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General Category => Sports/Entertainment/MSM/Social Media => Topic started by: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 08:58:46 pm

Title: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 08:58:46 pm

By Yours Truly

Just when you thought these postseason series were going to lack for intrigue other than that on the field, presto! We now have things from dirty play to espionage in the League Championship Series picture. Baseball as six parts the Dead End Kids and half a dozen parts the CIA.

Dodgers shortstop Manny Machado has been handed the Dead End Kids role, with a pair of Utley Rule-violating slides at second base in Game Three and a couple of nasty bumps on Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar in Game Four.

The Astros have been handed the spook role, with word that the Indians may have sent the Red Sox information about the Astros trying a little sign stealing during the division series sweep. While one and all around it so far seem to believe nobody’s found any corroborating evidence, it’s not as though the Astros or other teams—including the Red Sox—have been immune to accusations of subterfuge.

So much for savouring the Red Sox’s 8-2 dispatch of the Astros in Game Three of the ALCS Tuesday afternoon, or Jackie Bradley, Jr.’s game-busting eighth-inning grand salami. And, that skintight 2-1 Dodgers triumph in thirteen pitching-dominant innings in Game Four of the NLCS Tuesday night, ended when slumping Cody Bellinger shot an RBI single on a hard line into right.

But then if there’s one thing baseball fans tend to love more than the games themselves, it’s juiciness off the field or adjacent to it. Vin Scully used to love talking about the games within the games, but it usually referenced simple gamesmanship or parallel lines on the field or charming backstories. Dirty play and dirty pool just seem a lot sexier than that to Joe and Jan Fan—unless their teams are the actual or alleged victims, of course.

Machado isn’t exactly renowned as a completely clean player, even if a couple of past incidents involving him may not have been entirely his instigation. But when he slid in straight but hard with his arm up enough to possibly distract Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia from completing a double play, it ended up costing the Dodgers a fourth-inning Game Three rally when a review yielded interference and a double play call.

It was one of two such Machado slides and the one that got the negative field ruling, since on the first one Arcia hadn’t tried to throw on in a double play bid. But then in Game Four, on a routine tenth-inning ground out, Machado looked to too much of the world as though he kicked Aguilar’s foot with his back leg as he hit first base.

The benches and the bullpens emptied but nothing else happened and the game—dominated to a fare-thee-well by shutdown relief pitching on both sides and a one-all tie into the thirteenth inning—went on.

Machado’s ways on the bases, which seemed anomalous enough to those rubbing their eyes over his earlier proclamation that Johnny Hustle he ain’t, necessarily, almost overtook the discussion of Dodger center fielder Bellinger, a mid-Game Four insertion, robbing Lorenzo Cain of a hit with a dazzling, sprawling, wings-spread, tenth-inning catch, and winning the game with a no-doubt line single to right in the thirteenth . . . scoring Machado, who almost got picked off at second before coming home with the winner.

No less than the Brewers’ Most Valuable Player candidate, Christian Yelich, called Machado out after the game, which he otherwise called a great game. “It’s a dirty play,” Yelich said of the tenth-inning kick. “Dude, you just grounded one out. We’ve all grounded out. Just run through the bag like the rest of the world. There’s no place for it in the game . . . It’s unbelievable, really. He’s had a history. It happens once with him? It’s an accident. The fourth or fifth time? It’s intentional.”

“You saw the replay, probably,” Machado told a reporter. “I was trying to get over him, and hit his foot. If that’s dirty, that’s dirty. I don’t know, call it what you want.” Which was just a slightly odd observation about a play involving a fielder to whom Machado says he feels familial.

“He’s a great guy. We go way back since the minor leagues,” Machado said of Aguilar. “So it’s just a friendly game, go out, try and compete here. We’re trying to win, he’s trying to do whatever he can to help his team over there, and we’re doing the same over here.” Machado and Aguilar did apologise to each other but Machado was fined by baseball for the extra kick.

Apparently, trying to do whatever you can to help your team win can be taken a little too far. If the Brewers think Machado did, imagine what some people think the Astros are doing, now that Kyle McLaughlin—who isn’t an official Astros employee but carried an Astros identification badge—was caught aiming his cell phone camera at the Indians dugout during Game Three of the Astros’ division series sweep.

Baseball government was handed a photograph of McLaughlin aiming the cell camera on the day of Game Three between the Astros and the Red Sox. Various reports say baseball government had “beefed-up” security at Minute Maid Park just in case. MLB itself has decided the actual or alleged Astros intelligence agency isn't all that serious yet. And even if you could make a case that everyone in baseball does things like that or close to it to get a little edge, there seems to be a building consensus that the Astros are the team who makes the most teams nervous about such skulduggery.

In 1951 the New York Giants launched a stupefying comeback from a double-digit deficit in the pennant race to force a three-game playoff with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The one that ended with Bobby Thomson hitting the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, a game, set, and pennant-winning three-run homer with Willie Mays on deck. The one that somehow remains still so mythological that, when Travis Ishikawa won the 2014 Giants the NLCS and the pennant with a game-ending three-run homer, a popular video mash (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAXEvNvr_fw) almost immediately erupted of Ishikawa hitting the bomb with Russ Hodges’ fabled screaming call of the Thomson bomb patched onto it.

It turned out that ’51 Giants manager Leo Durocher and his coaches installed an elaborate for the time scheme in which one coach would train a high-powered hand-held telescope upon opposing catchers and relay the signs by under-field buzzer to the Giants bullpen, who’d then flash the Giants hitters the sign.

Thomson denied for the rest of his life that he’d accepted a stolen sign when he swung on Ralph Branca’s fastball. Branca himself—who forged a charming friendship with Thomson in later years—begrudged the Giants that pennant but couldn’t convince himself entirely that Thomson may have been helped to cheat. “He still had to hit the ball,” said Branca, who bore the humiliation of having thrown the fatal pitch with uncommon grace as his life forward otherwise happily.

Joshua Prager unearthed, affirmed, and exposed the ’51 Giants’ spy operation, first in The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB980896446829227925) and then in The Echoing Green (https://www.amazon.com/Echoing-Green-Untold-Thomson-Branca/dp/0375713077/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504658601&sr=8-2&keywords=Joshua+Prager). The Astros’ alleged espionage may or may not inspire a similarly researched and written book, but it took too much of the conversation away from the Red Sox’s staggering Game Three triumph Tuesday night.

Steve Pearce hits a one-out, tiebreaking home run in the sixth? Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi pitches six mostly dominant innings with only a first-inning RBI single (Marwin Gonzalez) and a fifth-inning RBI double (Alex Bregman) against him?

Controversial Astros relief pitcher Roberto Osuna—who pitched lights-out for them after his acquisition, a deal made when he was still on suspension over domestic violence accusations—hitting Brock Holt to load the bases and pinch hitter Mitch Moreland with the bases loaded to nudge home Pearce?

Jackie Bradley, Jr., whose three-run double in Game Two showed him beginning to erode a postseason slump following a hard regular season’s futility, bats after Moreland and turns on Osuna’s best fastball sending it into the right field seats?

How much fun is all that compared to another baseball Spygate? And never mind the irony of the Red Sox learning from the Indians that the Astros may have had a furtive camera trained on their signmakers, over a year after former Red Sox manager John Farrell was caught trying to use an AppleWatch to steal Yankee signs in a regular-season contest.

Plumb any reporting on the issue and it comes up that the Astros are the team who puts the fear of Wollensak (the type of hand telescope the ’51 Giants used) into the opposition. Some reports say the Athletics thought Astro players clapping in the dugout before each pitch were actually communicating stolen signs to their hitters. (MLB is said to be investigating that.) Others say Astro players use things such as banging trash cans to send hitters pilfered signs. Still others say McLaughlin was training a camera’s eye on the Red Sox to try discovering whether the Red Sox used a video monitor improperly.

Still others further may admit when pressed that, since we’re not talking about political or rival governmental spying and just baseball games, though it’s always mad fun to remind yourself that there isn’t a government on earth allergic to spying even on its allies, that the worst thing about any Astro espionage is that the Astros just might be better at it than others.

Remember Branca’s postulate. They can know what’s coming but still not be able to hit the ball at will. No level of Astro subterfuge could have kept Bradley from putting Game Four out of further reach and tying up the ALCS at two games each. And boys will still be boys, including the side of them that, even in the era of safe spaces and #MeToo, refuses to stop them from playing secret agent.
----------------------------------
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Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:06:17 pm

Quote from: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 08:58:46 pm

By Yours Truly


The Astros have been handed the spook role, with word that the Indians may have sent the Red Sox information about the Astros trying a little sign stealing during the division series sweep. While one and all around it so far seem to believe nobody’s found any corroborating evidence, it’s not as though the Astros or other teams—including the Red Sox—have been immune to accusations of subterfuge.

Thanks Easy Ace.

First I'll add an update.....

https://abc13.com/sports/mlb-clears-astros-of-cheating-over-photographing-in-playoffs/4504550/ (https://abc13.com/sports/mlb-clears-astros-of-cheating-over-photographing-in-playoffs/4504550/)

I will an update from another forum, I participate in.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 17, 2018, 10:09:22 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:06:17 pm

Thanks Easy Ace.

First add an update.....

https://abc13.com/sports/mlb-clears-astros-of-cheating-over-photographing-in-playoffs/4504550/ (https://abc13.com/sports/mlb-clears-astros-of-cheating-over-photographing-in-playoffs/4504550/)

I will an update from another forum, I participate in.

This was breaking when I was on the way to work this morning.
KTRH basically outlined what you have posted.
The supposed cheaters were trying to capture cheaters.

Pretty funny.

That 8th inning last night was pretty depressing.

Let's hope for a better outcome from the Astros tonight.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:11:10 pm

Cut/pasted from earlier today....

I've decided to stop at about 10 of these stupid click bait shit articles about Astross "spies" stealing signs for advantage.  Utter bull shit.

Just love how the East Coast MLB Illuminati media tries to make a mountain of a molehill, and attempt to unfocus the game from between the lines.

The concept of stealing signs has been around since as long as I have watched baseball (53 years), and no telling how much earlier.  All part of the lore of the games.  First and foremost, the biggest claims have always been a baserunner at second, then it became the spy with the binoculars at the outfield wall.  Now, the Uber-paranoia crowd thinks that taking pictures of a dugout is really creative and high tech means in this silly business

Now think about it folks.   Between the point when the catcher gives the sign to the completed pitch is about 3-7 second process.  So somehow in this fairyland of plausibility, a batter has to somehow communicate with someone using an electronic device while trying to hit a 100 mph fastball.  Come on..........

Finally... just want to make a couple of points......

(1) Note to AJ and the guys.....    Don't let this stupid diversion take your focus off the prize.  Let it get into their head.  In fact throw out decoys so that that is all the Sox are thinking about.   Kind of reminds me of Mike Scott back in the 1986 NLCS........    The Mets were so bent and worried about Scott scuffing the ball, they forgot the main intent was to hit the damned thing.

(2) MLB and the Commish illuminati are probably in near panic mode in what they may think the ratings will be in a Milwaukee - Houston series.  How better to deal with that, than manufacture some controversy,

(3) Cora is less than a year removed from being AJ's right hand man. IF this was a normal Astros tactic, wouldn't he have nipped it before even happening?, and Furthermore with Cora knowing, why would the Astros be stupid enough to employ it in Boston in the first place

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:12:28 pm

In the first inning tonight, I wish AJ and all the guys would get binoculars and point them at the Sox bench.........  :silly:

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:14:33 pm

Quote from: GrouchoTex on October 17, 2018, 10:09:22 pm

The supposed cheaters were trying to capture cheaters.

(http://orig07.deviantart.net/6da1/f/2013/126/6/0/spy_vs_spy__gentlemen__by_makatako-d64eerv.png)

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 17, 2018, 10:15:07 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:12:28 pm

In the first inning tonight, I wish AJ and all the guys would get binoculars and point them at the Sox bench.........  :silly:

That would be hilarious.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 17, 2018, 10:16:18 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:14:33 pm

(http://orig07.deviantart.net/6da1/f/2013/126/6/0/spy_vs_spy__gentlemen__by_makatako-d64eerv.png)

That's what Jimmy Barrett of KTRH called it this morning.
LOL

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 10:17:00 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:06:17 pm

Thanks Easy Ace.

First I'll add an update.....

https://abc13.com/sports/mlb-clears-astros-of-cheating-over-photographing-in-playoffs/4504550/ (https://abc13.com/sports/mlb-clears-astros-of-cheating-over-photographing-in-playoffs/4504550/)

I will an update from another forum, I participate in.

@catfish1957
I did mention in my essay that MLB decided Astros' Intelligency Agency isn't serious yet. At the time I wrote, any further detail about it wasn't coming forth yet.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 17, 2018, 10:21:20 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:11:10 pm

Cut/pasted from earlier today....

I've decided to stop at about 10 of these stupid click bait shit articles about Astross "spies" stealing signs for advantage.  Utter bull shit.

Just love how the East Coast MLB Illuminati media tries to make a mountain of a molehill, and attempt to unfocus the game from between the lines.

The concept of stealing signs has been around since as long as I have watched baseball (53 years), and no telling how much earlier.  All part of the lore of the games.  First and foremost, the biggest claims have always been a baserunner at second, then it became the spy with the binoculars at the outfield wall.  Now, the Uber-paranoia crowd thinks that taking pictures of a dugout is really creative and high tech means in this silly business

Now think about it folks.   Between the point when the catcher gives the sign to the completed pitch is about 3-7 second process.  So somehow in this fairyland of plausibility, a batter has to somehow communicate with someone using an electronic device while trying to hit a 100 mph fastball.  Come on..........

Finally... just want to make a couple of points......

(1) Note to AJ and the guys.....    Don't let this stupid diversion take your focus off the prize.  Let it get into their head.  In fact throw out decoys so that that is all the Sox are thinking about.   Kind of reminds me of Mike Scott back in the 1986 NLCS........    The Mets were so bent and worried about Scott scuffing the ball, they forgot the main intent was to hit the damned thing.

I remember that all too well

(2) MLB and the Commish illuminati are probably in near panic mode in what they may think the ratings will be in a Milwaukee - Houston series.  How better to deal with that, than manufacture some controversy,

Right, the ratings weren't good because thet teams cheated to get here, etc...

(3) Cora is less than a year removed from being AJ's right hand man. IF this was a normal Astros tactic, wouldn't he have nipped it before even happening?, and Furthermore with Cora knowing, why would the Astros be stupid enough to employ it in Boston in the first place

LOL., Spot on, best reason for it not to be happening. They can't be that stupid

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:24:06 pm

Quote from: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 10:17:00 pm

@catfish1957
I did mention in my essay that MLB decided Astros' Intelligency Agency isn't serious yet. At the time I wrote, any further detail about it wasn't coming forth yet.

Thanks Ace...   

I saw that.  My main point, as in my followup is there are factions within baseball who would like nothing more than create a diversion to derail the team.  It might seem to a  bit of a rant, but I have seen too may instances of Selig et. al antics that been underhanded toward the team though its history.  From team league changes, to Hurricane relocation games, to Roof open vs closed issues, etc.

Still, it won't really matter unless the team shows up tonight.  Team batting average  through 3 is .193, and Team ERA is 5.70.  Honestly we are lucky to only be down 2-`1.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 10:24:14 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:11:10 pm

Kind of reminds me of Mike Scott back in the 1986 NLCS........    The Mets were so bent and worried about Scott scuffing the ball, they forgot the main intent was to hit the damned thing.

The Mets actually did retrieve several scuffed balls Mike Scott threw in that NLCS, with circular scuffs in almost the same spots on the ball. It was then-National League president Chub Feeney who decided to do nothing about it, for whatever foolish reasons. (I'm pretty sure Feeney couldn't have predicted the final game would be a hair-raiser.) And Scott himself eventually admitted it for a documentary about the 1986 postseason. Quote: They can believe whatever they want to believe. Every ball that hits the ground has something on it. I’ve thrown balls that were scuffed but I haven’t scuffed every ball that I’ve thrown.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 17, 2018, 10:26:08 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 17, 2018, 10:24:06 pm

Thanks Ace...   

I saw that.  My main point, as in my followup is there are factions within baseball who would like nothing more than create a diversion to derail the team.  It might seem to a  bit of a rant, but I have seen too may instances of Selig et. al antics that been underhanded toward the team though its history.  From team league changes, to Hurricane relocation games, to Roof open vs closed issues, etc.

Still, it won't really matter unless the team shows up tonight.  Team batting average  through 3 is .193, and Team ERA is 5.70.  Honestly we are lucky to only be down 2-`1.

@catfish1957
The key for the Astros is really to out-hit the Red Sox if they can, and to accept the idea that as solid as their own pen is the Sox bullpen isn't quite as weak as believed going in.

The Brewers really have an issue now, losing Gio Gonzalez for the rest of the postseason after he rolled his ankle trying to make that play Tuesday night. Unless they get more than you might expect out of his replacement, the Brewers are in real danger of wringing their bullpen out just enough to make it count.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: corbe on October 17, 2018, 10:54:51 pm

   Another great read, Thanks @EasyAce

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 07:04:12 am

@EasyAce, first of all, great read.

Second, since this is my virgin year as a baseball fan, I had no idea of all the behind-the-scenes intrigue that takes place in America's favorite pastime.

Third, is there an "I HATE JOE WEST" club I can join? I need to vent my spleen.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 11:17:00 am

Quote from: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 07:04:12 am

@EasyAce, first of all, great read.

Second, since this is my virgin year as a baseball fan, I had no idea of all the behind-the-scenes intrigue that takes place in America's favorite pastime.

Third, is there an "I HATE JOE WEST" club I can join? I need to vent my spleen.

One thing 53 years of watching this game has shown me.  MLB has little regard for the paying fan.  How they allow the likes of Bucknor, Hernandez, and West to infect this game is proof positive.  Last night there was "no doubt" proof of what used to be the "line of demarcation". edge of wall was breached by Altuve's Homerun ball. Past that line is fair game...fielder or fan.   This whole thing was an utter farce, and I smell a rat.

Still. it was up to the Astros to up their game despite this.  They fell short, and MLB's desire to have a LA- BOS is now almost a certainty.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 04:16:24 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 11:17:00 am

...and MLB's desire to have a LA- BOS is now almost a certainty.

@catfish1957

Is this true? Is baseball fixed? If so, why? As a newbie to the game, I don't know what dynamics are at play here.

Was this fixed (see Reddick's tweet)? I felt so cheated then. After last night's debacle, I feel 100 times worse than when Altuve got robbed of that run in Boston.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 04:54:54 pm

Quote from: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 04:16:24 pm

@catfish1957

Is this true? Is baseball fixed? If so, why? As a newbie to the game, I don't know what dynamics are at play here.

Was this fixed (see Reddick's tweet)? I felt so cheated then. After last night's debacle, I feel 100 times worse than when Altuve got robbed of that run in Boston.

Baseball's not fixed, but I do believe that the MLB-Media east/west coast illuminati will give some teams an advantage, whether its intentional or not.   Baseball related,  Bud Selig is the biggest slime ball who ever lived.  Want evidence?  Even with fan objections, his Brewers were able to remain in the NLC, while our team was banished to ALW during league realignment.  All was a fix......   a condition allowing Crane to purchase the team from McLane.  There's other examples, but my blood pressure is already up..........

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: corbe on October 18, 2018, 04:55:42 pm

   Terrible night for Texas Sports, The Astros continue their collapse and the Rockets lost their season opener to the Nawlins Pelicans.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 05:56:58 pm

@catfish1957

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 04:54:54 pm

Bud Selig is the biggest slime ball who ever lived.  Want evidence?  Even with fan objections, his Brewers were able to remain in the NLC, while our team was banished to ALW.  All was a fix......   a condition allowing Crane to purchase the team from McLane.  There's other examples, but my blood pressure is already up..........

I don't even know what all that means or why NLC is preferred over ALW. I'm starting to wonder if baseball is the wrong game for me. It takes a considerable amount of time to watch the games (I watched all but about 10 or 12 games over the season). I was having great fun with my new passion (even during the injuries and slumps) -- until the past couple of weeks when I started learning about the shenanigans that go on away from the game itself. I have to weigh the value of my time against the disappointment and discouragement brought on by backstage puppeteers. I can't unknow what I have learned in recent weeks. I'm now feeling jaded and cheated. Maybe it's just the sting of last night's lousy call, but, at my advanced age, I need to consider how I invest my time. I woke up still mad as hell. That's not healthy.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 06:07:03 pm

Quote from: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 05:56:58 pm

@catfish1957



I don't even know what all that means or why NLC is preferred over ALW. I'm starting to wonder if baseball is the wrong game for me. It takes a considerable amount of time to watch the games (I watched all but about 10 or 12 games over the season). I was having great fun with my new passion (even during the injuries and slumps) -- until the past couple of weeks when I started learning about the shenanigans that go on away from the game itself. I have to weigh the value of my time against the disappointment and discouragement brought on by backstage puppeteers. I can't unknow what I have learned in recent weeks. I'm now feeling jaded and cheated. Maybe it's just the sting of last night's lousy call, but, at my advanced age, I need to consider how I invest my time. I woke up still mad as hell. That's not healthy.

@AllThatJazzZ

Don't give up on the game.  Screaming, bitching, and moaning is all part of it.    It took be 52 years of heartbreak to finally get the joy of winning for me.  Hopefully, JV will mow them down tonight, and we will get a miracle in Boston.  Pretty unlikely, but still possible.

As mad as I am right now too, you have to realize that this is damn good Boston team.  No accident they won 108 games.  Also don't forget we still made the final 4 of the season.  There are fans of 26 other teams who can't make that claim.

The sting, will wear off in a few days, and then you will start counting down the days to Spring Training.  All part of the cycle of life in baseball.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 18, 2018, 06:09:09 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 06:07:03 pm

@AllThatJazzZ

Don't give up on the game.  Screaming, bitching, and moaning is all part of it.    It took be 52 years of heartbreak to finally get the joy of winning for me.  Hopefully, JV will mow them down tonight, and we will get a miracle in Boston.  Pretty unlikely, but still possible.

As mad as I am right now too, you have to realize that this is damn good Boston team.  No accident they won 108 games.  Also don't forget we still made the final 4 of the season.  There are fans of 26 other teams who can't make that claim.

The sting, will wear off in a few days, and then you will start counting down the days to Spring Training.  All part of the cycle of life in baseball.

 :amen:

Some of my favorite words:

"Pitchers and Catchers scheduled to report..........."

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 06:11:28 pm

Quote from: GrouchoTex on October 18, 2018, 06:09:09 pm

"Pitchers and Catchers scheduled to report..........."

Except Maldonado......   :silly:

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 18, 2018, 06:33:38 pm

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 18, 2018, 06:11:28 pm

Except Maldonado......   :silly:

I believe that boy couldn't catch a cold.

He did throw out a runner, which is his specialty, but way too many passed balls.
He hits about a home run a month, which is the only hit he gets that month.

Other than that, hey what's not to love?

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 18, 2018, 07:41:35 pm

Quote from: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 05:56:58 pm

@catfish1957

I don't even know what all that means or why NLC is preferred over ALW. I'm starting to wonder if baseball is the wrong game for me. It takes a considerable amount of time to watch the games (I watched all but about 10 or 12 games over the season). I was having great fun with my new passion (even during the injuries and slumps) -- until the past couple of weeks when I started learning about the shenanigans that go on away from the game itself. I have to weigh the value of my time against the disappointment and discouragement brought on by backstage puppeteers. I can't unknow what I have learned in recent weeks. I'm now feeling jaded and cheated. Maybe it's just the sting of last night's lousy call, but, at my advanced age, I need to consider how I invest my time. I woke up still mad as hell. That's not healthy.

@AllThatJazzZ
As a lifelong baseball fan (I have been a Met fan since the day they were born, a Red Sox fan since the 1967 pennant race---want to see my October 1986 Class-A drug bills?---and an Angel fan since the ten years I lived in southern California), I can tell you that one of baseball's oldest professions is intrigue. It works that way in other, lesser professional sports, too. Imagine how Dodger fans felt when learning in due course that the 1951 Giants cheated their way to the stupefying pennant race comeback that forced the three-game playoff ending with the pennant flying into the left field seats on Bobby Thomson's home run. Yep---The Giants stole the pennant! The Giants stole the pennant! even though there's no evidence Thomson himself took a stolen sign to hit that homer. (Giants manager Leo Durocher, coach Herman Franks, and third-string catcher Sal Yvars had a scheme in which Franks would train a Wollensak spyglass telescope on the plate for signs, click a button that activated a buzzer in the Giants bullpen, and Yvars would transmit the sign to the hitter. Some Giants including Thomson and Hall of Famer Monte Irvin refused to take the stolen signs. You can get the whole story in Joshua Prager's The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, and the Shot Heard 'Round the World (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Echoing+Green).)

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 18, 2018, 07:42:26 pm

Quote from: GrouchoTex on October 18, 2018, 06:33:38 pm

I believe that boy couldn't catch a cold.

He did throw out a runner, which is his specialty, but way too many passed balls.
He hits about a home run a month, which is the only hit he gets that month.

Other than that, hey what's not to love?

He's definitely not the same catcher I saw when he was an Angel and was one of the better defensive catchers in the AL West and a good handler of pitchers.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 19, 2018, 02:07:45 pm

Quote from: EasyAce on October 18, 2018, 07:42:26 pm

He's definitely not the same catcher I saw when he was an Angel and was one of the better defensive catchers in the AL West and a good handler of pitchers.

Agreed. He looked pretty good here in Houston when he first arrived.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 19, 2018, 02:15:51 pm

Quote from: AllThatJazzZ on October 18, 2018, 05:56:58 pm

@catfish1957

I don't even know what all that means or why NLC is preferred over ALW. I'm starting to wonder if baseball is the wrong game for me. It takes a considerable amount of time to watch the games (I watched all but about 10 or 12 games over the season). I was having great fun with my new passion (even during the injuries and slumps) -- until the past couple of weeks when I started learning about the shenanigans that go on away from the game itself. I have to weigh the value of my time against the disappointment and discouragement brought on by backstage puppeteers. I can't unknow what I have learned in recent weeks. I'm now feeling jaded and cheated. Maybe it's just the sting of last night's lousy call, but, at my advanced age, I need to consider how I invest my time. I woke up still mad as hell. That's not healthy.

@AllThatJazzZ

Hang in there.

A quote from A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The green fields of the mind."

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

Baseball is a wonderful and glorious game, and mimics life quite a bit with ups and downs, heroics and failures.
God bless Abner Doubleday.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 19, 2018, 07:47:18 pm

Quote from: GrouchoTex on October 19, 2018, 02:15:51 pm

God bless Abner Doubleday.

Who didn't actually lay out the game. It was a myth begun by a fellow named A.G. Mills, who commissioned a 1905 study to determine the game's origin after a former player-turned-sporting goods tycoon, Albert Spalding, who objected to the thought that baseball might have evolved from England's rounders and cricket and wanted affirmation that it was a purely American creation. Not only was Doubleday not even present in Cooperstown in 1839, the year he supposedly invented the game (he was stationed at West Point at the time), but his obituary upon his death in 1893 made a point of mentioning that he actually didn't much like outdoor sports---even though he did provide baseball equipment for troops under his command as an off-duty recreation. (Doubleday was a Civil War general and the man who ordered the first shot of that war defending Fort Sumter, the war's first battle.)

A man named Abner Graves, a Denver mining engineer, submitted a letter to Mills's commission claiming Doubleday as baseball's creator. But nobody bothered to fact-check Graves's claims and, in fact, he died in 1926 . . . in an insane asylum. Baseball may actually not have a single inventor, properly defined, but it was Alexander Cartwright who first came up with the rules---including the infield, basepath, and mound distance dimensions---that basically defined the game as we've come to know it. Cartwright did that in 1845; a year later, the first known and recorded baseball game played under the Cartwright rules, between the New York Knickerbockers and the New York Nine, was played in a park known as the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J. The most positive outcome of the Doubleday myth is Cooperstown being the home, of course, of the Hall of Fame.

Abner Doubleday had as much to do with the creation of baseball as Herbert Hoover had to do with the invention of the portable vacuum cleaner. (Which was created, by the way, by an Ohio janitor named Murray Spangler, whose battles with asthma inspired him to rig up a fan tied to a revolving sweeping brush and augmented by an oversize pillow case that anyone could use. His cousin-in-law spotted it, liked it, and, realising Spangler couldn't afford to produce it en masse on his own, turned his leather goods operation into a massively successful vacuum cleaner manufacturer beginning in 1908. The cousin-in-law was Bill Hoover, no relation to either the future president or the future FBI director, and Lord knows J. Edgar Hoover sucked . . .)

Baseball began in a bright green field with an ancient name when this country was new and raw and without shape, and it has shaped America by linking every summer from 1846 to this one, through wars and depressions and seasons of rain.

Baseball is one of the few enduring institutions in America that has been continuous and adaptable and in touch with its origins. As a result, baseball is not simply an essential part of this country; it is a living memory of what American culture at its best wishes to be.

The game is quintessentially American in the way it puts the premium on both the individual and the team; in the way it encourages enterprise and imagination and yet asserts the supreme power of the law. Baseball is quintessentially American in the way it tells us that, much as you travel and far as you go, out to the green frontier, the purpose is to get home, back to where the others are, the pioneer ever striving to come back to the common place. A nation of migrants always, for all their wandering, remembers what every immigrant never forgets: that you may leave home but if you forget where home is, you are truly lost and without hope.

---A. Bartlett Giamatti, from "Men of Baseball, Lend an Ear," The New York Times, 1981.

Giamatti knew the deep national need for 90-foot baselines and 60-foot-6-inch pitching lanes, and three-strikes-you're-out-at-the-old-ball-game. He knew that the occasional eccentric whose passion tended toward stamp collecting or opera or gardening or computer hacking or football probably breathed easier from the exhibitions of March to the Series of October, secure that there was a ball game going on somewhere.

It was a tribute to Giamatti, who died Friday, that most journals and broadcasts honored him, in their rapidly assembled obituaries, as a human being first, and a scholar and administrator and writer before he ever became a baseball official.

When he first assumed the presidency of the National League, there was the tendency of some to patronize him as the nutty professor on sabbatical. This columnist, who saw Giamatti as a gravely serious man, once jested in print that a minor National League decision be rendered in Haiku, the Japanese 17-syllable poetry form. Giamatti referred to it years later, clearly not amused. Besides, his specialty was Dante . . .

At the very least, the [Pete] Rose affair kept Giamatti from sitting in the stands very often. He did get to see Nolan Ryan record his 5,000th strikeout last month in Texas, ticking off at least one Oakland player who thought he detected Giamatti rooting for Ryan.

Giamatti knew that baseball is about rooting, about caring. Let us envision him on the edge of his seat, a smile softening his gray beard and somber eyes, his fists itching to pump the air as Ryan blew his heater past Rickey Henderson. Let us picture him in Seattle or in Atlanta, suffering with the home fans, or back in Fenway, letting his true passions out.

As long as he was commissioner, there would have been the chance he would act and speak out of his convictions, and that these would have made him the ultimate steward of the national game.

---George Vecsey, from "The Commissioner Who Went One-for-One," The New York Times, 3 September 1989.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: AllThatJazzZ on October 19, 2018, 10:10:45 pm

@catfish1957

I need to apologize to you. I didn't [want to] buy the MLB manipulation that you referenced in your posts (Reply #5, specifically item (2), and Reply #15 and #17). The more I read and hear, the more I realize you're right.

I managed to catch this on FOX News this morning as Bill Hemmer and Julie Banderas were closing their show. Hemmer announced that Boston would be going to the World Series. Banderas kept badgering him to say who he's rooting for. He was all grins as he maneuvered his way through her questions without actually picking a team. He ended with this:

At this point, baseball can’t lose. If you get -- no offense against Milwaukee…and the rest of the guys -- if you get an LA/Boston Series, it would be great for baseball, coast to coast (gestures to indicate the two coasts).

--Bill Hemmer
FOX News, Oct. 19, 2018

Dayum! You were right. What a naïve fool I am. You'd think I'd get used to being part of flyover country, but hope springs eternal, as they say. I'll be contemplating whether baseball is the sport for me during the offseason. And mourning that my baseball virginity is lost and that I'm feeling a bit used.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 19, 2018, 10:57:08 pm

@AllThatJazzZ

Jazz....

In the realm of MLB wanting to nudge the needle one way or the other proved moot last night.

No conspiracy theory  caused the Astros to look that pathetic at the plate in G5.  The Game (series)  is a game of inches, and in 75-80% of this ALCS those breaks fell to the BoSox.   The better team won.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 20, 2018, 02:07:14 am

@EasyAce
I knew Doubleday wasn't the creator, but I look at it like saying Colombus discovered America.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: AllThatJazzZ on October 20, 2018, 05:06:13 am

Quote from: catfish1957 on October 19, 2018, 10:57:08 pm

@AllThatJazzZ

Jazz....

In the realm of MLB wanting to nudge the needle one way or the other proved moot last night.

No conspiracy theory  caused the Astros to look that pathetic at the plate in G5.  The Game (series)  is a game of inches, and in 75-80% of this ALCS those breaks fell to the BoSox.   The better team won.

@catfish1957

Uh-oh. If my post came across that I expected the 'Stros to win in spite of their sluggish performance, I failed to get my point across. I need to hone my writing skills.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: catfish1957 on October 20, 2018, 10:35:03 am

Quote from: AllThatJazzZ on October 20, 2018, 05:06:13 am

@catfish1957

Uh-oh. If my post came across that I expected the 'Stros to win in spite of their sluggish performance, I failed to get my point across. I need to hone my writing skills.

@AllThatJazzZ

No Jazz, your wring is fine.  Baseball is unique that it has such a long grueling schedule of 162 battles that culminate into a best 11 of 17 (add 1 if you are WC).  Seems always that the team that not only gets hot Oct 1 and stays hot becomes champion.  Last year was a joy, when you think that only 1 team out of 30 is happy at the end.  29 go disappointed.   

I have a saying that "Bad Baseball is better than No Baseball at All".  For 52 prior seasons, that pretty much has been my credo.  I'm still basking in 2017, and no one will ever take that from me. 

p.s. Pitchers and Catchers report in about 116 days.

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: EasyAce on October 20, 2018, 04:08:47 pm

Quote from: GrouchoTex on October 20, 2018, 02:07:14 am

@EasyAce
I knew Doubleday wasn't the creator, but I look at it like saying Colombus discovered America.

@GrouchoTex
No muss, no fuss, no problem.

And, strangely enough, there are people who still think either Herbert Hoover or J. Edgar Hoover were related to the man who actually did make the vacuum cleaners . . .

Title: Re: Dead end kid, espionage, welcome to LCS intrigue
Post by: GrouchoTex on October 23, 2018, 04:05:44 pm

Quote from: EasyAce on October 20, 2018, 04:08:47 pm

@GrouchoTex
No muss, no fuss, no problem.

And, strangely enough, there are people who still think either Herbert Hoover or J. Edgar Hoover were related to the man who actually did make the vacuum cleaners . . .

It is, admittedly, intellectual laziness on my part.