|
February 10, 2012
Who is Shyster?
Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008
Or you can search by:
Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Most Recent Comments
The Waiting Game (10)
Rules = Destiny (1) Mike Hargrove Interview (5) Cole Hamels Meets Talk Radio (18) Gerald Laird to the Tigers (2) Shyster's Daily Circuit
Rob Neyer
AaronGleeman.com Joe Posnanski Blog Baseball Analysts Baseball Musings Cot's Baseball Contracts It IS About the Money Keith Law Cardboard Gods Baseball Think Factory MLB Trade Rumors Retrosheet Vegas Watch Way Back and Gone Bats -- NYT Baseball Blog The Biz of Baseball The Daily Fungo U.S.S. Mariner Braves Journal Scott Simkus The Common Man Jorge Says No! Baseball Over Here Fack Youk Wezen-Ball Chop-n-Change |
Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.Friday, October 30, 2009Pearlman on McGwireJeff Pearlman brings the Mark McGwire sanctimony: Worst of all, however, McGwire was a baseball thief. At the very moment his 341-foot home run landed behind the outfield fence, he robbed Roger Maris of the most important record in professional sports. He robbed the Maris family of future income from 61-related merchandising and events. He robbed the Hall of Fame -- which swooped up McGwire memorabilia as if it were free Twinkies -- of its credibility, he robbed those fans who spent hundreds of dollars for a ticket in order to witness history and he robbed thousands upon thousands of kids of a seemingly genuine role model. Pearlman often writes how disgusted he is with what baseball has become. I can't help but think that if he hadn't had such a ridiculously idealistic notion of what it was in the first place, he never would have crashed so hard to begin with. Great Moments in Niche BloggingReader and Dodger fan Josh Fisher has found his bloggy calling. It's called Dodger Divorce. But allow Josh to explain it: Greetings, Dodger fans, and a pleasant afternoon to you, wherever you may be. Welcome to Dodger Divorce, a blog designed to be your one-stop shop for news and insight into the McCourt divorce and how it will affect the Boys in Blue. If you're a Dodger fan, I presume that you'll want this blog to run out of content as soon as possible. Based on what we've seen in the last week, however, I see no danger of that happening. Good luck, Josh! My Morning in ExileAs brushes with celebrity go, this is pretty good. Not as good as that time I was at the urinal next to a totally wasted Marshall Faulk at the Bellagio during the Rams' bye-week in the 2001-02 playoffs, put pretty good. The next night, also at the Bellagio, I saw Fred Schneider of the B52s dining alone at Circo. If you made a list of 1000 celebrities who you'd expect to see dining alone, would Fred Schneider ever be on it? I figured that the "Love Shack" video was one of his home movies. And That Happened: World SeriesYankees 3, Phillies 1: The Empire Strikes Back. Sorry, that was totally hacky. I haven't looked, but I'm guessing that line is being used by no less than two dozen outlets this morning. Anyone that can find them and make a note of it in the comments gets bonus points. Anyway: In the copious back and forth I had with Phillies fans in my "it's not time to panic yet, Yankees" post, almost everyone said that Burnett would get lit up last night because, well, I don't know exactly why. Yes, the guy was a bit erratic down the stretch, but he was still an above average pitcher this season, totally capable of dropping a nice performance like this one last night. Teixeira and Matsui shaking off the cobwebs was welcome too. And for the "good outcomes don't mean good decisions were made" file, how about Molina picking off Werth and Posada hitting that pinch hit RBI? I bet Burnett still has good stuff and wins last night even if Posada was behind the plate, but with it breaking down the way it did, Girardi will probably get some genius points today, for whatever they're worth. Ah, Pedro. I love the guy. Like I said over at NBC, I hoped like hell that he would be able to catch some 1999 lightning in a bottle. He didn't quite do that -- who could? -- but he gave a solid and gutsy performance, showing all of the smarts and guile he's always had, even if he doesn't have the velocity anymore. But really, if you had told anyone before the game that he'd throw over 100 pitches, lasting into the seventh and giving up only two runs before his exit, you would have assumed a Philly win, right? He was just met with a better performance by his counterpart. That happens. I can't tell you how much I've been enjoying this World Series so far. I'm a pitching guy, and we're four for four in solid starting pitching performances. Here's hoping it keeps up. Thursday, October 29, 2009Frozen Ropes and Dying QuailsYou may remember The Baseball Project, which was a supergroup of sorts (R.E.M.'s Peter Buck being the biggest name) that put out an album of baseball-related songs last year called "Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails." I had it in my "must acquire and listen to" file but lost track of it. MooseinOhio had his ears on last night and heard it featured on NPR's World Cafe last night. Interviews with the principals and some of the music. A good time killer before tonight's game. Phillies trying to end World Series droughtYa gotta believe: The last time the Philadelphia Phillies brought a World Series title back to the City of Brotherly Love, the nation’s financial sector was in complete ruin, the cost of a gallon of milk was only $2.74, fans watched the Fall Classic while huddled around their slightly-less-streamlined high-definition television sets, and Philadelphia slugger Ryan Howard was just 28 years old. Great Moments in World Series HistoryA 5-0 Phillies lead has Mayor Bloomberg snoozing, Bernie Williams happy. 22 milliseconds = $850KA big products liability award for the family of a dead American Legion pitcher and against the maker of an aluminum bat company: Attorneys for Hillerich & Bradsby Co. argued any other bat would not have hit the ball differently; in fact, they said, most bats on the market at the time would have struck the ball harder. Patch’s death was a tragic accident, they said. The defense lawyers declined comment after the verdict was read. I've never read the pleadings in this case and I'm not a products lawyer, so I have no idea if this is a crazy verdict or not. I will say, however, that I'm pretty dubious about such claims in general. And I say that even though I'm generally anti-aluminum bat. UPDATE: to clarify: my general position on this is that aluminum bats are either inherently safe with proper use or inherently unsafe and are incapable of proper use that won't cause injury. The presence or absence of a warning, or a milisecond difference between reaction times off of various aluminum bats does not seem like it would render the bat either safe or unsafe to use. As such, these kinds of bats should either be banned, or else we should accept comebackers to the mound as accidents, however unfortunate they might be. (link via BTF) My Morning in ExileColumbus, Ohio has the highly annoying habit of scheduling trick-or-treating on nights other than Halloween. They call it "beggar's night" and after 18 years in this town, I've still never heard an adequate explanation for why kids can't go door-to-door on the 31st. Some have suggested non-interference with high school or college football, but they move it even when Halloween falls on a Monday-Thursday. Some have claimed that, many years ago, Columbus held some city-wide Halloween party on the 31st and they wanted people to be able to do both, but no such beast exists today. There's really no good explanation. My suburb actually does it on the 31st most years, but this year they're falling in with Columbus. So we go trick-or-treating with the kids tonight, 6pm-8pm, followed by a good hour of trying to bring my children down from their sugar highs before bed. So I guess what I'm saying is, no one email me with mid-game spoilers, because I'm going to be DVRing that bad boy and watching it late. In the meantime: And if anyone cares, my daughter is dressing up like a witch, my son is dressing up like a construction worker, and my wife and I are dressing up like two suburban parents carrying travel mugs filled with liquor around the neighborhood while hoping nobody notices. Now that’s a game storyThose of you who recall an era when game strories weren't mere regurgitations of the box score will enjoy Josh Levin's game story over at Slate: On this night, the slim Phillie's casual brilliance outshines the grunting effort of his hefty ex-Indians teammate CC Sabathia. Despite a recurrent inability to spot his pitches, the Yankees starter kept every Phillie off the scoreboard excepting the brilliant, lefty-hitting second baseman Chase Utley. Down to his last strike in each of his first three plate appearances, Utley coaxed a walk and yanked two solo home runs. Utley's first shot comes with his left hand off the bat, a looping parabola that drops over Yankee Stadium's short right field porch. The second, which extends the Phillies' lead to 2-0, gets half as high off the ground and travels seemingly twice as far to deep right-center, leaving grunts and gasps in its wake. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||