thirties, and if he'd played for better teams he probably would have been in a long time ago. And I'd be fine with him making it. But he's kind of the definition of marginal Hall of Famer. He's more deserving than a lot of pitchers in there. And less deserving than a lot who aren't. David Cone was a better pitcher.

Roy Halladay

Bonus: Bob Gibson

dinosaur jesus wrote: Mike Scott Not who I thought would be the first off the board = No glory in grabbing the obvious ones first. Dean Chance