The Diz Factor

The Year In Review and Charlie Manual is an idiot.

2010-07-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

Generally, I have always felt that the MLB All-Star game did a much better job than any of the other sports all-star games. They generally do a better job of putting them team together, fan voting notwithstanding. This year just shot all of that built of tolerance right out the window. Charlie Manual, your an idiot. That is absolutely all there is to it. Last year I railed on and on about Manual picking Ryan Howard for the team when he was about the tenth best first-basemen in the National League. It was embarrassing then, and its even more embarrassing this year. Why? Because he left Joey Votto off the team. Joey Votto who is probably the front runner for MVP. Joey Votto who is leading the league in OPS. THE Joey Votto that is a much better hitter at 26 than Ryan Howard is at 30. Then he has the nerve to add a fifth Brave to the team over Votto. A guy that isn't a full time player, isn't a regular on his on team, is putting up a .337 OBP with a .706 OPS. Yes, folks, come on down Omar Infante. Thats right, the same Omar Infante that was a super prospect with the Tigers way back when. Apparently his .706 OPS in limited action is more impressive than a .997 everyday OPS. To put it bluntly this is bullshit, and I hope Joey Votto sticks it to you in the playoffs. I have no doubt that hitting bombs against the Phillies will be at least a bit sweeter than before.

Yes, folks, Stephen Stasburg is the real deal. Yep, he will probably win a Cy Young award injuries not withstanding. Yes, he is only 2 down from leading his team in K's with only a fraction of the innings. But no he does not belong on the All-Star team, not this year anyway. He will have plenty of those in his future, he has enough hype, let him earn it, and for once Manual actually got something right. Also, keep in mind he hasn't even been the best rookie pitcher this season so far. Jaime Garcia takes that honor, and he isn't an All-Star either, although he probably should be. Thems the breaks of being a rookie.

I just don't like Colby Rasmus. He is dumb as a box of hammers, makes dumb mistakes, can't throw the ball straight, doesn't learn from his mistakes as he repeats them, runs the bases like he has his eyes closed, has a diva complex, and his father things he should be on staff just to coach his swing. The possible upside just isn't worth the negative baggage, plus I think he might be peaking this year. At the end of the season I will break down his retrosheet, and I am quite certain I will discover he does poorly in games that matter, against quality pitching, and that his RISP numbers with 2 outs will be terrible because damn it, every time he comes up with runners on and two outs its generally a strikeout. If you could get a good trade out of him that could make the difference this year I say do it.

Trevor Hoffman, call it quits, your just embarrassing yourself.

I have decided that on the whole I really just despise baseball journalists. The beat writers anyway. I used to think I liked Rob Neyer, but after following him on Twitter he really is just a pretentious prig. The Cardinals beat is mainly covered by 4 guys, Matthew Leach, Joe Strauss, Derrick Gould, and Bernie Miklasz. Leach is talented writer, but practically just gushes at the seams trying to show the fans how well rounded he is and what a cool hipster he is. Always talking about the new album or whatnot and reviewing it mostly during the Cardinals games. Apparently it became enough of an issue that his bosses censured him and told him to focus more on baseball and less on being cool. As it is, he basically spends his time trying to be a journalist, bookwriter, music reviewer, and stat guru, and unfortunately he just does a half-assed job at all of them. He likes to gripe about managerial decisions with the pitchers and gripes constantly about the bunt. Here is a hint Matt, if you think you are a better manager than TLR grow a pair and say so, if not quite being such a whiner, that type of stuff is not productive for the fan base or the team. Joe Strauss is an all right who talks enough about poker and horse races that it makes me suspect he has a problem. Miklasz is a confrontational burnout that rarely says anything relevant. That leaves Derrick Gould, who is mostly just boring. I think the state of journalism is really just depressing. Getting to the point where now, I don't even like baseball writers, and that was pretty much the last group of journalists I had any tolerance for left.

When Roy wants out of Houston you know things have gotten REALLY bad. I have a feeling its going to be a long 3 or 4 years there. That team is pretty terrible, and it might get worse next year. Fortunately at least Pittsburgh is in the division, and they might not could win in Double-A.

Which brings me to Pittsburgh. In all the 17 years they have been losing, this might be the worst of those seasons. The fans truly don't seem to care anymore. They are going to see that cool ballpark more than to see that team. Even at homes games the players often hear louder cheers for the away team than the home team. Sad state of affairs for such a historic franchise.

Whats the deal with Ike Davis? People talk about him like he is, well, good. But, the numbers just don't really support that he is anything hype worthy. I just don't get it. East coast bias? Last I heard . An average in the .250's a low .300 OBP and low .400 SLG were not anything to be exciting about in a corner infielder, even if he is a rookie. Literally has next to the worst numbers at the position in the league.

Retro Movie Review L.A. Confidential 9/10!

2010-07-07T17:25:00.001-07:00

I get asked every now and then what my favorite movies are and for some reason even though its definitely one my five or six favorite movies, I always forget that this one exists. This is an absolutely fantastic movie folks, and if you haven't seen it you need to go add it to your Netflix queues right this minute. It has an absolutely fantastic cast, featuring Kevin Spacey, Guy Pierce, and an early career showing for Russell Crowe. They each play very different but equally conflicted police detectives on the 1950's L.A.P.D. Their boss is the always good James Cromwell, and the rest of the extended cast, although not so well known, turn in some very good performances. The plot is twisty, with a sort of noir flair storyline but not shot in the film style of film noir. There is really much to say about this film except GO SEE IT NOW!!

The Last Airbender 0/10!

2010-07-07T11:12:00.001-07:00

I have never, ever, received so little for the price of a movie ticket than I did with this movie. This is, probably the worst movie I have ever seen in a mainstream release. It has replaced Eragon as the worst movie with a budget I have witnessed and has created absolutely new lows in movie making. I don't know if ever I have left a movie theatre with absolutely nothing good to say about a movie. The only thing I can say is that I laughed a lot. At the terrible dialogue.

Firstly, the special effects were terribad. The opening scenes in the snow were laughable and you could actually pick out the halos around the characters where they were either put on a screen of imposed over CGI. That beautiful trailer we all saw that had all the ships and the kid in the tower in an epic war scene, totally not in the movie, and in fact nothing anything near that good or cool is in the movie. Truly hack work. This movie is so melodramatic that from hence forth all melodramas shall be known as airbenders, but that’s the least of this movies worries really. I don't really prescribe to all the hubbub about them not casting enough Asians. This is a made up world, and if they wanted to cast some white folk, and some Indo/Pak kids that’s fine with me. This movie had people of all flavors and there were plenty of Asians cast. However, they should have casted some kids in the lead roles that had at least a smidgen of acting talent. Sadly the worst of the worst were two of the characters that received a lot of air time. Noah Ringer, who plays Aang, the Last Airbender was terrible, even when held to standards for his age. This was his first gig, and frankly, I am wondering if he dad knew the casting director or something, because he should still be an unknown. He wasn't the worst though, Jackson Rathbone takes that honor. He plays Sokka a non-elemental bending semi-warrior who serves no real purpose to the plot but to say stupid things and deliver lines with all the emotion of a robot. Of course this is probably how they taught him to do things on the Twilight set.

Perhaps, though, these guys could have done something if they were giving anything, and I mean ANYTHING to work with. This is the worst script I have ever had the misfortune to stumble across. The lines are absolutely laughable. This literally makes Twilight look like an Oscar winner. Its generally a pretty good sign of poor script writing when actors that are generally average to good in quality are as equally terrible as the untested young talent. Dev Patel, who has talent, place a flat, completely non-dynamic character. Cliff Curtis, Shaun Taub, Aasif Mandvi are all at least adequate, but all come up short here. The other problem is this movie lacks any sort of resolution whatsoever. It was clearly made to be in a series of movies, but it makes it shamefully obvious that its part of a series. Unlike most other series, which has a full arc in each film this one just sort of ends like the first night of a three night mini-series on NBC. What makes it worse is that since its so terrible and is getting such terrible reviews there won't be anymore movies. Given the way this one ends THERE IS NO REASON TO WATCH IT. Its seriously like watching half of a movie and then stopping right before a lot of stuff happens, and never going back to it. Tell you what, I will sum it up for you:

There are a bunch of 14 year olds standing around, giving bad lines with even worse delivery, they do monumentally stupid acts for no particularly reason while one or more of them watch and say with little emotion "no don't you dare do that exact act in which you are going to do." Then they do that act and something else happens, then they get on a terrible CGI'd luck dragon clone and go somewhere else where they do some sort of combat that looks like it should be part of stomp. Then he doesn't something with water and the movie blacks out. The fire lord says something to his daughter blah blah blah, then you get ready for the real parts of the movie to start, oh but then it ends. Generally I believe that quality and enjoyability are not mutually exclusive, but there is a point in which a movie is just so bad that there really just can't be an reason to enjoy it. This movie is one of those. I just can't see how anyone can honestly say they enjoyed this movie. And from the rotten tomatoes reviews it doesn't really look like anyone has.

The A-Team Movie Review 7.5/10!

2010-06-22T21:54:00.001-07:00

There are various ways in which to judge a movie. Sometimes you don't judge purely on the quality of the product. The A-Team is ridiculous. The plot doesn't always make sense, there is very little logic, the action is huge and over the top, the characters are caricatures, but, it works. Why does it work? Why do components that generally make a bad movie result in an entertaining movie here? Well, its because it captures and epitomizes the spirit of the TV series perfectly. Sure, they could have made a gritty, dark, artistic movie, and it probably would have been high quality, but, that wouldn't have fit very well, the characters would have been off and it would have born no resemblance to the action series that so many people love. And, its darn funny as well. The characters are very well done, with the only stretch being Rampage Jackson, and his performance wasn't to terrible for a guy that’s really just not an actor. Bradley Cooper was excellent as Faceman but Sharlto Copley truly stole the show with his characterization of Murdock. He is not exactly a household name but he played Wikus in District 9 and he is very, very good. Very surprising given his inexperience. He is a guy to watch for in the future. Jessica Biel doesn't really add anything, but she is hot, and this type of movie does require at least one really hot girl to be in it. Its not going to win an Oscar or anything, but if you liked the television show you will love this movie, and if you are not a fan of the television show you can do a lot worse than watching this flick.

Video Games aren't art? Anything is art.

2010-06-17T11:39:00.001-07:00

Roger Ebert is quoted as having said that "Video games can never be art." His logic for this is that you cannot take the pinnacle of its creation and compare it to the great works in filmmaking, art, poetry, literature, etc. To use a metaphor quoted in his blog about this, video games are much closer to the chicken scratches on the inside of caves than they are to the Sistine Chapel. This is an incredibly idiotic statement. Actually amazingly idiotic, rarely does a critic say something that makes me wish I could actually talk to the guy face to face and really see why he thinks this. Perhaps he thinks that this will keep his fading reputation in with the pretentious bigwigs of the art house scene, or this is just last ditch efforts at staying relevant. Regardless there are many reasons as to why this is just a purely flawed statement. Firstly, no one can say what is or isn't art. You can fully have the right to say something is bad art, or terrible art, or something even a third grader could do, but you don't have the right to say that something somebody put their hard work and soul into "ISN'T" art. If someone considers what they are doing art, then it is art and no one can say different. Secondly, saying something has to have reached its apex to be art is also idiotic. Since the Sistine Chapel was achieved that means that all painting is art? Merely because one person was great in that field that means all others who could never hope to achieve that level are creating art because one person was great in it? How about graphic art? No offense to anyone in that field, I have seen a lot of quality work, a lot of really great work, but I have yet to see anything that belongs in the Louvre. Does that mean that it's not art? According to Ebert it does, and I don't think anybody in their right mind believes that Graphic art and design isn't a form of art. Even in my field of art, photography, there have been many greats, but I don't think a single photography has reached the transcendental level of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Joyce, Van Gogh, Etc. Is that any less art because of this? NO its not. And to follow on that line of though, I am a moviephile, I appreciate good movies, and I would doubt that 1/10 people I know have even seen even close to as many movies I have. I know cinema history, theory, and I know the great movies of all time. And the greatest reason why Ebert's logic is flawed is because his field is no more art than video games are by his theory. In no way shape or form has there been a movie made that can match the pure genius of the great works of art. Hell, a large portion of the "greatest" movies of all time use Shakespeare as the direct basis of their screen plays. The point is very few things can rival the beauty and awe inspiring nature of the works of the masters, saying that a field has achieved that mastery to be art is going to prevent most fields from being considered art. And then saying because one great person practiced an art makes all of that form art regardless of who does and quality is also just pure idiocy. Video games are developing as any art. REGARDLESS of what you think about video games even in its beginning its essentially animation. Its developed with hand drawn concept art. Notice the term concept art. Well, wait a minute Roger, since the sprites are rendered by hand generally first doesn't that make it art? Then it tells a story. Just like a movie does. In fact most games nowadays are movies broken up by periods of time in which you blow shit up, or hit it with a sword , or driving around looking for stuff and progressing to the next point in which the plot advances. The recent game "Heavy Rain" is a an example of what video game as art can be. It is an incredibly detailed plot driven game that allows for virtually all aspects of the plot to be controlled. It is cinematic, story driven, and has a better script than 60% of the new movies coming out. Not all scripts for video games are great, but several games companies have been telling a great story for many years. I was affected more by the death of Aeris in Final Fantasy 7 than I have been by any movie by that point in my life. The story of Chrono Trigger was amazing and that was on a 16 bit system. Ever heard of Final Fantasy 3/6? That game has more detailed characters with more nuance than most movies could ever hope for. And Square Enix is not the only game company that can tell a story. Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic had a better story than the Star Wars Episode I did. Rockstar hit it out of the park with their tale of revenge in GTA IV. I can go on and on. Video games can hold a narrative, tell a compelling story, and provides often awesome displays of CGI. If James Cameron can make Avatar (which has a far inferior plot to most video games) through out a bunch of CGI and get praised for his "art." Then its absolutely idiotic to deny video game there place as an art. It may not be quite to a level of a Sanjuro or an 8 1/2 but its getting damn close.

Repost of an old blog from 07 on medical testing.

2010-06-11T00:14:00.001-07:00

So I am taking a class at ASU and it is an online graduate class on the History of Medicine. One of our discussion topics was Medical Testing in prisons. Here is what one of our brilliant and ranking ASU police officers posted in the discussion board.

"Well this week discussion is a tossup for me. The men and women in prison are there for a reason, they have been convicted of a crime. I'm not saying that everyone in the prison system is guilty, but they have been tried and convicted and sentenced to prison. Once convicted the inmates loses their right to anything.( Examples- right to vote, right to carry weapons, ect). I think that the companies should use the men and women in the prison systems especially the ones on death row. I don't think the inmates need consent to do this. Yes, you can in return for participating in the study give extra commissary. I think that most inmates are educated, being in law enforcement, we deal with the same people a lot on the street from the prison system and they come out smarter than when they went in. Most men and women in the prison system get their GED or read law books to try and make them smarter. I don't think they should be asked for consent."

Brilliant, not only does a law enforcement officer think they all prisoners no longer have any human rights, but he is under the delusion that apparently prison is good for them, and that it is an improvement for them. He thinks they are essentially animals. Actually maybe not that highly... this is another quote on the same thread.

" Its not that I am a bad police officer cause I take my job very serious. I have been in Law Enforcement since 1992. The thing that gets me is that once someone's convicted and sent to the state prisons, that they belong to the state. which means we have to pay for all there meals, all there doctors appointments, everything, even though they are locked up and guarded 24 hours a day seven days a week, we have to foot the bills. You are right they are humans,and I can see where some of the men and women have the right to consent.

I am a big animal lover to, so why test the animals, they have rights too. I don't think its right to do the animals either.

sorry to get the class stirred up, but just to let you all now that I do take my job very serious to protect and serve the state of Arkansas. Everyone has there own feelings about this, I knew this one would be a tough week for me. I just know that arriving on some of the scenes that I have in the past, just gets to you sometimes. Again I hope you can accept my apology for stirring things up."

Apparently he actually value animals to a greater extent than human life. Pretty amazing really.

My Guitar Project

2010-06-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

Way back in the day when I was a gigging drummer I used to have this idea that I would take a drum set and sand down the finish then take baseball cards and attach them to the drum frame and refinish it. The drum set would then have the cards as collage finish and I always thought that would be quite awesome. I still want to do this, but I know longer really play drums, so I have decided that I will do it to a guitar.

I will probably go with a strat body, one of the unfinished ones. The rounded edges will make it easier, and prevent me from having to cut a bunch of cards up with an exacto knife to get the precise fit needed. I will probably go with the 1987 Topps set as my source for cards. The 1987 set as seen to the left has a wood grain look and I think it would look quite nice as the finish. I will probably use all St. Louis Cardinals cards, and 1987 isn't a bad year to do that with since it was a world series team. The other sets I am considering are 1983, primarily because I really like that set, and 1978, mostly because I have a complete set collecting dust. It will be some work to get it done, but I think it will make a good project. 1970's and 80's cards will make a good base for this project because the card stock is so thin and they feature virtually no gloss on the card whatsoever.

The Losers Movie Review 6.5/10

2010-05-17T12:32:00.001-07:00

So what is the difference between a summer pop corn flick that is enjoyable and one that makes you want to shoot the screen with a .50 caliber sniper rifle? Generally with me its how serious the movie takes itself. This is, of course, mostly due to who is directing. Some directors think they are creating a dramatic masterpiece no matter how crappy the premise and load it with dramatic chipmunk type shots and overly dramatic lines filled with gravitas like they are all being uttered by David Caruso in his most serious of moments. The converse is movies like The Losers. This movie is fun, and it knows what it is. A movie filled with over the top characters that quip one liners and blow crap up. Its fun, its quick, its mindless. Its not the best movie in the world, but its summer popcorn entertainment and its worth seeing. There are no Oscar winners in this movie, but the acting is good enough considering all they have to do is shoot stuff and do their best Spider-man one-liner impression. And Zoe Saldana, man, she is smoking. You know a girl is attractive when she still manages to look hot as a CGI alien, so of course she is good looking in this film. This movie is sure a heck of a lot better than any Miley Cyrus/Nick Sparks compilation.

Michael Bay's worst movies list!!

2010-05-16T20:58:00.003-07:00

All of them.

Easiest blog ever.

Robin Hood Movie Review 7.5/10

2010-05-16T18:59:00.001-07:00

So I really liked this movie. I am not sure why its not doing so well with the critics. Some of the reviews say that it isn't an original take on the Robin Hood legend (notice the proper use of the word legend rather than myth) but I question what they really mean by that. I am not sure what they were expecting, it not something that can have a numerous about of different takes. But I digress. To put it in today's comic book nomenclature perhaps this movie should be entitled Robin Hood: Origins. This is not a retelling of the events of Robin Hood and his merry men stealing from the rich to give to the poor, this is the story of the events and circumstances that put him there. This movie does have an excellent cast and they do a good job in this film. Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett are really good, and in all truth the movie would actually be better with more scenes of them interacting. The movie has freaking MAX VON SYDOW in it, how can you go wrong with that? Mark Addy is good, and frankly I have always wanted to see him play the role of Friar Tuck, although I certainly do wish that the movie had more of him. Denis Menochest made me smile in a small role, mainly because he was so good in Inglourious Basterds. And Mark Strong is his typical villain (go go Sinestro, is he even capable of playing a good guy?) William Hurt and Kevin Durand also do well in supporting roles as William Marshall and Little John (his line, "What are you getting at? I am proportional" which of course makes me wonder where an uneducated 12 century thug knows the word proportional)The action scenes are good, although not great, and the final battle really seems to be set up to look like a bit of a Normandy re-creation. I will admit that I am a Robin Hood fanboy, I have been since I saw the old Disney Robin Hood cartoon, and this movie is good enough to have kept me entertained and enjoy the retelling of one of my favorite legends.

If Howard is worth 25 million then Adam Dunn is worth 22 Million!!!!

2010-05-02T23:02:00.001-07:00

What I take from Howard's contract is that Adam Dunn is apparently worth 20-25 million dollars, or the Phillies drastically overpaid. The Nationals are getting Dunn on a two year 20 million deal, and I think they are getting the far better deal. Firstly, to spoil the popular impression of people saying that Howard is worth 25 million because of his age, he is not a young player. For some reason it seems that he is, but he is not. He is 30 years old. Adam Dunn is also 30 years old. It seems like he should be much older, but he is not, he just started young. I keep bringing up Dunn because they are excellent comparisons. Dunn is also a first basemen now, and they are both slow, poor fielding first basemen, who strikeout about 200 times a year. In fact Dunn was the perennial leader until Ryan Howard burst onto the scene and wrestled first place from him with a 199 strikeout performance. No doubt they would be battling out for first every year now, but of course Mark Reynolds is in fact in the league and the reigning strike out king. Alas, but I digress, back to the subject at hand. To take a look over the last three years, Howard and Dunn's offensive numbers are incredibly similar. In 2009 Howard put up percentage numbers of .279 .360 .571 for an OPS of .931. Dunn put up a .267 .398 .529 for a .928 OPS. That’s 3 points different and Dunn played in a park that was much, much less hitter friendly than Howard. To abbreviate a little in 2008 Howard put up an .881 OPS to Dunn's .898. In 2007 Howard had a .976 and Dunn had a .940. Howard's 2006 was much better than Dunn's as that was his MVP year. Howard does have an MVP which I guess is worth something, but Dunn has 5 more years proving that he is good for a .900 OPS pretty much every year. This players are nearly identical with Howard having a slight edge in percentage numbers, and a huge edge in RBI's. But folks, RBI's are a stat dependant on your teams offense, and looked out with little value in today's baseball. And Howard has played in the middle of the lineup for an EXCELLENT offensive team. And I am not advocating that Dunn is a better player than Howard. But it’s a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE contract by Howard. At best he is a worth 2-4 million more a year than Dunn, and NOBODY in baseball believes Dunn is worth 20 million. Then why in the heck does Philly think that Howard is worth 25 million?

The Season in Review - April

2010-04-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

AHHH, the long wait is over, baseball is back and all is right with the world. So far we have put about 15 games underneath our collective belts and in the relatively small sample sizes there have been a few surprises although none of them earth shattering.

Firstly, Ubaldo Jimenez is good. I don't think anyone is surprised he pitched the years first no-hitter. The kid has some absolutely filthy stuff and when he is on he is practically unhittable. He followed up his no-hitter with another dominate start. His name should be in the mix at the end of the year for the Cy Young even though he pitches half his games in Coors.

I wonder if the Cardinals increased strikeouts and higher reliance on home runs is a side effect of Big Mac being the new hitting coach. Honestly, I don't really know what wisdom he has to impart, he wasn't a very good hitter honestly. He swung as hard as he could at pitches in the strike zone and missed them at a fairly high rate. I am not sure that his approach to hitting works for anyone without super human strength or a super soldier serum running through his veins. If his work was in evidence throughout that 20 inning exercise in futility then its going to be a long year for the Cardinals with runners in scoring position.

Anybody surprised by the Rays being good? I am not, they have a ton of talent. Nor am I surprised by the fact the Nats can at least play .500 ball. I am equally not surprised that the Mets are terrible. How much longer can Omar blame Steve Phillips? The Mets are just lucky that they fired Steve Phillips before the got Kris Benson. I am sure the Steve Phillips Anna Benson combo would have been tabloid worthy. Also is there any question that the Padre's aren't pretenders?

Jim Edmonds can still hit boys and girls. His Gold Glove certainly has some tarnish on it, but his swing is looking pretty sweet after sitting out a year. My guess is that he wants to play at a decently high level for this year and maybe one more so that he can eclipse the 400 career homer mark. He is 17 homers short and although it is a relatively minor thing it would increase his chances of making the Hall of Fame. His percentage numbers are excellent with a career OPS of .906. Oh yea, and this just in, the Brewers may not have any class, but they sure can hit the baseball.

The AL East could be the most exciting division in baseball this year. There are three high quality teams in that division, with only two possible playoff spots. A good team is going to get left out in the cold. And yes folks, the Red Sox aren't going to struggle like this all year, they just haven't started hitting yet.

The Astros may not have the best team in the world but few teams would end up with a winning record after running through Lincecum, Cain, Wainwright, plus others. They aren't going to be a contender in the Central but they aren't nearly as bad as their 0-8 start indicates. Carlos Lee has been terrible and Lance Berkman has been injured so the middle of their lineup will only get better from here on out.

How To Train Your Dragon Movie Review, 8.5/10!!!

2010-04-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

There isn't really much to write about this movie. Its animated, its not deep, there isn't much to analyze. But it is a darn fine movie. The animation is excellent, the dragons are ridiculously cute, the voice acting is sharp, the jokes are funny, the characters loveable, the ending storybook. Its a good diversion to go and see a movie like this. A well made movie without the sadness and bad endings that seem to be the Hollywood norm nowadays. I enjoyed just going to see a movie that made me laugh without raunchy humor, gimics, and didn't make me feel sad at the end. All in all time well spent at the theatre.

Clash of the Titans Movie Review 5.5/10!

2010-04-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

It seems to be that lately we have been inundated with a rash of movies that are perfectly content with being decent, but not great. Particularly this year I was left the movie theatre feeling that I was entertained, but that what I saw was just missing something. Maybe movie makers don't really want to take chances anymore, and they like to retread the same old formulas out there because they are safe. They would rather a movie be safely average and make money than take chances on greatness and have a bomb. I don't know that I really fault them for this logic. Great movies don't always equal more money, or even any money at all. Greatness in film is often not appreciated by the masses and the benign blockbuster film with good advertising generally is. In fact a couple of movie insiders from the Scene Unseen Movie review podcast often have said that the key to making money with a movie actually has nothing to do with its quality, only the quality of its advertising. This movie has that sort of thing going for it to a certain degree. They advertised the fooey out of this thing. Lots of epic shots of monsters and of Liam Neeson saying "Release the Kraken." This movie was going to make a decent amount of bank just because of the advertising campaign, and recoup a lot of its making costs. Once again I can't really fault the movie companies for this, it does make them money. However, I really don't like it when the advertising is the best part of the film, and when the trailers give a false impression as to the plot of the movie. (in this film its who the primary antagonist is) On the whole I didn't leave the theatre feeling that I hadn't enjoyed my time, I found the film enjoyable enough, and I didn't feel like it was wasted. Its not a bad movie and I wouldn't tell people that they shouldn't see it if they like this type of film. But it was a decidedly average film, not great and the question I keep asking myself is with this wealth of source material how can you not make a great film? I mean seriously this is a remake of an already pretty darn good film, so they can only go up from there right? This film does a few things right. The period people (although no more accurate than any other movie) felt right. I bought into the fact that these were an ancient people. The costumes looked really good, with the exception of Zeus' light can't quite focus on you armor, which just looked silly and cheesy. Sam Worthington, although not exceptional, gave a far better turn than he did in Avatar, and his performance was solid. Ralph Fiennes was as freaky and scary as he always is in these roles, and frankly I think the movie could have benefitted from more of his. Liam Neeson was fine, but he wasn't really given all that much to do. Zeus was actually far less epic and frequent in the film that the trailers would have you believe. Once again, not Neeson's fault, and he wasn't bad, aside from his terrible armor, he just wasn't given much to do. The movie did a few things badly that really detracted from the film. Firstly, I immediately got popped out with believability with Sam Worthington in this role. I know he was a demi-God, and physically stronger and all of that, but young Perseus has a conversation with his adopted father when he was, at the oldest ten. Then it pops up 12 years later, and it shows Worthington. I leaned over to my friend that was watching the movie with me and said "Huh, 22 years old and he already has crows feet." He responded, "hard life man." Its just really hard to buy him as a 20 year old kid. Even a 20 year old demi-god kid. My question is, why pop up the 12 years later subtext at all? It had no bearing to the plot, its not like it wasn't obvious this was sometime in the future, why do it? All it did was make people go huh, that 20 year old looks 35. But that’s just a personal peeve of mine, and I am sure that wouldn't annoy most people. Other than that this movie had real problems in production, not so much in the acting and story. It looked like the shot the film with actually 8mm retro color film. Sometimes that’s not a bad look, but in this film it kind of made things look washed out, with a lack of vibrancy. Everything kind of looked gray scale and it was not pleasing at all. The monsters looked a little to cartoony for the gravity of the situation, and for you old school gamers the Kraken totally looked like one of the Weapon's bosses from Final Fantasy 7, or even Bahamut from Advent Children. If you haven't seen the original go and see that one instead of this one, it’s a better movie, but this one is still entertaining enough despite its flaws, so if this type of movie interests you, then by all means go out and see it. If you love the original, you will probably be disappointed, but if not, you will just have a couple hours of mindless action entertainment.

RepoMen Movie Review 3/10 spoilers

2010-04-01T17:35:00.001-07:00

I am tired of going to see movies that have a good idea behind them but have lousy script writing and direction that forces them to crash and burn in a miserable experience. This movie has the potential to be excellent. In fact some of the elements are very good indeed. Liev Schreiber was really fantastically smarmy and slimy in his bottom line make the money role as Frank. However, he really is the highlight of the movie. *Spoiler* Normally I attempt to do reviews of movies without giving any spoilers, but with this one I am not going to do that. There were a couple of things with this movie that just completely ruined it. I hate movies like this, movies that try to suck you in, make you involved in the plot and then bam, some ridiculous twist that invalidates everything you have watched. Like, for example, the movie Identity where you discover the entire movie took place amongst the multiple personalities in a killers head, or like Stutter Island, another movie that has this type of result. I think its cheap. I think it’s a cliché, cheap, non-thinking way of turning a plot twist, and utterly useless to telling a good story or delivering a quality movie. In this particular movie this twist happens when Jude Laws character gets smacked in the head with a large hook. In the movie he wakes up later, goes on to invade the Union and escapes with both the girl and his best friend to the beach, where he writes a best selling book. But the twist so to speak was he never woke up from getting hit in the head with that hook, Jake just had a neural net installed on him so that his coma would be a happy one. This was poorly done, first of all, because it should be fairly obvious. Fake heart or no, Jude Law's character is just human, and no human could survive the amount of force. As soon as it happened I literally said out loud in the theatre "no one wakes up from that." And point of fact, he didn't. Terrible movie making there. After this point it turns into your standard kill everyone to infiltrate the blah, blah, blah, and it culminates in a terribly melodramatic scene in which they scan each others internal organs sans pain killers to get them erased from the system. It was a disgusting and ridiculous scene that was supposed to show how far true unfettered love would go, but in reality, they were trying to give a slap in the face to the people who believe this type of unfettered, unending love is possible. More like a punch into the face of the people who find this appealing. Why? Because even in the convention of the movie this type of love was in fact, not possible. This only existed in a very badly damaged brain. So, so sad that the second half of the movie destroyed what could have possibly been a very decent flick.

Greenzone Movie Review 3/10!

2010-03-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to like this movie, I am a big fan of the Bourne Series of films so I thought that a new film with Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon would likely be very enjoyable. I was wrong, everything about this film is generic and bland. It wasn't that it was a terribly made film, it wasn't. What it was, though, was terribly boring. Rarely can I remember ever being completely bored in a movie theatre. Well, I was during this film. The story is interesting, as it attempts to explain the scenario for why there were no WMD's found in Iraq. But it is poorly done in its execution. In Greengrass style the camera is hand held and shaky. But it doesn't seem to work as well as it does in the Bourne series, it plays more like motion sickness than realism in this film. The characters themselves are bland and vanilla. I never really related to Damon's character because he just didn't really seem believable, he just seemed like a stock character from a generic war movie. The supporting cast should have been great, but they really didn't have much to work with so they were really a non-entity in this movie. All in all, I felt like it was the first time this year I felt like I had truly wasted my time at the theatre.

My List of Players for the Hall of Fame

2010-03-18T21:43:00.001-07:00

Here is the list of players I decided to keep in the Hall of Famer:
Rickey Henderson
Cal Ripken Jr.
Tony Gwynn
Wade Boggs
Paul Molitor
Ryne Sandberg
Eddie Murray
Ozzie Smith
Kirby Puckett
Carlton Fisk
Joe Gordon
George Brett
Don Sutton
George Davis
Larry Doby
Phil Neikro
Vic Schmidt
Vic Willis
Richie Ashburn
Steve Carlton
Reggie Jackson
Rollie Fingers
Tom Seaver
Rod Carew
Fergie Jenkins
Tony Lazzeri
Joe Morgan
Jim Palmer
Carl Yastremski
Johnny Bench
Willie Stargell
Billy Williams
Willie McCovey
Ernie Lombardi
Hoyt Wilhelm
Arky Vaughn
Enos Slaughter
Lou Brock
PeeWee Reese
Harmon Killebrew
Brooks Robinson
George Kell (purely because he is from Swifton, otherwise no)
Juan Marichal
Frank Robinson
Hank Aaron
Johnny Mize
Bob Gibson
Duke Snider
Chuck Klein
Al Kaline
Willie Mays
Eddie Matthews
Addie Joss
Joe Sewell
Ernie Banks
Ralph Kiner
Billy Herman
Earl Averill
Mickey Mantle
Whitey Ford
Warren Spahn
Roberto Clemente
Sandy Koufax (I am actually still on the fence about him)
Yogi Berra
Harry Hooper
Lou Boudreau
Stan Musial
Stan Coveleski
Roy Campanella
Joe Medwick
Goose Goslin
Kiki Cuyler
Ted Williams
Heinie Manush
Luke Appling
Sam Rice
Edd Roush
Jackie Robinson
Bob Feller
Max Carey
Zach Wheat
Sam Crawford
Hank Greenberg
Joe Cronin
Gabby Hartnett
Joe Dimaggio
Frank “Homerun” Baker
Bill Terry
Bill Dickey
Al Simmons
Dizzy Dean
Chief Bender
Paul Waner
Harry Heilman
Mel Ott
Jimmie Foxx
Charlie Gehringer
Mordecai Brown
Pie Traynor
Carl Hubbell
Lefty Grove
Frankie Frisch
Mickey Cochrane
Ed Walsh
Rube Waddell
Johnny Evers
Frank Chance
Eddie Plank
Joe McGinnity
Jimmy Collins
Roger Bresnahan
Fred Clarke
Rogers Hornsby
George Sisler
Eddie Collins
Lou Gehrig
Grover Cleveland Alexander
Nap Lajoie
Cy Young
Tris Speaker
Honus Wagner
Ty Cobb
Babe Ruth
Walter Johnson
Christy Matthewson

The Final Hall of Fame Blog, here are the 1930's.

2010-03-18T17:38:00.001-07:00

Here it is, finally the last decade of my year my year Hall of Fame evaluations. I have kicked a lot of players out of the Hall of Fame. The 30's are pretty much a formality. All of these guys were amongst the first elected and some of the games greats of all time.

1939. George Sisler, Lou Gehrig, Eddie Collins.

George Sisler-Yes- The man hit .420. Yes I think he is overrated, yes I think pure batting average is overrated. Yes the man couldn't walk. But he is still a Hall of Famer.

Lou Gehrig- Yes, emphatically- Where as Cal Ripken was a slightly above league average player during large portions of his streak, Lou Gehrig was in the lineup everyday, and one of the greatest ballplayers of all time everyday. His career percentage numbers are .340 .447 .632. Yes folks that’s a career OPS of 1.080. He is constantly overshadowed by the fact he played on a team with Babe Ruth, so as amazing as it is it’s a possibility he was slightly undervalued as a player.

Eddie Collins- Yes- Cocky Collins is on pretty much every top five second basemen of all time list. The conversation generally goes around him, Lajoie, Hornsby, Gehringer, and thanks to sabermetrics, Joe Morgan, Oh and Just for Andy's sake I will toss in Craig Biggio. Collins was a fantastic defensive player and a fantastic hitter. He also stole 741 bags to go along with 3315 hit. His career numbers were a salty .333 .424 .429. He is a no doubt Hall of Famer.

1938. Grover Cleveland Alexander

Grover Cleveland Alexander- Yes- I recommend the book Wicked Curve to anybody who likes baseball. Grover is a sad figure. His most famous moment was probably as a Cardinal while he was a drunk nearly washed up reliever. But he rose to glory one last time in the 1926 World Series when the lowly Cardinals beat the mighty Yankee's to win their first ever World Championship. (Sorry we were late to the party Cubs fans, but at least we didn't duck out early) Grover was a pretty phenomenal 373-208 and is unquestionable one of the great pitchers of All-Time.

1937. Cy Young, Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie

Cy Young- Yes- Probably not a good idea to kick the guy whom the pitching award is named after from the Hall of Fame. Most well known for being the career leader in wins with 511. Of course he is also the career leader in losses with 316. We won't hold that against him though since he had a career winning percentage of .618. All in all he was perhaps slightly overrated, but still one of the greatest pitchers of All-Time.

Tris Speaker- Yes- Spoke has the distinction of being one of the few guys that called Ty Cobb a friend. He also sadly has the distinction of being tied to a gambling rumor with Cobb (they were very likely innocent) and having to give up managing to finish up their playing career A's. (By the way I don’t know another team that had more future Hall of Famers the 1928 A's team. Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, Ty Cobb, Jimmie Foxx, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, and Lefty Grove were all on that team) Tris was a great player, a historically great centerfielder, and a great hitter. He was a career .345 hitter with a .428 OBP and .500 SLG. Yea, this guy could play.

Nap Lajoie- Yes- Lajoie was generally not a nice man while he was a Philly. He had a lot of problems with drinking, and was generally a world class insubordinate ass. However, he could play. He was not the greatest defensive second basemen of all time by any stretch but he was one of best offensive players of his time.

1936. Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Matthewson

Honus Wagner -Yes- Of course Honus is in the Hall of Fame, he is the greatest shortstop of All-Time. He was without a doubt far and away the best player in the National League during his playing days. He brought home 8 batting titles in his career. He was a career .328 .391 .467. He was leaps and bounds better than any other shortstop defensively during his time in baseball.

Babe Ruth-Yes- Babe Ruth was ridiculous. Other than possibly his teammate Lou Gehrig Babe was a man playing amongst boys. Anyone that thinks Barry Bonds is a better player than Babe Ruth is deluded. (and that has nothing to do with his steroids allegations, just his stats) Sure some of Bonds stats may be comparable, but you can't compare stats straight against each other generation to generation. You have to look at how much better that player was than the people he was playing with. Bonds was better than everybody else, but not ridiculously so. Ruth was in a league of his own. There just weren't people doing what he could do. Hitting for average, hitting more homeruns than entire teams. He was a legend, Bonds will continue only to be a legend in his own mind. .342 .474 .690 were his career percentage numbers.

Ty Cobb-Yes- 11 batting titles. .366 career average. 897 Stolen bases. World class ass. Great Hitter.

Walter Johnson-Yes- He is a frontrunner in the conversation for greatest pitcher of all time. 417 wins to only 279 losses, pretty damn good considering the Senators were not a top flight team. He lead the league in wins 5 times and in ERA 4 times. He also garnered two MVP awards, one at the ripe old age of 36. He was the premier strike out artist of his time and lead the league in K's 11 times.

Christy Mathewson-Yes- He is one of my All- Time favorite players in history. He was an educated man, he went to Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, which was an extreme rarity at this early and rowdy stage in baseball history. He was a good man, an American Hero kind of guy, who was an officer in World War I. He died early in 1925 because of a lung complication due to his being gassed during WWI. Ty Cobb narrowly missed being gassed in the same incident, he got his mask on a second quicker than Matty. His career record was an amazing 373 and 188 for a very robust .665 winning percentage. His career ERA was a very low 2.13. He had a pitch called the "fadeaway" which has generally been thought to have been a screwball, but very likely could have been an early version of a changeup.

Here come the Forties. 1940's Hall of Fame Blog

2010-03-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

The 1940's was an interesting decade for the Hall of Fame. Most of the candidates were actually elected by the Old Timer's Committee, which was the first iteration of the Veteran's committee. The committee seemed to have issues with separating a playing career from a managing career, and elected some players in as managers that couldn't possibly have been elected solely on their playing stats without the help of their managing career as well.

1949- Kid Nichols, Charlie Gehringer, Mordecai Brown

Kid Nichols- 1800’s player. He only spent 3 or 4 season past the 1900 decade. I am efforting greatly to improve my ability to judge players before 1900 but I am still lacking so I am still not voting yay or nay on this players. I will live it to the old tyme scholars.

Charlie Gehringer- Emphatically Yes- Charlie inevitably makes it into any conversation of the greatest second basemen of all time. He makes it into this discussions because of course, he was damn good. He ended with a solid career hit total of 2839 and over 1400 RBI’s. He was an excellent Gold Glove type defender and his percentage numbers are very, very good. He racked with a .320 .404 .480 line. Without question this man could play and belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown- Yes- I will always lament the fact that Mordecai’s rookie season was spent as a Cardinal and that he was traded to the Cubs for a bag of peanuts. He was possibly the greatest fielding pitcher of all time, and definitely the best at fielding the bunt. He spent hours working on this, even when a lot of people at the time neglected fielding practice for pitchers all together. But he knew he was a control pitcher, and that he was not going to strike a ton of guys out. He knew that limiting base runners was key, and that his ability to get them out with the glove would be an advantage. He was a great pitcher, he pedigree is not in question and who am I to kick a man with Three-Fingers out of the Hall of Fame?

1948-Pie Traynor, Herb Pennock

Pie Traynor-Yes- Pie Traynor is incredibly overrated. That being said he is still tough to kick out of the Hall of Fame. He gets some publicity as being the greatest defensive thirdbasemen. He was great defensively, but I think it’s a stretch to say he is the best. Jimmie Dykes, Clete Boyer, Brooks Robinson, and Scott Rolen are all very likely his equal or superior. A good part of his reputation was built on fond remembrances of his playing days by teammates, and that is a bit of a biased source of course. From what we have its hard to extrapolate that he was the greatest of all time, but its pretty clear that he was an excellent defender. He gets credit as a great hitter too, but that’s a bit inflated as well. He was a singles hitter that didn’t walk. Which leads to a career .320 batting average, but a pretty weak .797 OPS. I am including him, but he is definitely a marginal inclusion.

Herb Pennock-No- To be honest when I saw his name on the list I had to think about it a second. I really couldn’t remember much about him at all other than he pitched on some of the great Yankee’s Murderers Row teams. Then I looked up his stats and realized that that’s about his only redeeming quality and claim to fame. His career ERA is a less than impressive 3.60. Very high for a Hall of Fame level pitcher. His win-loss record was 241-162 for a very nice .598 winning percentage. But giving the fact that he played on mostly great teams in his career, that’s about where it should be, actually maybe a little low. He was an above average pitcher that benefited from playing on historically great teams. He has no place in the Hall of Fame.

1947-Carl Hubbell, Lefty Grove, Frankie Frisch, Mickey Cochrane

Carl Hubbell-Yes-Carl threw a screwball and is most often remembered for two things. Throwing at guys and striking out a zillion matters in a row in an all-star game that’s lineup looked like an All-Time greats list. Hubbell was a great pitcher. He lead the league in ERA 3 times and wins 3 times. He sported ERA’s of sub-3 and sub-2 in the early part of the 1930’s when even good pitchers were getting rocked for about five runs a game. His winning percentage was an excellent .622. I have no problems including him.

Lefty Grove-Yes- Lefty may be the greatest pitcher of all time, so obviously I am putting him in the Hall of Fame. 4 time leader in wins, 9 time leader in ERA. He won exactly 300 games with 141 losses for a spectacular .680 winning percentage. In 1931 he went 31-4. Winning 30 games when people didn’t really do that anymore. That season he tossed up a 2.06 ERA in a season when most teams hit over .300 as a team. This may very well be the most impressive season of all time.

Frankie Frisch-Yes- An excellent player and a good manager. He did a variety of things well, and he was an educated man. That’s where he got the nickname “The Fordham Flash.” He was an excellent defender, and excellent hit and run man, a good hitter, had great speed, had a little pop in his bat, and could steal some bases. He hit .316 for his career with a .369 OBP and .432 SLG. He stole 419 bags in his career and garnered 2880 hits. Not the greatest secondbasemen ever by a long stretch, but still one of the best there has ever been.

Mickey Cochrane-Yes- One of my favorite players of all time he was one of the greats. He has a shortened career due to injury, but since he was a catcher it is about the same as all the others. Mickey was a rarity, even back then, he was a catcher with some good speed. He didn’t really steal bases, but he could scoot around the basepaths pretty well. He was an excellent defensive catcher and one of the best throwers of his time but where he truly excelled was as a hitter. His percentage numbers are a very solid .320 .419 .478. It is kind of funny that his numberes are nearly identical to Charlie Gehringer’s career numbers, they teammates in Detroit.

1946- Ed Walsh, Rube Waddell, Joe Tinker, Eddie Plank, Joe McGinnity, Johnny Evers, Jack Chesbro, Frank Chance, Jesse Burkett.

Ed Walsh-Yes- Big Ed was pretty ridiculous. He had an ERA of 1.82 and won 40 games once. Yep that’s 40 games. Also had the misfortune to go 18-20 while leading the league in losses AND ERA. That is one hell of a tough luck season. He lost 20 with an ERA of 1.27. Ridiculous.

Rube Waddell-Yes- Known primarily for being one of the premier strikeout artists of his generation. He led his league in k’s 6 years in a row with some very respectable totals. He was hard to hit, because players just didn’t strike out that much back then. He was a quality pitcher, who didn’t put up many big win totals, but nonetheless was a great pitcher.

Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance- Tinkers, Evers, and Chance all went into the Hall of Fame in the same year, all elected by the Veteran's Committee. Part of the reason, I believe, they were all elected is because it is hard to separate them from each other. They are associated together more than any 3 players in history, and Tinkers and Evers is the most famous double play combo by far. So the question is do all three of them belong in the Hall of Fame? I am going to analyze these guys all under the same column, because it just seems appropriate. First up is Joe Tinker. Tinker was the less fiery of the double play combo, and apparently much easier to get along with than Evers, whom wasn't particularly popular amongst anybody who knew him. However, putting him into the Hall of Fame is a stretch at best. He really just didn’t hit very well. His percentage numbers were a paltry .262 .308. .353 for an incredibly anemic .661 OPS. That is pretty terrible, even for the time. He had one very good year, but also a good half of his years were just pretty darn terrible. He was a plus defender, being above the league fielding percentage for his position pretty much every year, and had marginally above average range. By the subjective accounts he was an excellent defender, and there is no real evidence to dispute that that is possible. However, with anemic hitting, and less than 1700 career hits, his defense does not seem anywhere near enough to merit inclusion in the Hall. Joe Tinker DENIED. Next up is Johnny Evers Evers is probably best known for being the one who recovered the ball and got the umps attention to get the force out in the famous Merkle's Boner play versus the New York Giant's. Evers is similar to Joe Tinker, not quite as good a defender, and quite a bit better hitter. The other numbers are similar but Evers could get on Base quite a bit better with a career .356 OBP. He could also steal you a base pretty frequently. The difference between Tinker and Evers though is this. Evers had some pretty damn good years. One was truly great and another was very good, oddly, he won an MVP award in his second best season. The fact he has an MVP award and was generally a much better player than Tinker, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Johnny Evers ACCEPTED Frank Chance Known as the peerless leader because he was the team leader turned manager for the great Cubs teams in the early part of the 20th century. He started out as a catcher, he was pretty terrible at it, and was smart enough to realize he needed to move himself to first base when the team got Johnny Kling. The question is, I believe Chance got in as a player. Which is just preposterous. He played in less than 1300 games, which is just not enough time to be a Hall of Famer as a player. As a player he was a good defensive first basemen and a much better hitter than either of the other two. He his .294 with a .394 OBP. These are damn fine numbers for the time, and in one season he had an amazing .450 OBP. But the career is just not long enough or distinguished enough to merit being in the Hall of Fame. If you give him credit as a manager then perhaps you can include him, he was the manager for some legendary teams as well as playing for them. So my final verdict Chance as a player DENIED Chance as a player manager ACCEPTED. Poor Joe Tinker, I guess that leaves him as the odd man out.

Eddie Plank-Yes- Eddie plank was a hell of a pitcher. When I think of him, the first thing that pops into my mind has absolutely nothing to do with his playing career, its that his card is the second most valuable in the T-206 set, second only to the famous Honus Wagner card. That probably is an injustice to Mr. Plank. He put up a 326-194 record for his career, for a very nice .627 winning percentage. He also had a career ERA of 2.36. With that amount of wins, with such a good winning percentage, it would be hard for anybody to rationalize him not being in the Hall of Fame.

Jack Chesbro-No- I have a hard time including Jack Chesbro because he only played for 9 seasons. Two of those 9 seasons were fantastic, legendary even. But the rest was merely good, not great. He never won an ERA title. Which I think is telling, as he was never truly the best, which I believe you need to prove if you are going to get in with a tiny sample size.

"Ironman" Joe McGinnity-Yes- This guy is known primarily for his ability to pitch a ridiculous number of innings a year. Perhaps if he hadn’t pitched so many innings his career would have lasted longer than ten years. Actually that’s not really fair, because he got a late start to his career. I am inclined to take him where I didn’t take Chesbro because he pitched about twice as many innings in the same span. Ok that is an exaggeration, but he really did start a ton more game than any pitcher during that time. He lead the league in wins 5 times of his ten years in the league. This would not be impressive given the number of innings he pitched except for the fact that he did it with a good winning percentage. At time with a GREAT winning percentage.

Jesse Burkett-Yes- I generally don't judge players before the turn of the century, but with this guy I am making an exception. He like Delahanty, is a sure thing, because this guy could just knock the cover off the ball.

1945-Ed Delahanty, Jimmy Collins, Fred Clarke, Roger Bresnahan.

Ed Delahanty-Yes- Another Pre-1900 type player, but like Jesse Burkett he is a no-doubter. Ed Delahanty is one of the all time greats, and his death is one of the great mysteries of history.

Jimmy Collins-Yes- Jimmy was one of the best third basemen of his time, both offensively and defensively. .294 .343 .409 is a very good line for a player of his time period. Plus he was an excellent defensive third basemen. During this period of baseball third base is probably the premier defensive position on the diamond due to the high number of bunts down the line.

Fred Clarke-Yes- A good hitter, a good defender, and a good manager. His percentage numbers are a very solid .312 .386. .429. He was one of the most well respected players of his generation by his peers.

Roger Bresnahan- Yes- Roger looks like he shouldn't be a Hall of Famer, but he was probably the best catcher of his time. He could hit a bit, and he had a good OBP to boot, but this was at a time when catchers were some of the worst players on the field due to all the injuries.

1942-Rogers Hornsby- Yes- Another no doubt Hall of Famer, his percentage numbers are phenomenal .358 .434 .577. He won six straight batting titles and he hit over .400 3 times. That’s just silly good.

Retro Movie Review: Yojimbo 10/10

2010-03-03T00:02:00.001-08:00

When one watches this movie for the first time its easy to be look at it and go "huh, I am see all of this before." Well, thats because you have. Yojimbo is one of the most revered and influential movies ever. Mifune of course is fantastic, as he always is, and I am sure the "man with no name" plot is not original with Yojimbo, however, it is the movie is most thought of as inspiring all of the others that came after. Movies, frankly, just don't get better than this one. The film techniques are amazing, and the plot and dialogue is fantastic. The acting is spot on as well, with not just Mifune shining. The plot might be most recognized in the Clint Eastwood-Sergio Leone classic spaghetti western "A fistful of Dollars." There is a good reason for this as Kurosawa successfully sued Leone for ripping off his movie. Everyone who appreciates good film should see this movie. YES it is in black and white, YES it is subtitled, and unfortunately many people have a problem watching black and white films and watching subtitled films. However, this is one of the greats of all time, and you owe it to yourselves to get over this hitch and watch. It is currently available on Netflix streaming.

Top Five Movies of 2009.

2010-02-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

As we get closer to Academy Award time I though it was just about time for me to whip out a list of my choices for the five best movies of the year. Personally I think this is a down year, and there isn't a single movie as good as last years Slumdog Millionaires or The Wrestler, but there were some decent flicks out there. I feel better though, that after I put my list together 4 of the 5 I chose were also nominated for best picture. That is probably the most the movies I though were good were also nominated for an Oscar.

5. District 9 - This movie made me feel like crap. It made me realize that humans aren't nice, and that I truly bought the way humanity reacted in this movie. It made the list because I have never encountered a movie that made me feel like such trash just for being a human.

4. Star Trek - I don't like Star Trek. I don't like any of the other movies, and I didn't like the show. But this movie was really great, really enjoyable, and made me excited to see if the reboot would live long and prosper.

3. Up - There isn't much to say about this movie, I think its Pixar's best effort, and that they have really created a masterpiece here. Cartoons aren't supposed to make adults cry damn it!!!!

2. Inglourious Basterds- In my opinion this is Tarantino's master work. Brilliant paced and of course it has amazing dialogue, written in about 17 languages. This movie should count as a foreign entry.

1. The Hurt Locker - This is the best film of the year, hands down I think. Incredibly tense, gritty, and believable. The type of war movie that I enjoy, because it delivers believable drama. Plus I think Jeremy Renner is exceptional. If I were going to recommend someone only watch one movie this year, it would probably be Inglourious Basterds, because it will probably remain somewhat iconic due to the director and actors, but I believe this movie is the most well crafted, well written, and well acted movie of the year.

Honorable Mentions: Up in the Air, An Education (yea I watched it, thanks Market Cinema)

Edge of Darkness Movie Review 5.79/10!

2010-02-11T00:32:00.000-08:00

Mel Gibson graces us with his presence once again on the silver screen. What's it been, like ten years? Of course he has directed and been in the news, but this is his first screen appearance in quite some time. This is pretty vintage Mel Gibson. A role that he can play well falling out of bed after a hard night of drink at a Bar Mitzvah. It is his bread a butter, a revenge flick. A wise man once told me that almost all movies can be broke down into only three categories: Love stories, coming of age stories, and revenge stories. This man is for the most part right, and as far as crazy ass revenge goes, Mel Gibson has cried over more lost children and dead lovers than most Hollywood stars. He does what he always does in this movie. If you like him in that roll then you will like this movie, if you don't and that annoys you then this movie isn't for you. The story is interesting, although none of the characters are really fleshed out and it feels like you only get snapshots of each one. The story feels like there should be a lot there, and there is a reason for that. This was a six part BBC miniseries that was compressed into one not very long movie. So you get a skeleton outline of a story that was supposed to be much more complex and interesting, and instead is only mildly intriguing. Its a decent movie, worth passing a couple of hours with if you have nothing better to do, but I would recommend that you wait for netflix and watch it on a night when your snowed in.

Book of Eli Movie Review 5.5/10!

2010-01-24T03:06:00.000-08:00

This movie was kind of a disappointment. I thought that having Gary Oldman and Denzel Washington opposite each other in a pseudo-biblical post-apocalyptic battle field would be highly entertaining. I was disappointed. It was somewhat entertaining, but it was nearly as good as I thought that it would be. The movie is your standard post-apocalyptic nightmare. Basically a Mad Max/Postman/The Road standard fair kind of stuff with a bit of Fahrenheit 451 thrown in. Of course nothing is ever really explained as to what happened in the world to make it this way except for some vague allusions to things that happened like "a whole was ripped in the sky" and "after the big flash." I guess, that's ok as it wasn't all that important to the plot, but still that sort of sets the tone for this movie as it seems to have lots of things that just are with no explanation for what the heck is going on. This movie was bad, and would have received rating probably of 6.5 or 7 except for a couple of things. There is a big twist of sorts and the end and to be honest it was bad for the movie as it really just didn't make that much sense. My issue with can't really be discussed without giving out a ton of spoilers which I prefer not to do, and the ending just left me with to many unanswered questions and to much Why the hell did this happen this way to get more than a slightly above average rating. As is kind of a theme it seems with the movies I have watched this year this movie had a lot of potential but underachieves and fails to reach that potential.

Legion Movie Review 4/10!

2010-01-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

From the previews I really didn't think this movie was going to be that good, but since I have a mancrush on Paul Bettany I knew I was going to go see it as soon as I saw the first trailer. Essentially this is a Zombie apocalypse movie but instead of some virus the zombies are created by Angel possession. Yea, I know, sounds silly, it was pretty silly when I was watching it. Listening to an audience can sometimes give you a clue as to the quality of a movie. If the entire audience is laughing at inappropriate times then its probably a good example of a poorly written script. I don't expect my action movies to have Oscar quality scripts, but I do expect them to no be so painfully bad as to make the audience laugh when it should be feeling something else. There isn't really that much action in the movie, and the dialogue scenes between the characters are painfully cheesy and forced. The one bright spot of the film is how they implemented the angel wings into the big fight scene. Basically the bottom line on this film is that it had an interesting idea but do to poor, poor pacing, cheesy melodramatic over acting, and a script that lacked the proper cohesion to tell the story kept it from actualizing any of he potential that was there. If your going to the theatre and you have to choose between this movie and Book of Eli, see Book of Eli, its better, although only marginally. It somehow manages to take itself far less seriously, which is saying something considering how seriously Book of Eli took itself.

Five Movies you should see right now.

2010-01-24T02:33:00.001-08:00

5. In Bruges- An odd but incredibly well made little flick with a lot of good acting and a drunken midget. Can't go wrong with that combination.

4. Grey Gardens- Creepy, disturbing, and utterly fascinating. I know not everyone is interested in documentary film making, but if you are this is one to see without a doubt.

3. Dances With Wolves- Not only is it a very good movie it will remind all of you who watched Avatar that its a complete rip off of this movie.

2. L.A. Confidential- It has Guy Pierce, Kevin Spacey, and Russell Crowe, how can you go wrong there? This is a really great movie with an excellent script and snappy acting from the ensemble cast. Its my favorite cop movie by far.

1. Twilight- PSYCH!!!! You should never see that trash. The real number one is YOJIMBO. A great samurai movie from possibly the greatest director of all time Akira Kurasawa. It stars Toshiro Mifune as the samurai with no name. This is the inspiration behind Leone's Dollars Trilogy, and in fact the first movie of said trilogy was a complete rip off of Yojimbo, so much in fact that Kurasawa sued his ass in court, and won. This is an excellent movie, and is a little lighter than Sanjuro, or some of his other works like Throne of Blood.

Repost of my Sosa block with a little extra about McGwire

2010-01-19T01:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote this blog a while back about Sosa and it still applies with whats going on with McGwire. I still believe what I wrote in the Sosa blog, but I have a few more things to add. Firstly, its really silly to see all of these media types who kept pressuring McGwire to come clean turn around and have a field day with it. Seems incredibly hypocritical, of course I wouldn't know what to do if journalists weren't hypocritical. What's even worse is all the guys who were just upset that he didn't come clean in the way they thought he should, so they are critical of that. Secondly, I still think the media has a completely blind eye to the fact that all of their so called clean players from before the steroid era were all popping greenies (amphetamines). They are just as much a PED as steroids are. Stop turning a blind eye just so you can make a story, or protect the sanctity of an era that is not nearly as clean as you would have us believe.

THE SOSA BLOG

Ok, so its true that apparently Sosa did test positive for a performance enhancing drug and it made headlines in the sports world yesterday. But lets be honest about this, is anybody actually surprised anymore when a name like Sosa's pops up testing positive? I for one am not shocked by any name that comes up from the late 90's and early 2000's anymore. And frankly did we need confirmation to know that Sosa was on them? Anybody that watched him play had to have him on their top 2 or 3 list of players most likely to be taking a shot in the butt. My top 4 list was Big Mac, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens. I have been screaming for a while now that Roger Clemens was the one pitcher I was certain of to hitting the juice, and truthfully he is the only player other than Bonds that I have felt a certain vindication and satisfaction in seeing the news come out. The question though that I feel needs to be asked is was it worth what Big Mac and Sosa did to themselves and the game? I would have to say yes. Those of you who know me well know that I am a rules nazi. I am fair to the rules to a fault, when I play softball I have actually called myself out when an umpire was umping that didn't know all the rules. I hate it when my team gets the benefit of a bad call and I tell an umpire when I think he missed a call, even if it is one that helped my team. But at the same time, 1998 was a magical season for baseball fans. Outside of hard core baseball fans, baseball was not doing well after the 1994 strike and 1995 lock out ( I do believe the owners were more at fault than the players, and they get a bum rap on this, but thats a blog for another day) and he game was struggling mightily to get butts in the seats. Sosa and McGwire's home run chase changed that. It created interest in the game on a national level that baseball had not enjoyed in a long time. That interest did not go away, it maintained through the 2000's and even though baseball can't compete with football for television ratings (this mostly has to do with the number of games) people were going to game at a great rate in most cities, Florida and Montreal of course were exceptions. Montreal baseball was destroyed by the strike, and never recovered. They had a hell of a team in 1994 and had real chances of going places that year, and their fans got their hearts ripped out. But for most teams 1998 was magical. Not only was it home runs in numbers never seen before, but it was a rivalry between two players in the same division, and each on teams that historically have one of the best rivalries in baseball. Everbody was watching, everybody wanted to know what was going to happen next, and everybody was enchanted by the fact Sosa and McGwire were pushing each other to play better via encouragment rather than animosity. Sure the steriods make the season seem a bit hollow now, but you can't take away what it did for baseball, even now baseball is doing all right and its in part due to that season. And you can take away some of the gloss on what they accomplished on the field with their numbers, but you can't take away the grace they handled themselves with during that chase and embracing what they were to baseball. And lets keep in mind that in 1998 they weren't technically even breaking any baseball rules, which means that perhaps baseball administration is far more on the hook for steroids than the individual players are. Was it worth it, yea, it probably was, without 1998 contraction was a very real and ugly possiblity, and the face of baseball could have been drastically different. Would baseball have been better if the owners and administration had been more responsible in their drug testing? Absolutely, but us and the players have to play with the hand they were dealt, and we still have to look for a silver lining in a cloudy sky.

Undefeated Seasons

2010-01-19T01:12:00.000-08:00

So why all the big deal and hub bub about the Colts deciding they don't care about going 16-0? Why does it matter? The answer is it doesn't not one little bit. The only thing that is important is winning the Super Bowl. It doesn't matter if you go 8-8 during the regular season or if you 16-0. The Championship is the same regardless of how many wins you have, the super bowl ring looks the same, the Champagne tastes just as sweet. The Colt's had nothing to gain by playing their starters and going 16-0 and everything to lose. They could have lost Peyton Manning, it is football and anything can happen at any time. If that happened they might as well just forfeit. And for what? The Colt's had already secured home field, so what else was there? The fans at the game that boo'd the team should be ashamed of themselves, because they sure as hell would have lit Jim Caldwell up if they had suffered a catastrophic injury that cost them a chance at a championship. In fact Jim Caldwell was in a complete no-win situation. If he pulls his starters and rest them then he gets blasted, if he plays his starters and one gets injured then he gets blasted by the press. He chose the right answer in choosing the solution that gets him blasted by the press but doesn't cost his team a chance at winning the championship. In fact I feel terribly sorry for poor Jim Caldwell, if he was Tony Dungy he wouldn't be facing nearly as much criticism. Tony Dungy was in the exact same situation as head coach of the Colts and he did the exact same thing, yet most of these same fans and critics that are yelling at Caldwell complimented him about his savvy coaching and ability to keep focused on the target. I know, I am a Colt's fan and I remember it well. Basically the bottom line is the fans and media need to quit their bitching. Winning the division and locking down homefield early gives the team the right to rest their starters, why should the Colt's squander that advantage over some useless thing like an undefeated season?

MVPs on Bad Teams

2010-01-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

It is pretty easy to tell how a pitcher who pitches on a bad team is affected. Generally speaking it means less wins, as his team will score fewer runs, and more wins blown by the bullpen. It can also mean a higher earned run average, or more unearned runs allowed because bad teams often have a terrible defense as well. But not many people think about how playing on a terrible team alters the statistics of a truly great hitter. I think how these players are treated has changed in the last decade. Previously, I think one great hitter on a bad team had their stats inflated. Now I haven't done in detailed analysis on this theory yet, this is purely from observation of games in the 80's and 90's. I will do research on retrosheet to back it up though, and I think it will prove true, but I hypothesize that players on bad teams had their stats inflated because pitchers then didn't want to put guys on base and waste pitches. So instead of pitching around the good hitter in the lineup, they just pitched to him knowing they had a lead and that he couldn't really hurt them. You get a whole lot of meaningless fastballs down the middle of the plate, I.e. the Jack Morris school of pitching. However, lately, with pitchers not going deep into ballgames, and the intentional walk a much bigger part of the game, pitchers are approaching it differently. Why pitch to a guy who can hit a homerun when you can just walk him and get the next guy out? The difference in mind set is the difference in the pitching mentality then and now. When I get a chance, I will pick out some players and pour through the box scores and see how exactly they were treated with runners on base in the games there teams were behind by a large margin. I think I will be proven correct.

Sherlock Holmes Movie Review 8/10!

2010-01-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

I personally am a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes. I have read every single one of the stories many, many times. As such, I was concerned that this movie rendition would for lack of a better word, suck. It wasn't the best movie I have ever seen but it was pretty quality. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are an excellent combination for Holmes and Watson. Of course there are some liberties taken to fit them to the roles. Watson is a much older, less clever, and more portly character than that portrayed by Law, and Holmes is in general much less charming than Downey portrays him, however, those are some changes to be expected given it would be pretty hard to relate to a cocaine addled ass. Although as with Iron Man, it seems Downey gets to play a lot of characters that kind of resemble him in real life.... Other people will have an issue perhaps with the rather proficient fighting nature of Holmes in the movie, but frankly, that part is rather true to form. Holmes was an excellent pugilist, an excellent fencer, and uncannily strong. If anything, they actually downplayed his incredible strength from the stories. He once bit a piece of solid iron back straight after a strong man had struggled to bend in curved. Regardless I digress. Its a simple movie, that stays true to the form of Sir Doyle's stories pretty well. And of course its going to have a sequel because you can't make a movie about Holmes and leave it at just one unless Moriarty is the primary antagonist. The plot is a bit thin, but there is enough wit and humor to make up for it, and it somehow manages to all make sense in the end, somehow. All in all if I was recommending a movie in theaters right now I would wholeheartedly recommend this one over Avatar. Or as I like to call it "Dances with Blue People."

Enjoyability versus Quality

2009-12-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

A lot of people seem to miss the point about how enjoyability and quality are not always tied together. This is in regard to all sorts of things, music, movies, books, etc. For me it most often is tied to movies most often, and books secondly. I am good at separating the two and seeing the enjoyability in a poor movie, and seeing the quality in a movie that I did not enjoy at all. Pretty much my favorite movie of all time is Big Trouble In Little China. Does that mean I think its the best movie of all time? Hell no, its not even the best movie of its year, but its my favorite. It is highly enjoyable for me, even though I can see that its not the most quality movie ever. The opposite is true for some other movies that I don't enjoy. For example, I didn't enjoy, for example, Cold Mountain. Actually I really hated it, but I can see that it is high quality movie making. This is an important thing to keep in mind when looking at rottentomatoes.com. RT is a great GREAT way to get a general feel for the quality of a movie. They are pretty spot on with that since it takes a whole bunch of critical reviews instead of just one. If its a high rating its a well made movie, if its a low rating its not a very well made movie. However, thats not always a good measure of enjoyability, and that is something to keep in mind.

On a side note, this is something I always kind of use in those silly Harry Potter versus Twilight debates. Sure there are a ton of people that find both of them enjoyable, and obsess over them even. However, J.K. Rowling is the clear winner. Although both series can only be classified as highly entertaining, Rowling wins because not only is it enjoyable, its well written as well. Rowling is a good writer, although not great, by almost all opinions. Meyer is a terrible, terrible writer, and she and Christopher Paolini should totally have a crappy writer competition. The same can be said for the movies, where as the Harry Potter movies generally get pretty good objective movie reviews, the two Twilight movies rank just a hair above Old Dogs and Willard on "objective" movie reviews. Just my two cents worth.

Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day Movie Review 5.5/10!

2009-12-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, firstly, I loved the first movie and I am utterly fascinated by the train wreck that is Troy Duffy. But lets be honest, what he is is a huge ass who somehow came up with a good movie idea and script and even more unbelievably got major funding with no movie experience whatsoever. Then he got blackballed because he was such an ass and his movie didn't even get main stream released. However, despite that, it became a cult classic, and is actually a pretty creative and well made movie. However, it appears, and quite predictable so, that he is a bit of a one bullet Barney. His second film does not capture the same feel or charm of the first one, and it is quite obvious that he is pressing and trying to capture the same magic and feel that he stumbled upon. It, for the most part, fails. The story is supposed to be a bit more epic, a lifelong tail, but its cumbersome flashback scenes make it less than powerful. The secondary antagonist has all this interested set up, but never gets evolved and eventually he just goes down like a chump. Also, one thing I never though I would say, THIS MOVIE NEEDS MORE WILLEM DEFOE. His role as FBI Agent Smecker was hilarious and fantastic in the first movie, and his presence is sorely missed in the second one. In the end, I gave this a slightly better than average rating because I loved the characters and the first one. However, where as I recommend the first one to just about everyone, I will only recommend the second one to hardcore fans of the original.

Avatar Movie Review 6.5/10!

2009-12-24T10:45:00.000-08:00

Ok, first of all I would like to say that the special effects in this film are in fact fantastic. At times its hard to tell where real actors end and CGI begins. However, that doesn't hold a lot of water with me. James Cameron is the Yankee's of film making. If you throw enough money at something then eventually you will get what you want in the end. Sure, the special effects were fantastic, but pretty much anybody could have thrown that much money at enough design studios and accomplished the very same thing. This is the kind of special effects you get when you throw three times the average blockbuster at a movie. If you spent 300 million freaking Gremlins it would be the most realistic CGI ever, its just the nature of the beast. The point I am trying to make is that you can't throw a lot of shiny glitz my way and expect me to go ga ga over it. I will enjoy it perhaps, but in no shape or form do special effects make a movie good. There are terrible movies with GREAT special effects, and there are great movies with terrible special effects. So kudos for the design studio, but the quality of the effects does not terribly alter the way I rate a movie much either up or down, it does some of course, but it is not going to change a 5 into an 8 or vice-versa. The idea, which gets so much credit for being original, is absolutely not. This Avatar concept is old, well used, and not original. In fact most of the stuff in the film isn't all the original. That's not a bad thing, there aren't a whole lot of original stuff out there, I am just saying that Cameron gets no originality points with this film, the Avatar idea, things named Pandora, and especially, most especially the aboriginal people are not new thoughts. ( "I see you" Mudpeople from Sword of Truth anyone?) This movie is essentially been made already. This movie is essentially "Dance with Wolves" on a distant moon. Ok, its exactly "Dances with Wolves" on a distant moon. Personally, I am not much of a fan of James Cameron, I don't care much for his brute force style of films, and his dialogue is sketchy at best. He has come up with some memorable lines, but on the whole his writing is not terribly consistent. Which is proven by this film. There are some GREAT moments. Very visceral, very intense. But there are some slow, slow parts. Its almost as if you could break this into two movies, one of which is great and one of which is pretty bad. The real problem with it seems to lie more with whats on the cutting room floor. This movie is edited terribly with what seems to be a large chunk of pertinent story line that didn't make it into the film. I could very well see a 4 hour directors cut coming out in a year or so, and I could also very well see me changing my opinion on this film and liking it very, very much. As it is, in its current cut there were to many times during the film where I was asking myself, "why in the world is this happening." Not because I didn't understand the plot, its pretty simple, but because things kind of happened with very little explanation, however, they had the feel that it was originally set up to explains these situations in a lot of detail. I can only infer in the originally story that there was some sort of prophecy involved that was explained on the story board but only briefly alluded to in the final cut. Even with all of my misgivings about the film though, I still enjoyed it. I thought it was an entertaining movie with incredibly visceral battle scenes that affected me more than I have been emotionally affected by a battle scene in a very long time. But my no stretch of the imagination is this the best movie of all time as some are proclaiming, or even the best movie of the year. Its a spectacle, its something you should see, IN THEATER. Don't wait for DVD even on BLU-RAY this will be lacking. In fact, I doubt I will ever watch this movie again because I think it will just lose so much on the small screen. Oh, and Sam Worthington, whom I thought was the one redeeming feature of Terminator Salvation, disappointed me at times in this film. Some of the better lines of the film come out sort of garbled by him, as if he has a big jawbreaker in is mouth. Don't know why that happened, but I didn't like it. FINAL WORD: See this movie, See this in theater, see it in 3D IMAX if you can, its worth the higher priced ticket. Its emotional, visceral, and enjoyable, but its not that revolutionary.

The Men Who Stare at Goats Movie Review 5/10!

2009-11-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, this is one of the stranger movies I have seen lately. The closest I can categorize this movie is as a dark comedy, but its really not quite dark or cynical enough to really be called "dark." Its sort of a tweener movie, its not light enough to be a regular comedy, but its not quite dark enough to be a cynical dark comedy. In a movie like this, the thing that makes it is quality dialogue and well written characters. Not just the main characters, but all of the little bit parts as well. This is something that a director like Quinten Tarantino excels at. Grant Heslov and Peter Straughan not so much. The movie started promising, with a nice Ewan McGregor voice over, and the meeting with the first "psychic" he encounters, a man named Gus Lacy. It was quirky, entertaining, and set the pace for what I thought would be a very good movie. But it sort of went downhill from there. What it seems to be is a group of good actors given a very mediocre scripts with characters that they had very little that they could do with. They seem to be mailing it in. Kevin Spacey is just particularly wasted. There is nothing about his character that uses his talents, or requires him to be playing it. I could have played that character just as effectively. Its not really Spacey's fault I don't think, he just wasn't given anything to work with. George Clooney's character was also a null, it could have been played much more over the top. Jeff Bridges is entertaining but he is really just channeling the "dude" into a similar role, definitely nothing that we haven't seen before. Another odd thing about this movie is that it was a completley male cast except for a line or two by MgGregor's ex-wife in the movie. This isn't a good or bad thing, I just thought it was interesting. I did find Clooney calling McGregor a Jedi, but that was funny for the wrong reason I think. All in all I was very disappointed with this movie, I am glad I only paid 5 bucks to see it. Its not the worst movie in the world, if you were looking for a Friday night movie to rent then it would possibly be a decent choose, but don't waste a movie ticket on it.

Why the word myth is a myth.

2009-10-26T03:49:00.000-07:00

The other day I was watching Mythbusters. Why you might ask would I watch such a terribly annoying show? My brother is obsessed with it for some reason, so I was forced into it. This show annoys on a variety of different levels, one of them being that they don't bust any thing all they do is pick one string of facts and fail analysis any of the variables that could make something plausible outside of their ridiculously shortsighted experiments. The other being that their name itself is somewhat an affront to what I got my degree in. I admit that the word "myth" is commonly used to represent a falsehood, or something that has questionable truth to it. But I guess its like someone repeatedly using horrible grammar around someone who has an English degree. (ok wait that is essentially what my degree is in, and that doesn't annoy me) The word myth academically has nothing to do with falsehoods, legends, tales, or fables. I have from time to time abused this common misconception, once I referred to the bible as mythology around a bunch of church goers just to see what would happen. It wasn't really a pleasant experience for me. But the bible, particularly the book of Genesis, is a pure example of what a myth, or mythology is. It is, to avoid an even longer discourse, a creation story. Every religion, culture, or people has a mythos or mythology, and those words do not imply falseness or truth, they simply are. They are a way of given a particularly archetype to a specific part of a religion or culture. Every time someone says "oh thats just a myth," it just makes me think about that. Its 99.9% of the time completely a statement made in error. Most of the time I disregard it, but when it really bugs me is when Professors use the word in this content when lecturing, often in related fields, when they really, really should know better. One time when I was having a really bad day I corrected a professor on this and I would really recommend this tactic to anybody. Of course, it was just Wilkerson-Freeman so piling on to here is a bit gratuitous since she makes herself look silly enough on her own. The whole moral of this story is that the show Mythbusters really should be called UrbanLegend Busters, or just LegendBusters. I guess those names were already trademarked.

Movie Review: Zombieland 8/10!

2009-10-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

When I think about Zombie movies there are two things that generally come to mind first. George Romero and Shaun of the Dead. They are pretty much the pinnacle of zombie greatness. Romero has pretty much mastered the zombie genre, and Shaun of the Dead sort of spun it on its head. Zombieland doesn't really resemble either of these. Zombieland is a good movie, good but not great. It is not a scary movie at all, as its pretty much a straight comedy. I mean its not scary at all, its a coming of age story that just sort of happens to have zombies in the background. The laughs are good, but not great, and the story is cute. I think I laughed out loud twice at the most. That doesn't mean it wasn't funny, and admittedly, and I don't laugh that much during movies, but still it was not a super crazy laugh your ass off type movie. The cast is good, Woody Harrelson is great in this movie, and Emma Stone is hot, and has the most freaky big eyes I have ever seen. I think she must be an anime character. Jessie Eisenberg really doesn't do it that much for me though, he basically does a Michael Cera impression, but he just isn't quite as good at it than the original. There are two things though that sold the movie for me though, one was a suddenly touching at sad moment with Woody's character about 3/4 of the way through involving a duct tape wallet, and a particularly awesome cameo by a very cool guy. All in all I recommend seeing this movie, its no Shaun of the Dead as its laught just aren't anywhere near its caliber, but its cute, funny, and worth seeing.

Retro Movie Review: Big Trouble in Little China 9/10.

2009-10-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of movies from the 80's that have made cult status, and Kurt Russell happens to star in my two favorites, which also both happen to be John Carpenter flicks. The first one of course is "Escape from New York" with Kurt Russell playing the trench coat wearing Snake Pliskin. My favorite however, is the classic "Big Trouble in Little China." This movie is to this day one of my all time favorite movies, and I routinely put it into my top fives. This great thing about this movie is John Carpenter knew what he was doing. Unlike a lot of other campy cheesy horror/action movies from the 80's this ones camp and cheese is by design rather than by accident. Its funny cheesy moments are still funny, the corny one liners still hold up. Sure the special effects are bad, but you know what, its a testament to a great movie when its still entertaining even if they have terrible special effects. How can you go wrong with a movie that has a villain that is 1 part 1000 year old decrepit old man and 1 part 8 foot tall Chinese sorcerer? Who knew green eyes were so important? I do know one thing though, its all in the reflexes.

Retro Movie Review Dead Alive 5.5/10!

2009-10-09T03:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, many of you know me and know that I have healthy interest in the horror movie genre. This is one of those films that I have been wanting to watch for a few years, but just never got around to watching. Now I know why. Its actually known as the bloodiest movie of all time by volume. This movie was so over the top gore fest that even I, the horror movie veteran, had trouble stomaching it. Before we get to those gory details though let me give you a bit of background information about this little movie.

This is an independent film made in New Zealand and released in 1993. It is directed by none other than Peter Jackson, yes the Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson. Turns out before he was doing wizards and hobbits he was actually quite the king of splatterhouse. This movie is pretty simple. Boy meets girl, boy has issues with his mother, boy's mother gets bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey, turns into a zombie, boy has bigger issues with his mother. That pretty much sums of the plot. Along the way there are some veiled attempts at this foreign concept called acting, but really such inconsequential notions aren't needed in this flick.

This movie is over the top gory, and is thin on anything other than the gore. I mean seriously there are parts where it looks like they just turned on a bunch of bloody sprinklers, soaked the set in blood and then were like "Damn, we need a lot more blood." The special effects are terrible, and I guess blessedly, the blood doesn't even really look like blood at all. Its kind of an orangey watered down ketchup really. I am trying to think of something positive things to right, or even things to actually give a critique about, but it just isn't there. This movie is gross, gory, bloody, disgusting, and absolutely a must watch if your a horror junky. I really think this movie was just a gimic to try and see if they could make the bloodiest low budget movie ever. Its a tough match between this one and "Zombie Strippers."

Dan Brown Book Review "The Lost Symbol" 5/10

2009-10-01T16:30:00.001-07:00

Have you ever noticed how in movies that have sequels they all have a similar pattern of quality? Generally the first one is decent, but not great. The second one normally gets all the elements right, and improves all of the negatives in the first to create a pretty damn good finished product. The third one generally regresses pretty hardcore and is generally a contrive attempt to profit off the success of the first two. This appears to be the format Dan Brown has followed, and “The Lost Symbol” appears to be a situation where Mr. Brown was obviously trying to hit on the success of the first two, and try to emphasize the highlights of those books. What that means is the use of the symbols and secret societies is now in your face instead of subtle and surprising. He has found a formula for success and he is sticking to it. To be quite honest, Dan Brown is not a good writer, actually quite the opposite, he is terrible. That doesn’t mean I don’t think he is entertaining, as I enjoyed his first two books quite a bit, however, he is no wordsmith. He is never going to make a living on his ability with words. His books are interesting despite his lack of writing talent, not because of it. It was his ability to work a plot, winding and interesting that makes his books popular. This one however, was transparent. It was easy to see what was going on from the beginning; there were not good plot twists, and frankly no really good plot period. At the end when it came to big reveal it was a terribly let down. Brown was really pushing to make something important and of something that didn’t make that much sense at all. I was hoping that would be a good read, something that would be interesting. Instead all I got was a contrived mess of predictable plot.

Top Five Shortstop!!

2009-09-29T17:44:00.001-07:00

As listed in my previous blog, I don’t consider Ernie Banks to be a shortstop. The majority of his career was actually spent as a first sacker. Also I am leaving off Arod because it seems he is going to go in as a third-baseman, not as a shortstop.

5. Ozzie Smith- Ozzie Smith is not an offensive force, but he didn’t contribute some with the stick in his career. He eventually became a respectable average guy and a pretty decent on base guy as well. He also had 580 career stolen bases to only 148 times caught. That’s a pretty good number. However, Ozzie is not here because of his batting prowess. He is here because he is, by any statistical analysis you choose to employ, the single greatest and most valuable defensive player of all time. At a position where defense is important that counts for a lot.

4. Derek Jeter- With all apologies to Cal Ripken Jr., he isn’t going to make my top five. This is a bit of a surprise to me, as much as it is to the people who know me. First of all Jeter isn’t done. He may actually go into the number 3 spot, even though he has actually been a pretty terrible defensive player for most of his career. He has finally learned to be an average to slightly above average shortstop the last couple of years. No bones about it, his Gold Gloves are a travesty and anybody who thinks that they aren’t should be ashamed. That being said, Jeter is still one of the exception shortstops of all time. To this date he has amassed 2742 hits, and put up slash numbers of .317/.388/.459. And he is a gamer, and a leader, which although not heavily waited, is important. He has the personality that Arod should have, but doesn’t. All in all, I feel confident in putting him in my top 5.

3. Joe Cronin- This may be a controversial pick as well, but he was a damn good player. First of all Cronin was a great fielder. Absolutely superb, and one of the best ever. But no only could he field the ball, he could hit it as well. His percentage numbers are a very solid, .301/.390/.468. These are very, very good, particularly for a short stop, and even rarer for a shortstop who can field his position.

2. Arky Vaughn- The proud owner of the best season by a shortstop not named Honus Wagner. This guy could hit, this guy could field, and frankly I am just a sucker for players with career OBP’s over .400. His slash numbers are .318/.406/.453. His 1935 season was truly amazing. In that particular season he hit .381/.491/.607. That’s an absolutely sick season.

1. Honus Wagner- This is pretty much a given, and beyond debate. Hans Wagner is the greatest shortstop of all time, bottom line, end of story. 7 time batting champion and the best defender of his time. His career numbers are .327/.391/.466. This doesn’t look all that impressive but given the average season of his time he was leaps and bounds better than everyone else. Putting up a near 1.000 ops, which he did often, was a near super human feat in early baseball. And according to his peers he was far and away the most feared hitter in the National League.

Cal Ripken Jr.- Cal Ripken Jr. is, of course, one of the great players in baseball history. However, I have a hard time putting him in the top 5. Sure he had the games streak, and that is one of the most impressive records in baseball, but that in itself does not make you the best player at your position. His career OPS is .788. Frankly this is just a bit low to put him in, even counting that he played in an offensively repressed era. Defensively he was very very good, but not great. I have no qualms putting him in the Hall of Fame, and among baseball’s greats, but he doesn’t crack the top five.

Here come the 1950's Hall of Fame blog Part 6!!

2009-09-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

Alrighty boys and girls, I know it’s been a long time since my last installment into the wonderful world of the Baseball Hall of Fame, but here we are the 1950’s.

1959- Zack Wheat

Zach Wheat- Yes- Zach Wheat is fairly marginal as far as Hall of Famers go, but I do think he is a Hall of Famer. His slash numbers are .317/.367/.450, which aren’t spectacular, but are very good. He accumulated 2884 hits, 1248 RBI, and 1289 Runs. He was known as a quality defensive outfielder and was considered one of the best players in baseball by his peers.

1957- Sam Crawford

Sam Crawford-Yes- Sam Crawford is nearly and identical player to Zach Wheat with the exception that he was one of the great defensive outfielders of his generation. His percentage numbers are .309/.362/.452. He gets extra points for playing Right Field next to Cobb for several years without killing him. Overall, it is basically the same thing as Wheat. A few more hits, a few more Runs, and quite a few more RBI’s.

1956-Hank Greenberg, Joe Cronin

Hank Greenberg- Yes- Normally I don’t go for the short career guys, but you know what there are seldom guys who have been truly this great. .313/.412/.605. Yep folks that’s a career 1.017 OPS. That’s pretty damn good.

Joe Cronin-Yes- Joe Cronin is actually in my top five greatest shortstops of all time. His slash numbers are a very, very solid .301/.390/.468. He was an amazingly good defender, one of the best. As far as shortstops there are very few who can combine his defensive prowess with the ability to hit both for a decent average and with some pop. His .857 OPS ranks very high amongst shortstops.

1955-Dazzy Vance, Ray Schalk, Ted Lyons, Gabby Hartnett, Joe DiMaggio, Home Run Baker.

Dazzy Vance-Maybe- Dazzy Vance is a tough person to rate. I put a lot of weight towards how their peers viewed them in their playing days. Dazzy Vance was always considered one of, if not the best by the hitters he faced. There is no question that he was tough to hit, and his 1924 season is one of the greatest of all time. He also led the National League in K’s 7 years running. However, other than his 3 great seasons, he wasn’t all that good and he didn’t pitch for very long. He has a career 3.24, which would have been a lot higher is his ERA hadn’t been ridiculously low in his 3 great seasons. In the rest of his seasons he was only average or a little above or below. He only had 197 wins to 140 losses. He does have 2045 career K’s, which given the strikeout rates of players in his day, is very impressive. Its equivalent of about 3200 k’s now. All in all it’s a tough case to judge, so I am putting it at maybe, but I think I am inclined to leave him out.

Ray Schalk-No- This pick is one of the ones that gets the most attention as being a farce. This is because his career slash numbers are .253/.340/.316. That is the lowest batting average of any player in the Hall of Fame. His OBP is actually pretty remarkable considering how little of a threat he was with the stick. What’s even worse than his batting average is his putrid .316 slugging average. He was a good defensive player, a great one even. But he is not the greatest defensive catcher off all time. Maybe not even in the top five greatest. He was an excellent base stealer for a catcher and he did have some speed, but its not enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.

Ted Lyons-No- As far as I can tell, Ted Lyons isn’t really all that good a player. He had a career 260-230 record, for a less than stellar .531 winning percentage. His career high in k’s for a season was 74, for a career total of 1073. I am not a big fan of pitchers that walk more than the strikeout and Lyon’s did that for his career. His career ERA of 3.67 is not really indicative of him having a Hall of Fame career.

Gabby Hartnett-Yes- Gabby Hartnett was an excellent catcher. He was great defensively with a rocket arm, and he could hit. He could hit very well. His percentage numbers are .297/.370/.489. That gives him a very solid .858 OPS. His cumulative numbers are lacking, of course, but with catchers especially you have to make an exception for that. Due to the nature of their profession they are always going to have less games played than other positions.

Joe DiMaggio-Yes- Three time MVP, great defensive centerfielder, and a great hitter. His career OPS of .977 make him a HOF lock. A curious thing about DiMaggio, he was known as a very speedy player but his career high in SB’s was 6. In fact he only had 30 career stolen bases. I know it wasn’t a stolen base era, and that he was a middle of the order type hitter, but you would think he would have gotten at least twice that accidently.

Home Run Baker-Yes- Mr. Frank Baker was known as Home Run Baker because of his ability to knock the ball out of the park. Of course 12 was his career high and he only hit 96 in his career. His career slash number are .307/.363/.442. Given the time period in which he played he was a legitimate big time slugger. He was considered by his peers to be the best third basemen in the game. His 12 home runs were also a record until Babe Ruth broke it. He is a Hall of Famer without question.

1954-Bill Terry, Rabbit Maranville, Bill Dickey

Bill Terry-Yes- I am not a huge Bill Terry fan. His .401 average is incredibly over rated and should not be considered with the same reverence as the other .400+ hitters. Basically anything offensive that was done in 1930 shouldn’t really count. Outside of that he was a very good player. His career .341 average is extremely impressive and he had a little bit of pop in his bat as well.

Rabbit Maranville-No- He got in because he was a media riot. His numbers certainly don’t verify Hall of Fame status. His career OPS of .658 is unimpressive to say the least. He was not that exceptional a fielder to make up for the poor average. I am really not sure why he is in the Hall of Fame to be honest.

Bill Dickey-Yes- Mr. Dickey grew up in Kensett, Arkansas, which is a little town that is basically a part of Searcy. After he finished his career he moved back to Arkansas until his death in Little Rock in 1993. Most people rate Yogi Berra as the greatest Yankee catcher of all time, but my vote goes to Bill Dickey. He was a man that was well liked and a leader on his team. He was a smarter player than Yogi, he was a much better defender and had a rocket arm. And in my opinion he was much more consistent hitter. He put up a nice career .313 batting average, with a .382 OBP, and .486 SLG. He is a no doubter as a Hall of Famer, and one of the greatest catchers of all time.

1953-Bobby Wallace, Al Simmons, Dizzy Dean, Chief Bender.
Bobby Wallace-No- Bobby Wallace was a whole lot of average over a very long career. He was a career .268 hitter with no power. He managed to rack up 2309 hits but it took him 25 seasons to get them. He didn’t steal bases, he was only a slightly above average fielder, he only batted over .300 once. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about him.

Al Simmons-Yes- Al Simmons is no doubter of a Hall of Famer, but one that flies under most people radar. “Bucket-Foot” Al could flat out hit the baseball. He racked up 2927 hits, ending up just shy of 3000, but we will give him the benefit of the doubt there. His percentage numbers are a more than solid .334/.380/.535 for a career .915 OPS. He tends to get overlooked because he played on team with about seven other Hall of Famers.

Dizzy Dean-Yes- Dizzy gets into the Hall but I don’t know that I would put him in if he hadn’t been a Hall of Fame type broadcaster too. I will give him the benefit of the doubt because he was a great player, and because of his overall contribution to baseball. And because he is just a damn interesting guy. First of all he one 30 games in 1934. He followed that up with 28 wins the next year. The problem is he only has 150 career wins. On the plus side he had a career winning percentage of .644. That’s pretty spectacular.

Chief Bender-Yes- Charles Albert Bender could play some baseball. He had a career 212-127 record for a .625 career winning percentage. Not to shabby, especially when combined with his career 2.46 ERA. He was always considered one of the best pitchers in the league.

1952-Paul Waner, Harry Heilman

Paul Waner-Yes- Big Poison was a much better player than his brother, Little Poison. He put up a career .333 batting average, and unlike his brother he could slug the ball a little and tossed up a career .473 slg to go along with his good batting average. For good measure he tossed in 3152 career hits, 1627 Runs, and 1309 RBI’s.

Harry Heilman-Yes- A guy most people don’t think about, or have even heard of, Harry could flat out rip the ball. He put up a .342 batting average and put up a .410 OBP and a .520 slugging percentage just for good measure. That gives him a career .930 OPS which is pretty stellar. He put up 2660 career hits, 1291 career runs, and 1539 career RBI’s. No question he belongs.

1951-Mel Ott, Jimmie Foxx

Mel Ott-Yes- No doubter. 511 career home runs, with .304/.414/.533. This gives him an outstanding .947 OPS. Mr. Ott was a professional slugger and his numbers show that. He also put up a very respectable 2876 career hit total and had over 1000 career extra base hits. 1859 career runs with 1860 career RBI’s are also very impressive.

Jimmie Foxx-Yes- Another no doubter, Jimmie Foxx goes into the argument as one of the greatest right handed hitters of all time. 534 homers, 1751 runs, 1922 RBI and 1000 extra base hits. His slash numbers are even more impressive .325/.428/.609. There is no question to membership into the Hall of Fame.

Ernie Banks a shortstop?

2009-09-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, I get quite a bit of flack from time to time because I don't include Ernie Banks in my top five shortstops list. But there is a logical and sound reason why he isn't on my list of all-time great shortstops. The first reason is his career numbers aren't all that spectacular. However, that is actually not the reason why he doesn't make my list. He doesn't make my list because he didn't spend his entire career as a shortstop. He didn't even spend HALF of his career as a shortstop. Ernie Banks gets publicity as the only shortstop in the 500 club, but frankly, this publicity is 100% not deserved. Not because he didn't hit 500 homers, that's not in question of course, but because he spent more of his career as a first basemen then he did as a shortstop. Here is the breakdown of Ernie Banks career by position:

As a 1st Basemen:
Games played: 1238
PA: 5091
AB: 4658
R: 565
Hits: 1209
2B: 195
3B: 31
HR: 207
RBI: 758
BB: 305
SO: 659
BA: .260
OBP: .308
SLG: .448
OPS: .756
As a Shortstop:
Games Played: 955
PA: 4083
AB: 3670
R: 609
Hits: 1066
2B: 174
3B: 41
HR: 248
RBI: 691
BB: 348
SO: 450
BA: .290
OBP: 353
SLG: .564
OPS: .916
There is no question that Banks was a much better player as a shortstop, but the problem is he stopped being a shortstop by the age of 29. And when he stopped being a shortstop he really stopped being a shortstop, he never played a game there again, and he played until he was 40. He played 140 games or more at shortstop in his career only six seasons, and in a career that lasted 19 seasons I don’t think its fair to identify him with that position. It’s not fair to the other shortstops that legitimately played that position their entire career. Looking at the stats it’s easy to see which position he spent the most time at. He had more at bats, hits, and RBI’s playing first base than he did at short. He did hit more homers at short than he did at 1st but not by a wide margin. He is pretty close to half and half there. So what in the hell do we give him credit as being a shortstop in the 500 club? Especially since he only hit 248 homers as a shortstop. There is no question that he should be associated with first basemen, not with shortstops. This is a situation in which propaganda and media has affected our perception of a player. Ernie Banks was well liked, especially by the writers. They had to press the issue with the shortstop part of his career because he looks like a much better player, a top ten or top five players because of his home run total. If he was compared as a first-basemen he just doesn’t stack up. His numbers probably wouldn’t crack the top 15. Of course this blog doesn’t even go into the fact that for half of his career Banks was actually not a very good player at all, or that when he was a shortstop it was a stretch to say he was average defensively, but I am not denying that he should be a Hall of Famer, just that he should not be considered a shortstop, because that is misleading. This is the reason why Banks is not on my top five list, and this is the reason why he shouldn’t be on ANYBODIES top five list at short. Because he just isn’t a shortstop.

Five best names in baseball history!

2009-09-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

I like names and baseball has sure had some good ones. I am not talking nicknames here, this are the actual given names of these guys.

5. Johnny Dickshot- I can't imagine what the origination of this last name is but I certainly wouldn't want to grow up with it. To make matters worse this guys nickname was Ugly. Ugly Dickshot. What a terrible name.

4. Biff Pocoroba- Absolutely a great name.

3. Razor Shines- I love it when the Cardinals play the Mets just because I know that I will get to see Razor Shines send someone homes from third. Its really a great name.

2. Sixto Lezcano- If only this guy actually had six toes.

1. Rusty Peters- Seriously what was this guys mom thinking. That is just a bad idea.

The Flu

2009-09-14T16:48:00.003-07:00

I know a thing or two about epidemics. I guess one good thing about focusing on medical history in my M.A. is that I have gotten a good working knowledge about how epidemics work particularly those that are reoccurring epidemics such as influenza. People don’t understand a lot about what is going on with H1N1 virus. To understand the issue and why it is so frightening to a lot of people you have to go back to the Spanish Influenza epidemic from the early part of the 20th century. That epidemic was truly frightening. It had a high fatality rate and the most terrifying thing about it is that it was an indiscriminate killer. Most diseases rarely kill people in the prime of life. They focus on the elderly and the young or those that already have compromised immune systems. The Spanish Flu was not one of these. It killed people just as readily that was in perfect condition as those that were not. People could wake up feeling fine and be dead by night fall. It is theorized, though not definitively confirmed, that the Spanish Influenza was a mutated strain of avian flu. That is where the fear of these avian and swine flu’s are derived from. The fear is that eventually an avian flu will mutate to where it can be spread person to person. Then the fear is that after it does that it can mutate into the incredibly virulent and dangerous form that it has taken in the past. People think that the CDC and WHO are over reacting to these flu strains and that they are no big deal. The people who say this are right to some extent. The H1N1 as it is right now is really no big deal. It’s basically a really bad case of the flu, and unless you have a pre-existing condition then all you have to fear is really feeling like crap for a while. However, the Health Organizations are not over reacting. They have to start implementing protocols now. If they wait until the virus mutates then it will be too late and will be in mass pandemic stage before they can begin to do anything. Only by pre-emptively planning can they hope to do anything if it becomes a major worldwide pandemic. The best thing that can be done for such a situation is for them to begin planning for the worst, and to try and increase the herd immunity to the highest level that it possibly can be. If you don’t plan for the worst then if the worst happens you will be unprepared.

Where were you on 9/11?

2009-09-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

I always here people saying "I will never forget where I was on 9/11." That is generally the way it goes with things like this. My mother said she never forgot the moment she heard the JFK has been killed, and my grandfather said he would never forget Pearl Harbor. For my generation this is our defining event, and hopefully, will always remain so. What I was ruminating about today though was why do I, the person who remembers his first year in school about as well as his tenth, remember very little detail about that day? I remember where I was of course, but other than impressions and emotions I really remember very little detail. I remember that I found out in chapel when I was at Harding University. I say my friend Trey Laminack who sat next to me in chapel that year and a ran to catch up with him as we were leaving the dorms. But other than that its quite a haze. We walked into together and immediately I felt something was wrong, the aura of the place, for lack of a better word, was oppressive. I doubt I will ever again in my life feel what its like to be in a room with 4000 other people all of home have just received the most stunning news of their life. I know many of you on my facebook friends list can relate to this, most of you were in chapel that day as well. I do remember that Kimberly was not in chapel, she was running late for chapel and had caught the news coverage before she left and then couldn't make herself leave, so the seat to my right was vacant. But after that I remember nothing about that day until noon. I don't remember what Dr. Burk said that day after Trey and I, who were also late, figured out what was going on. I was in a daze I guess, and from looking at Trey so was he. The next thing I remember was going to Cone at noon, where I was supposed to meet some friends. I remember then that we had to explain it all to Drew Dasher who had just woken up because he had slept in. He hadn't heard any of it. I remember we tried to come up with words that were adequate but we just said, "go in there and turn on the news." I remember that was probably my most vivid memory of the day, watching someone else learn the news when I myself was no longer reeling from it. At no time before then or since then have I felt myself so small, so incapacitated, and so useless before an event. I didn't think there was a situation that could so completely make my brain shut down and panic. That was the situation, and although the feeling didn't last long, that was my honest reaction, and the feeling of that helplessness and shock comes back every time the anniversary rolls around. I can't help but wonder if that was the way I felt in Arkansas how much more terrible was it for those around ground zero.

Five Most Memorable Movie Bad Guys

2009-09-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

I like movie bad guys, they can really make or break a movie. I am not going to list Darth Vader, or Sauron, or Voldemort, or any of the obvious choices. I am going for those with a little more quirky flair.

5. Hans Gruber, Played by Alan Rickman in ""Die Hard and the Sheriff of Nottingham from "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves." I decided to give a tie for this spot to two characters especially since both or these characters were played by the same actor. His character in Robin Hood is an excellent combination of cruel and evil, yet scared and whiney, a perfect portrayol of this particular character. In Die Hard is gives an iconic eighties performance in an iconic movie. Plus he is named for a character from "Our Man Flint" which is funny to me.

4. David Lo Pan,played by James Hong in "Big Trouble In Little China"
This movie is perhaps my favorite movie of all time. Its not the best movie I have ever seen, but it is still my favorite nonetheless. David Lo Pan is an ancient shriveled old man, EXTREMELY ancient and shriveled, who turns into an incorporeal seven foot tall unstoppable mound of magic. He is actually more terrfying as a shriveled old man than he is as a big ass magician.

3. Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg played by Gary Oldman in “The Fifth Element." Has there ever been a quirkier villian? Gentile southern accent in an evil corporate president that wears a plastic plate on his head and walks with a limp. His performance of this character is hilarious and although a bit campy, it fits the tone of the movie perfectly.

2. The Joker played by Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight." Honestly its just the joker in general, not just the Ledger Joker. The joker is a great combination of funny, honest, and completely terrifying. You know when you see him on stage that he is completely insane and that even his brief moments of kindness are scary as hell. Ledger brings the most visceral and real life version of this character that there has ever been.

1. Cruela DeVille from "101 Dalmations." When I saw this movie in theater as a very young child, the fact that she was after the puppies to make a coat out of them AND was actually wearing a puppy skin coat absolutely scared the hell out of me. Not only that her demeanor with the skunk hair and the cigarette holder just add to the menace. To this day I can't see someone using a cigarette holder without instinctively thinking that they are evil.

My Top Five Most Hated Sports Teams

2009-09-10T01:04:00.000-07:00

You know people always assume that I hate the Cubs because I am an extreme Cardinals fan. The truth is I don't really hate the Cubs. I don't particularly like their fans, and I think their booing and heckling gets a little old, but hey they can do what they want. They are only hurting themselves anyway, which is why they have some issues getting some free agents to sign there. But the point is I still don't hate the Cubs. As it is its sort of a one sided rivalry anyway. However, there are some sports teams I really do hate. And I have decided to list them here in no particular order from least hated to worst hated.

5. The Dallas Cowboys- I have always hated the Dallas Cowboys. I don't really have a reason, I just hate them. I hate the "America's Team" label and I hate Jerry Jones. They are just a very hateable team. I do root for Felix Jones to do well, but if I could wish for him to have a monster season and them to go 0-16 I would would be ok with that.

4. Milwaukee Brewers- This is more of a I hate them now situation rather than one of long term despise. I think for the most part they operate in a completely unprofessional manner, and they are a team in a bad need of a veteran leader. Most of this teams problems are because they are led by Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder. They aren't evil guys, but frat boy immature are the words that come to mind.

3. University of Texas- I can't help it, it comes with being a lifelong Hog's fan. Honorable mention in this spot to University of Tennessee for the same reason.

2. The New England Patriots- Tom Brady? An insufferable overrated prick. Bill Belichick, basically a man who makes a farce of the game with his willingness to break the rules. I absolutely LOVED it when the Patriots lost to the Giants in the superbowl. What was great about it is beforehand when Brady got upset at the Giants player who said they wouldn't score more than 21 points. Brady was like "come one, you have got to give us more credit than that." And of course they didn't meet the mark in which he considered a given. I was happy about that for a week.

1. New York Yankees- This is almost a cliche, but alas, its true for many in baseball. I hate the spending. I hate the pretentious we play the game better than you attitude. I hate the fans who call themselves the best fans in the game, but who flee the turnstiles with the speed of the Flash when the team has had losing seasons. I hate Arod and his corporate delivery of cliches and his complete lack of social skills with the press and his teammates. I hate just about every stinking thing about them. I root for them to lose every single game, and when they are in the playoffs I cheer for the other team to kick their ass no matter who they are. This year I kind of want them to make the World Series though, because I would sure the love the Cardinals to have a chance to beat them like a drum in their new ballpark.

Inglourious Basterds Movie Review 10/10

2009-09-01T16:12:00.001-07:00

Oh where to start, where to start? This movie, in this moviegoer’s humble opinion, is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece to date. I am sure many will argue and say that it is and will always remain Pulp Fiction, and there are even a few who claim that title for Reservoir Dogs. I will still contend that this movie bests all of those. This is what he wants to make, a spaghetti western. If you were to go back and watch, say, Fistful of dollars or the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly you will see the comparison, most noticeably in the slow pacing, cinematic framing, and the intense prominence of dramatic music in the score, which is fantastic. This movie would not be what it is without Tarantino’s use of music, particularly of note is his use of Fur Elise during the opening scene.
First of all this movie uses a little bit of misdirection in its marketing. Not in a bad way I would say, just in way to try and keep a little mystery about it. It is an ensemble cast movie, and even though Brad Pitt is featured heavily in the preview, the movie is not focused primarily on him. He is a major character in the movie, but he gets no more screen time than any of the several other major characters. Like Pulp Fiction, this movie has several different character driven plots going on at the same time. This movie is not an action movie, and the violence, although typically Tarantino intense and gory is not the focus of the movie and is actually pretty sparse. This movie is, first and foremost character and dialogue driven, and folks, it is brilliant. The opening scene sets the pace, with a drawn out suspenseful scene completely driven by character dialogue and pacing, before given into the action. This type of thing seldom affects me, but towards the end of the scene I was sitting towards the edge of my seat. It’s this way for the entirety of the film.
And speaking of the dialogue, this movie almost counts as a foreign language film. If you have issues with subtitles this will be a problem. I didn’t count, but, I would say there is more French and German used than English in this film. However, Tarantino made a very smart move. He cast all foreign language actors to speak the French and German language sections. So all of these scenes are accurate and the accents believable. Other than Pitt probably the most recognizable actor is Diane Kruger from National Treasure 1 and 2. Even she, although you wouldn’t know it from her acting, is a native German speaker and has citizenship in Germany. I am used to subtitles as I watch a lot of foreign language films, and by 20 minutes in I had forgotten the subs and was immersed in the wonderful acting by the French and German speakers. Tarantino also uses this convention where if the point of view character cannot speak the language then the subtitles are not given for what other people are saying. It’s a nice touch of realism.
Brad Pitt does play one of the main and most memorable character and he does a fine job. However, a foreign film veteran named Christoph Waltz really steals the show. His performance, which he gives in three languages, English, French, and German, is fan-freaking-tastic. He is an absolute scene stealer, and is riveting anytime he is on the screen. If he doesn’t at least receive a nomination for Best- Supporting actor it is an injustice. I will say though, this movie overall is very well acted, and he is just the best of what is actually an incredibly stellar cast.
I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. I am aware that its few extremely brutal scenes means that it will not appeal to everyone, but those that could stomach it should see this movie. I also recommend that it be seen in the theater. The cinematography is such that it really is best to appreciate it on the big screen.

Here come the 1960's. Hall of Fame Blog Part 5.

2009-08-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Well here come the sixties. Groovy Man.

1969-Stan Musial, Waite Hoyt, Stan Coveleski, Roy Campanella
Stan Musial-Yes- Its impossible to find one blemish on Stan the Man’s record that goes against him being one of the greatest players of all time. .331 career batting average, .417 career OBP, with a .559 career slg percentage. That gives him a very salty .976 career OPS. He was a seven time batting champion and nearly won the Triple Crown in 1948. He gathered 3630 career hits, 475 career home runs, 1949 career runs, and 1951 career RBI’s. He was a three time MVP and easily could have won three more, and probably should have. Plus he was just a hell of a nice guy. He is one of the top ten greatest players of all time.

Waite Hoyt-No- The veteran’s committee strikes again. Apparently they thought their job back then were to pick out marginal guys and make their families happy by putting them in the Hall of Fame. Waite had 237 career wins with a 3.59 ERA. Not exactly hall of fame stuff. He pitched 21 seasons, most of them bad with a few good seasons sprinkled in. I don’t really know why he is in the Hall of Fame.

Stan Coveleski- Yes- Now here is a guy that might be worthy of the Vet’s committee’s pick. He only won 215 games, but at a much better percentage than Hoyt. (.602) and he had a much better career ERA. (2.89) Even though his career was somewhat limited he won 20 games five times, with a good percentage each year. I never really count a 20 win season if you lost 20 games as well, that just means you had a ton of decisions, Coveleski could pitch.

Roy Campanella- Yes- A tragic case, Campanella was a great, great player. Roy was a great defensive catcher, and like Yogi Berra he was a three time MVP. The difference between he and Yogi, is that Roy probably actually deserved them, or at least was as good a choice as the competitors. As it is, although his career was shortened due to the car accident that left him in a wheel chair, he had a career OPB of .860 and was an All-Star in every season other than his rookie year and his last. His career was brief, but I don’t really have the heart to exclude a great player who ended his career in a wheelchair.

1968-Joe Medwick, Goose Goslin, Kiki Cuyler

Joe Medwick- Yes- A triple crown winner and MVP winner, and put up a great career average of .324 which he coupled with a career .505 slugging percentage for good measure. He only had 2471 hits, but he was a great player, and had some monster seasons, so that really doesn’t matter. Medwick was a bit of a prickly person and wasn’t particularly well liked in baseball. He wasn’t hated, but he wasn’t exactly liked either.

Goose Goslin-Yes- Goose Goslin was one of the strongest men of his time, and although he was a terrible defensive outfielder, he sure could hit. He has a career .316 BA with a .387 OBP and a .500 Slugging. For good measure he threw in 2734 career hits, 1609 RBI, and 1483 Runs.

Kiki Cuyler- Yes- A little bit marginal, but he was truly respected by his piers as one of the best in the game. He was an excellent defensive centerfielder, with a rocket for an arm, and he could hit as well. He tossed good percentage numbers of .321, .386, and .474. He also led the league in stolen bases 4 times, and in runs twice. He had some decent power, and for a non-RBI slot hitter, had some very respectable RBI totals.

1967-Red Ruffing, Lloyd Waner

Red Ruffing-No- What in the hell was the voters thinking? Less than 2000 career strikeouts, and a 273-225 record. That is a lot of wins, but he pitched 22 seasons, he is supposed to have a bunch of wins. The real issue with him is his career 3.80 ERA, that is entirely too high to be a hall of famer. For at least half of his career he put up an ERA over 4.00. That’s no greatness.

Lloyd Waner-No- Perhaps I am a bit biased, but this is the exact kind of player that I think is overrated. Lloyd did one thing. He hit singles and he hit them well. But that’s all he did. He didn’t walk, and even though he hit .316, he only got on base at a .353 clip. There are lots of players that hit far lower, but were far more productive due to his lack of on base percentage. Not only that he has a tiny percentage of his careers hits that weren’t singles. His career slugging is only .393. An argument could be made that he belongs, because he was a good player. However, I really just dislike this type of player. If he hit .325 plus I would be a bit more likely to take him.

1966-Ted Williams

Ted Williams- Yes – (Explicit Warning Here) Ted used to refer to himself as Teddy Fucking Ballgame, the greatest hitter than game has ever seen. Now everybody that hears it generally hates that type of arrogance, however, he maybe just have been right. He was a fighter pilot as well, and by all accounts he was exceptional at that too. Ted Williams was a ridiculous player. He refused to hit the ball the other way, and he was a terrible outfielder that could often be seen practicing his swing out in the field, but that doesn’t matter. He was that good a hitter. His career percentage numbers are .344, .484, and .634. Those are video game type numbers. He led the American League in OPS 11 times, and posted an OPS over 1.000 18 times. Keep in mind he only played 19 seasons. Yep, that means he has a ridiculous career OPS of 1.116. He put up 521 homers, 525 doubles, and although he only had 2654 hits, a bit part of that is because he took a ridiculous 2021 walks. And keep in mind he did this even though he missed 3 years of his career right in the prime of it due to WWII and he missed sometime for Korea as well. Truly a legend, even if he was a very unlikeable guy.

1965- Pud galvin-Pre-1900 Player, Pass.

1964- Heinie Manush, Tim Keefe, Burleigh Grimes, Red Faber, Luke Appling
Heinie Manush-Yes- This guy could hit the baseball. He is one of the more unknown of the Hall of Famers but he deserves his place. He hit a very robust .330, .377, and .479. To go with the good percentage numbers he also tossed up 2524, which although not a stellar overall total, is very respectable nonetheless. To be honest, I don’t know a ton about this guy, so I don’t really have any anecdotal research to add to his case, and particularly know very little about his defense, since that is pretty much purely extracted from anecdotal research. Like Bill James I think I will revise this list from time to time and hopefully in its next version I will have more to say about Mr. Manush.

Tim Keefe-Pre-1900 player, Pass.

Burleigh Grimes-No- Another guy I don’t know a ton about. He was a spitballer, the legal kind, and he was one of the last legal spitballers to toe the rubber. Just looking at his stats I would have to say he is probably a no. 270 wins, with a good .560 winning percentage, but his ERA are a bit high at 3.53. His strikeout total is a bit low at 1512, but guys didn’t strike out all that much during the ERA he pitched. For now he is a no, but eventually I will do my due diligence on his anecdotal research.

Red Faber-No-If I don’t take Grimes then I can’t take Faber. They are very similar pitchers. Their careers overlapped, and Grimes one a few more games at a better percentage and Faber had a better ERA. Faber had 1471 K’s to Grimes 1524. Neither pitcher was stellar.

Luke Appling-Yes- Appling could hit the ball pretty well, and he new how to take a walk. He won two batting titles and walked over 100 times in three seasons. His career percentage numbers are .310 .399 and .398. The slugging is a bit low, but the OBP is stellar. He was a sure handed quality shortstop if not spectacular at his position. And oddly he seems to be better at short defensively when he was 40 than he was at 30, which is a pretty unusual trend. Anecdotally he is supposed to be one of the best at defensive position, which would account for that anomaly.

1963-Eppa Rixey, Sam Rice, Elmer Flick

Eppa Rixey-No- Although I know this is always indicative of the quality of a pitcher but Mr. Rixey led the league in losses twice as often as he led the league in wins. Ok that is not quite fair to leave it at that, he led the league in wins once, and losses twice. Still, an interesting fact to note. Other than that it seems Mr. Rixey was about a .500 pitcher, to be more exact a .515 pitcher. He posted a career record of 266-251. Definitely nothing to write home about. He also walked about as many as he struck out and gave up quite a few more hits than innings pitched, which isn’t always a bad thing either, but it does mean he has a relatively high WHIP. All in all, there is no way he was close to one of the best pitchers of his era.

Sam Rice-Yes- This man could play the game. He was an excellent fielder, with a good arm and he could hit the baseball. He put up a .322 career batting average with a .374 OBP and a .427 Slg. He also came up just 13 hits short of 3000 for his career. He scored 1514 and for good measure stole 351 bases.

Elmer Flick-pass- I am going to take a pass on Flick at this time, I would like to have the input from the peanut gallery on him if I could.

1962-Edd Roush, Jackie Robinson, Bob Feller,

Edd Roush-Yes- Mr. Roush was a capable hitter, he put up some really good percentage numbers of .323 .369 and .446. The career slugging of .446 is really good for his era. He was known as a good defender as well, and how can you not vote for a guy named Edd with 2 D’s.

Jackie Robinson-Yes- He only played for ten years, but this is a situation where you have to give a guy some credit for projected years. There is no reason to think that he wouldn’t have had five or six more years at the start of career that would have been comparable to his prime. As for the years he did have they were quite good. He put up a .311 average a great .409 OBP and a respectable .474 slugging. He was a great player who also put up 197 stolen bags in a era where people didn’t really still bags. As a defender he was adequate but not great, his reputation with the glove has become a bit overinflated. However, he was a professional hitter no doubt about it.

Bob Feller-Yes- This is a guy through the years that probably should have kept his mouth shut on a few different occasions. Despite that he was a mighty quality pitcher. He had some of the same problems as Nolan Ryan, but he corrected his wildness where Ryan never did. He did have over 200 walks in a season once though. He led the league in strikeouts 7 times and has a reputation as a big time strikeout pitcher, which he was at times, but contrary to what most people believe he never got to 3000 k’s. Bob was generally a better pitcher than the teams he was on and lead the league in wins 6 times with a very good .621 career winning percentage. He also lost 4 prime years to wartime service, and of all factors that play upon what could have been, I am more prone to giving people the benefit of the doubt when it
comes to wartime service.

1961-Max Carey-Yes- Max Carey was a great leadoff man. He posted a .361 career OBP with 738 careers steals. Caught stealing stats aren’t available for a good portion of his career, but when it is he stole a very good percentage. Also anecdotally he is known as a very high percentage base stealer. He was also an excellent fielder and amassed 2665 career hits and 1545 career runs. He led the league in steals 10 times.

1960-There were no players elected in 1960.

Retro Movie Review, Our Man Flint 7.25/10.

2009-08-27T18:33:00.003-07:00

How many of you enjoyed the Austin Powers movie series? This movie is the original Austin Powers type of character. Our Man Flint is movie that was made in 1966 and was made as a parody to the recently popular James Bond series of movies. The movie chronicles the Ultra cool super agent Derek Flint (play by James Coburn) as he takes on a trio of mad utopian scientists that are controlling the world’s weather. This movie is often described by watchers and cheesy or just plain goofy, but really it’s just a whole lot of fun. It is of course very tongue and cheek and very campy, but this is by design not because it was just a bad movie. The strong point of this movie is the performance that James Coburn put in. Many who know this actor would find it hard to believe he would be able to play the suave, ultra chic, ultra-competent sex magnet that the character Derek Flint is supposed to be, however he pulls it off very nicely. James Coburn is very different than Austin Powers or any of the Bonds in his characterization. He is very polite in his rebelliousness, and instead of being condescending to his superiors he is always polite and says sir. Rather than being the suave rebel he is more that annoying person you know that absolutely knows everything about everything and is the best at everything he does and on top of that is also the most polite person you have ever met. He has a boyish smile and disarming manner that makes him both charming and despicable at the same time. This works exceedingly well for the role of Derek Flint, because it distinguishes him from the Bond role very well. I won’t go into a lot of detail because this is not an incredibly thought provoking movie. What it is though is a very fun movie that if you choose to enjoy it and not take to seriously will provide a good two hours of entertainment.

District 9 Movie Review 9.5/10.

2009-08-27T18:33:00.001-07:00

District 9 is one of the most original movie ideas I have ever encountered and I have seen a ton of movies. The idea is relatively simple it is an alien movie that is a comment on the human condition. Think to yourself as you are reading this these questions: What would you do if an alien race came to your city? What would you do if these people were refugees needing sanctuary in your city? What would you do if you discovered they were emaciated and badly in need of food and care? What would you do if it seemed they were not smarter, and perhaps in many ways were not as advanced as we are? These key questions are the pivotal ideas of this movie. We, as humans, do not have a good track record when dealing with people that are different on first contact, and we have an even worse track record of dealing with refugees. I wish to regress a little bit and talk about the production before I continue you into the plot points. It is important to point out that this movie was made on 30 million dollars, which of course by today’s standard is a pittance. Despite the low budget this is an effects heavy movie, and I must say that given the budget the effects look fantastic and the shot of the space ship hovering about J-Berg is fantastic. The main actor has never really been in anything other than this, he is reprising his role from the movie short that this movie was adapted from. It was shot in South Africa and acted by South African’s, which I think is very important, that essentially makes this a foreign film, and this should not be overlooked. Anyway back to the plot at hand. This movie in some ways reminds me of another alien movie, “Signs.” Not because the plot or style is in anyway similar, but because , like “Signs” is an alien movie that isn’t really about the alien part. Yes, this is an alien movie, but despite the fact it’s full of aliens, and DNA shifting and advanced weaponry this is more than any of that a comment on the human condition. And frankly, although riveting, it’s difficult to watch. For example the aliens are referred to always as “prawns” which is what they call shrimp in some other countries. They are called this because they do in fact resemble shrimp in some ways. This is of course a parallel for racial slurs that have been used in South Africa, or as we are in the U.S. some particularly nasty slang that we are all familiar with. In the movie they use the same rationale that people have always used, to paraphrase “well that is what they look like, so it is ok right?” That’s the kind of things people are always saying to rationalize the cruel things that they say. This movie touches on everything that has happens in regards to refugees or to those of the minority race. A termination of rights, thoughts of them being less than human (I mean human in the sense that they are viewed as being below the need for basic rights much the way slave owners used to refer to African Americans) serious exploitation and controlling of monopolies, and every similar theme, such as the common racial epithet “they all look the same.” And of course the usual movie them is there, that everything is always about weapons and money.
As for the actual production of the movie, it was pretty spot on. The actors are talented and perfect for their parts. The movie is shot in a documentary sort of way, it starts out as a documentary on the aliens and on the lead character Wikus, and in the middle it drifts from the documentary footage and starts showing you the actual events in Wikus’ life that lead to his notoriety. The two approaches are very well integrated and it doesn’t seem clumsy at all. This movie is not one that is going to make you feel good. In fact it is going to make you feel like crap more than likely. I realized as I was watching this movie that I totally bought everything they were trying to convey, and I realized at that point that I have very little faith in humanity. However, despite that I think this is the one film this year that I think everybody should see, but be warned it’s depressing and has some fairly gross parts.

Best Scene: When Wikus’ has his hand bandage removed by the Doctor.

Best Line: “there you go, souvenir from your first abortion. “

AFI Top 100 Movies.

2009-08-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

So this is the current 2007 list of the AFI's top 100 movies. I, as many of you know, am a huge fan of film. I love to read, but there is just something about a cinematic experience that makes me a bit giddy. I have decided that I would post the list and mark the ones I have read, and then invite you guys to compare your lists to mine. Feel free to do it on facebook, just tag me in the note. Just ignore the extra information to the right of the title, that was just stuff from the rankings I didn't want to go through and delete. The ones I have seen will be underlined.

1 CITIZEN KANE (1941) 1 0

2 GODFATHER, THE (1972) 3 1

3 CASABLANCA (1942) 2 -1

4 RAGING BULL (1980) 24 20

5 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) 10 5

6 GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) 4 -2

7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) 5 -2

8 SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) 9 1

9 VERTIGO (1958) 61 52

10 WIZARD OF OZ, THE (1939) 6 -4

11 CITY LIGHTS (1931) 76 65

12 SEARCHERS, THE (1956) 96 84

13 STAR WARS (1977) 15 2

14 PSYCHO (1960) 18 4

15 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) 22 7

16 SUNSET BLVD. (1950) 12 -4

17 GRADUATE, THE (1967) 7 -10

18 GENERAL, THE (1927) N/A

19 ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) 8 -11

20 IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) 11 -9

21 CHINATOWN (1974) 19 -2

22 SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) 14 -8

23 GRAPES OF WRATH, THE (1940) 21 -2

24 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) 25 1

25 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962) 34 9

26 MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) 29 3

27 HIGH NOON (1952) 33 6

28 ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) 16 -12

29 DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) 38 9

30 APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) 28 -2

31 MALTESE FALCON, THE (1941) 23 -8

32 GODFATHER PART II, THE (1974) 32 0

33 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975) 20 -13

34 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937) 49 15

35 ANNIE HALL (1977) 31 -4

36 BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE (1957) 13 -23

37 BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE (1946) 37 0

38 TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, THE (1948) 30 -8

39 DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) 26 -13

40 SOUND OF MUSIC, THE (1965) 55 15

41 KING KONG (1933) 43 2

42 BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) 27 -15

43 MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) 36 -7

44 PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE (1940) 51 7

45 SHANE (1953) 69 24

46 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) 35 -11

47 STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A (1951) 45 -2

48 REAR WINDOW (1954) 42 -6

49 INTOLERANCE (1916) N/A

50 LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, THE (2001) N/A

51 WEST SIDE STORY (1961) 41 -10

52 TAXI DRIVER (1976) 47 -5

53 DEER HUNTER, THE (1978) 79 26

54 M*A*S*H (1970) 56 2

55 NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) 40 -15

56 JAWS (1975) 48 -8

57 ROCKY (1976) 78 21

58 GOLD RUSH, THE (1925) 74 16

59 NASHVILLE (1975) N/A

60 DUCK SOUP (1933) 85 25

61 SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (1941) N/A

62 AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) 77 15

63 CABARET (1972) N/A

64 NETWORK (1976) 66 2

65 AFRICAN QUEEN, THE (1951) 17 -48

66 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) 60 -6

67 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966) N/A

68 UNFORGIVEN (1992) 98 30

69 TOOTSIE (1982) 62 -7

70 CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A (1971) 46 -24

71 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) N/A

72 SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE (1994) N/A

73 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) 50 -23

RANK FILM 1997 CHANGE SEEN IT OR NOT

74 SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE (1991) 65 -9

75 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) N/A

76 FORREST GUMP (1994) 71 -5

77 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) N/A

78 MODERN TIMES (1936) 81 3

79 WILD BUNCH, THE (1969) 80 1

80 APARTMENT, THE (1960) 93 13

81 SPARTACUS (1960) N/A

82 SUNRISE (1927) N/A

83 TITANIC (1997) N/A

84 EASY RIDER (1969) 88 4

85 NIGHT AT THE OPERA, A (1935) N/A

86 PLATOON (1986) 83 -3

87 12 ANGRY MEN (1957) N/A

88 BRINGING UP BABY (1938) 97 9

89 SIXTH SENSE, THE (1999) N/A

90 SWING TIME (1936) N/A

91 SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982) N/A

92 GOODFELLAS (1990) 94 2

93 FRENCH CONNECTION, THE (1971) 70 -23

94 PULP FICTION (1994) 95 1

95 LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE (1971) N/A

96 DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) N/A

97 BLADE RUNNER (1982) N/A

98 YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942) 100 2

99 TOY STORY (1995) N/A

100 BEN-HUR (1959) 72 -28

Why I switched to a Fountain Pen.

2009-08-19T00:34:00.000-07:00

You know, I never much thought about what type of writing utensil I used, but I have decided that I will use fountain pens from now on. Why you might ask? The answer is pretty simple, it makes me feel much, much cooler. Well, ok, that's only part of why I made the switch. Firstly, I think writing is dying. I mean the actual putting of pen to paper, not the act of writing as a profession. Put don't write things any more, and I am as guilty of that, actually probably more guilty of that than anybody. The other day I actually wrote a check, the first one I have written in a long time, and I found it strangely satisfying when I wrote my signature. I thought about it, and I realized that things that used to be staples of life, such as letter writing are now dying out. This is the point where this blog completely shifts gears and talks about something else. The lack of letter writing will eventually have an affect on how we study history. A good portion of what we learn about historical figures is through personal correspondence. It is often the best way to learn on insight of a personal nature about somebody who is a public figure, and who has a public persona. Basically it helps historians figure out who the person is behind the history. Now of course there is a trade off here, we are in the information age of course. We are 24/7 on the internet, with out tweets, facebook updates, and ridiculously invasive news coverage. However, is that a good trade off? At least for historians, not really. This barrage of information is the obvious stuff because people control the image they send out as much as they possibly can, keeping the true person hidden. So in one hundred years what will we truly know about the important men and women of this generation? We will perceive them in two ways, the image that they wanted to portray to the public, and the negative image that the press tries to portray to the public, the real person, of course, will be something somewhere in the middle, leaving us without the personal knowledge that collections of personal letters tends to give us. Oh yea, and I switched to fountain pens because they make my poor, oft dislocated fingers from hurting when I write, they really are marvelous for that.

Ruminating on kindergarten

2009-08-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

So I have an app on my iphone that lists sexual offenders in my area. And I noticed a name on the list that I knew, and lo and behold it was a guy that I went to Kindergarten with who moved after that year. I won't give any names, but apparently he made the list for a sexual assault. He was a part of one of the early events in my life that had a real affect on my personality and growth. When I was in kindergarten we had to eat lunch next to whoever we were in the line next to and everyday a different student go to lead the line. That student got to choose the person who was in line behind him. When it was this persons turn to lead the line he chose me. Now this person came from a very poor and backwards family, which I later found out didn't even have running water. So to put it bluntly he smelled horrible. Also he had a terrible speech impediment and I couldn't understand a word he said. When he called my name, my eye brows rose and the teacher saw my reaction. My reaction was because I was nervous about sitting next to him because I didn't like having to constantly ask him what he was saying, and really just guessing even when I asked him several times, but the teacher thought the reaction was because of his smell. The teacher told the student, right in from of the class, that perhaps he should choose someone else because I had a weak stomach for smells and because he smelled so bad that I wouldn't be able to eat lunch. When she did this even at that age I was floored that a teacher, someone who was supposed to be in charge would so something like that. I felt so horrible for him, and if it had happened a couple years later, being the verbose child that I was, and also largely uncaring of the consequences of what I said, I would have called her out on it. At the time I just felt horrible, sick to my stomach for the poor kid, who really didn't have much of a chance as it was. This event I am somewhat sad to say made me contemptuous of authority and of teachers in particular and I never forgot that event. I never once in my life looked down on someone in school purely because they were less fortunate financially than I was, and for that fact I am grateful, I feel it made me a better person. But when I saw that name on that sexual offender list it made me think about what might have been if I had stood up for him. Maybe an act of kindness by a six year old could have been enough to steer him from the path that he ended up taking. Perhaps not, but it might have made a difference. I am not beating myself up over it, but it was a situation that when I look back on now, might have made a difference in someones life. Hindsight is 20/20 isn't it?

My favorite book.

2009-08-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

This is a blog about my favorite book. I don't mean my favorite book to read, but rather my most treasured book in my collection. As many of you know, I am a collector. I follow most of the collectibles markets, and I like to collect the old, the rare, and the unusual. Particularly I collect books, and I have a fairly large and varied collection. My favorite book in this collection is not my signed copy of Mother Night by Vonnegut, or my signed God Knows by Heller. Its not even my copy of Catch-22 from high school that my friends signed like it was a yearbook. It is in fact an old beat up and faded 1971 copy of The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. Many of you might not be familiar with this series. Its the series that the Disney movie "The Black Cauldron" was taken from. It is a childrens or if you prefer tweens series written very much like Eragon or Harry Potter, and very much along those lines in terms of theme. Of course this series pre-dates those series by about 40 years, and in terms of writing ability Mr. Alexander is actually far superior, although he doesn't wind a story as well as Rowling. I loved this books when I read them, and I still love them. Even though I hardly here them mentioned, their themes and conventions come up so much in literature that I know people have to be borrowing from them. But anyway I digress, the quality of the series really isn't the point of this blog, so back to the point. In 1999, after I graduated High School I had the chance to go to Montana to spend a week in a camp for one of my best friends family reunion. I know that sounds a bit odd, but I almost consider this family as much my family as my own family. This of course is the Smith Family. This was a great trip, and everybody that I close friends with at the time went as well. While we were there we had limited access to stores of any kind, the closest town was Gardner, Montana and it is the entry way into Yellowstone. Its a small little town, a gas station, a few local restaurants, a few touristy type stores, and a few local stores. We were passing some time in this town one day, having just had lunch at one of the most awesome burger places on the planet (seriously they have about 150 burger toppings) I decided that I would like to find a place where I could find a book, because I had read the books that I had brought with me. We pull up to this little Mom and Pop flea market on the outskirts of town, and I said you know I would like to have a copy of the Prydain Chronicles. I don't have a copy, and I think I would really enjoy reading them right now, and the whole collection would keep my occupied for the drive home. Well, we went in and they had about 4 books on a shelf with about an inch of dust on them. 3 of them were romance novels, but the 4th one was, lo and behold, my trusty worn black copy of The Prydain Chronicles. What were the chances of that? To me the odd coincidence of that actually being there, combined with the memories of my first great adventure after High school makes it a treasured possession.

The Wait is over, Here come the Seventies and their Hall of Fame Greatness.

2009-07-28T02:58:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Part 4 of the Hall of Fame blog. In this section we will be covering a lot of the worst selections ever to the Hall, mostly due to the Veterans committee that was headed by Frankie Frisch and was made up of his old cronies. They were mostly old Cardinals and Giants beat writers who really were only interested in electing a lot of the players they were friends with through the years, which meant a lot of Cardinals and Giants players that were no where near Hall of Fame caliber.

1979- Hack Wilson, Willie Mays

Hack Wilson- No- Hack Wilson only collected 1461 hits in his career. I am not a huge fan of basing things on cumulative stats alone, but that total is just too tiny. He was a quality player, but not that great of one. His .940 OPS is impressive, but when you look at the time period he played its not nearly that impressive. His best years came at a time when nearly every team in baseball batted .300 as a team. A time period that even dwarfed the Nineties and early 2000’s in its offensive ridiculousness. In fact it wasn’t that uncommon for a team to have a couple of players batting in the .380 range. He is a much less quality Hall of Fame pick than guys like Moises Alou and Jim Edmonds, and that’s not even taking into account Edmonds defense, purely based on his offense. His greatest year came in 1930 when he knocked in 191, but this is probably the single greatest offensive year in baseball history. His entire teams batting average was .309 with a .378 OBP and .481 slugging. That’s just silly high for team numbers. He finished tenth in the batting race that year, and he batted .356. All in all, with his numbers actually being inflated in value, and his lack of career totals Hack Wilson only belongs in the Cubs Hall of Fame.

Willie Mays- Yes- Nothing to say here, anybody that questions his being place amongst the greatest of all time knows nothing about the game.

1978-Eddie Matthews, Addie Joss

Eddie Matthews-Yes- Maybe not the greatest defensive third basemen of all time, but he was definitely serviceable, and his offensive value puts him amongst the greatest all time at his position. His .885 OPS might be a tad lower than you would expect, but he played in an offensively repressed time period.

Addie Joss-Yes- His career was short, and tragically cut short by a fatal duel with tuberculosis, but he was brilliantly great in his ten years. A career .623 winning percentage is impressive, and even more so because it was so much greater than his teams won loss percentage. Every years of his career he was one of the two or three best pitchers in baseball and his career 1.89 ERA is phenomenal even by the standards of his time.

1977-Joe Sewell, Amos Rusie, Ernie Banks

Joe Sewell-Yes- This guy could play. Good defensive shortstop with a career .312 average. He threw in a career OBP of .391 and a slugging of .413 just for good measure. The slugging isn’t anything to write home about really, but the .391 OBP is excellent. Sewell of course is a man who was very hard to strike out, so hard that he only struck out 114 in his career. He had a few seasons where he struck out as few as 3 or 4 times with nearly 700 plate appearances. This is ridiculously impressive. 112 times in his career, and by today’s standards that many times in a season wouldn’t be that many.

Amos Rusie- Who knows- Frankly I just don’t know enough about pre-1900’s baseball to decide who should or should not be in from that time period, and I am not really sure anybody does. At first glance his 3.09 ERA seems high, but I just don’t really know. He did pitch over 500 innings in a season twice, which seems ridiculous. He led the league in losses as many times as he did in wins.

Ernie Banks- Yes- Ernie Banks was not a great player and his value as a shortstop is overstated. He actually played more games at first base (1259) than he did at shortstop. (1125) And when he did play short he was average at best. Actually he gets a ton of press as the only member of the 500 club who is a shortstop, when in reality, I don’t even know why he is listed as a shortstop in the Hall of Fame, as generally they go by what position you played the most games at. In actuality he was done as a shortstop before he was even 30. I guess he is listed at that position because he played there when he was a back-to-back MVP. But in actuality he should have never have won either award. In 1958 Willie Mays was clearly the better player and in 1959 Hank Aaron was even more clearly the better player. His career OPS is low at .830. The only reason I am including him is he was a great player for a few years, probably top 5 in the league, and he cranked out a lot of offensive production and homers when that was very difficult to do, and in a park that made it even more difficult. Wrigley played very pitcher friendly until the late sixties.

1976-Robin Roberts, Freddie Lindstrom, Bob Lemon, Roger Connor.

Robin Roberts-No- He wasn’t really that good. He did win 20 games six times, which is actually one of my milestone type numbers. But he was actually really bad in some years, posting ERA’s over 4.00 in years that were actually very weak offensive years. His winning percentage wasn’t that great, and he also missed 3000 k’s so he doesn’t have that milestone going for him. He also missed 300 wins, although not by much, but with as many decisions as he had it’s a mark he should have hit honestly.

Freddie Lindstrom- No- Mister Lindstrom was pretty good, but he only got in because of Frisch. He was reputed as a good defender, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case and he only had 9 years as a regular player, which were played in the high octane twenties and thirties, so his .311 BA is overinflated and his .351 OBP less than impressive. 1747 career hits, 103 career homeruns, no MVP awards, less than 1000 RBI’s and runs. He only finished in the top ten in the MVP voting twice, so all in all it looks like he is a stretch as a Hall of Famer.

Bob Lemon- No - I am frankly amazed that Bob Lemon got into the Hall of Fame via the vote. His career record is 207-128 for a .618 winning percentage. This is deceptively good. He played on a lot of REALLY good Cleveland Indians teams, and if you go year by year his winning percentage was often below that of his team, and when it wasn’t’ it only met the teams, or was marginally better. True its hard to be significantly better than your teams WP when it’s a good team, but you never want to be below it. His career era was 3.23, which is a bit high. He did do very well in the MVP voting, but I think his reputation is greater than the sum of his parts. He was a very good hitter for a pitcher. He gave up a large number of walks and hits, which tells me he was a very hittable pitcher who played for a very good team.

Roger Connor-I guess- Pre 1900 first basemen. His OPS was .883, which seems high, but frankly pre-1900 baseball just isn’t my think. My knowledge starts at 1900.

1975- Ralph Kiner, Billy Herman, Earl Averill

Ralph Kiner- Yes- There is a balance between having a long career and putting up cumulative numbers. I am not a big fan of the average player who played for 18 seasons while never being great and puts up 3001 hits and gets into the Hall of Fame. However, there is a balance, if a player only plays 10-12 years and hasn’t put up anywhere close to any good cumulative totals it makes it equally hard to include him. To get into the Hall of Fame with a short career you have to have exhibited greatness. Ralph Kiner was great, he led the league in homers his first seven year in the league, so that means in his ten year career he was the home run leader 7 times. Nice ratio. He also put up a nice career .946 OPS. His OBP was nearly .400 at .398 and I am a sucker for guys with a .400 career OBP. He definitely displayed greatness in his time in the big leagues.

Billy Herman- Yes- Slow as snot, but a great defender, and without a question the greatest hit and run man of all time. This guy could find a way to hit a pitch 15 feet over his head through the hole. The OPS was a little low at .774, but he hit .304 and he was legitimately a good hitter who is one of better defenders historically at his position. Given his defensive prowess he makes it in, although he is not one of the strongest candidates.

Earl Averill- Yes- Played during a high octane time period, but he was still exceptional even when the offense slowed down. He played with a chip on his shoulder, always feeling like he never got the credit he deserved, and by many accounts he wasn’t that pleasant of a teammate. But he could hit, he could get on base, and he could slug. And he was a great defensive centerfielder, which is what really seals the deal for his inclusion. His career OPS was .928. And although he didn’t reach 3000 hits, he was at least over 2000.

1974- Sam Thompson, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Jim Bottomley,

Sam Thompson –Meh- I really need to do some research in regards to Pre-1900 players. I need a pre-1900 baseball scholar.

Mickey Mantle- Yes- It’s the Mick; of course he is a Hall of Famer. There is no question that he was one of the elite to play the game, what is just scary is what this guys potential was. His basically played hobbled his entire career, having a serious knee injury his first year. Apparently this robbed him of some speed early on, but he was still blazing fast. What could this guy have done if he was healthy even for half his career? I mean seriously look what he did with two bad legs.

Whitey Ford- Yes- I should leave him out on principle, as he was just as big a cheater as Gaylord Perry. However, unlike Gaylord he has never flaunted the fact he was successful because of doctoring the ball, so I guess I will just do like most of baseball historians do and ignore it. Whitey Ford did the most important thing a pitcher can do, he just won ball games. At an amazing clip, even counting how good his teams were. He posted a 236-106 record for an astounding .690 winning percentage. You could count on him to win ballgames for you. More so than any pitcher of his time.

Jim Bottomley-No – I be over critical of Cardinals players because I don’t want to show a bias, but Sunny Jim was another one of Frisch’s veterans committee picks. He had some really great years with the Cardinals in the first few years of his career, but he shut it down in the second half of his career. The problem was for about 9 years he put up decent looking percentage numbers, but unfortunately it was during the late 20’s through the 30’s. His percentage numbers, although they look impressive, were actually only average for the time, or even a little below average. For example he hit .304, .368, .493 in 1930. This looks like a pretty decent, even good line. However, the team as a whole hit .314, .372, .471. Except for the slugging, he was actually below average for his team on the other two numbers. There are more years like this as well.

1973-Mickey Welch, Warren Spahn, George Kelly, Monte Irvin, Roberto Clemente.

Mickey Welch-Meh- See other pre-1900 entries.

Warren Spahn- Yes- 8 time 20 game winner. 3 time ERA champ, and 4-time strikeout leader. He won 363 games while putting up a .597 winning percentage. There isn’t much to argue with on Spahn’s resume, although I do find those that consider him to be the best lefty of all time to be a bit laughable.

George Kelly-No- Oh look at this, it’s amazing its another marginable Giant picked by the Frankie Frisch and Friends Veterans Committee. Decent OPS but he only played 8 seasons as a regular, and those were most definitely not great seasons. Under 2000 hits for his career, very limited amount of games played, and he failed to display greatness in any single season.

I am skipping Monte Irvin because he got in based at least half on his Negro league career. He was a Giant as well though.

Roberto Clemente-Yes- Remembered in death as a much nicer person than he was in real life by all accounts. A good person yes, but a prickly one all the same. I think I would feel bad if I didn’t take him. He was a great player.

1972- Ross Youngs, Early Wynn, Sandy Koufax, Lefty Gomez, Yogi Berra.

Ross Youngs-No- What do you know, another career Giant voted in by the Frisch Veterans Committee, and another one at that with essentially an 8 year career. This isn’t even funny anymore. He was a much better player than Kelly. I guess, kind of hard to tell with a guy who didn’t even make it to 1500 hits an whose career was over before 30. I am voting no out of principle.

Early Wynn-I don’t know- I don’t really think he is a hall of famer. He had a career 3.54 ERA, which is pretty high. He hit 300 wins, but with 244 losses, and he played for some pretty good teams. If you want to take him just because he got 300 wins then I guess you can, but other than that he was an alright pitcher who was kind of a jerk and was never really great.

Sandy Koufax- Wow- Ok, this one is tough. There comes to a debate. Is a player has five great, truly great, compared to any time of history kind of great years is that worthy of being in the Hall of Fame? What if they were the only five good years the player had period? This is what makes Sandy Koufax so tough to gauge. The last five years of his career were ridiculous. He led the league in ERA all five years, he lead in strikeouts three of those years, and in wins three of those years. He won three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, and three pitching triple crowns. He tossed up some ridiculous won loss records, such as 25-5, 26-8, 27-9. Career he is 165-87, for a very stellar .655. The problem is other than those fives years he was average for one year, and then actually quite poor for five years. ERA’s of 3.91, 4.05, 4.48, 3.88, and 4.91. Nothing to write home about, and actually quite the opposite. So if you answer that yes, five great years makes you a hall of famer, regardless of the quality of the other years then he is a Hall of Famer, if you answer no that a player needs to demonstrate quality in more than just five great years, then Koufax does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. It an argument that can be made since he essentially balanced five great years with five very poor years.

Yogi Berra –Yes- He screwed Minnie Minoso out of an MVP twice, and Al Kaline out of one once. He only possibly deserved one of the 3 MVP awards he won, with his last being an outright travesty. As it is I have always felt that Yogi was an overrated player who has more mythos around him than fact. People like to put him in the greatest catcher ever debate, and I don’t even think he is the greatest catcher to wear a Yankee uniform. That being said he was still a great player, although his loveable nature is a modern construct, he was actually quite grumpy and contrary as a player. He is a St. Louis boy, and the Cardinals decided to go with Joe Garagiola instead. That worked out great for them. Yogi’s spot as a Hall of Famer is pretty much beyond contestation; only his debate as to where he stands amongst the greats is in debate.

1971-Rube Marquard, Joe Kelley, Harry Hooper, Chick Hafey, Jake Beckley, Dave Bancroft.

Rube Marquard-No- Oh look, something we haven’t seen before, a marginal ex-Giant player elected in via the Frankie Frisch Veterans Committee. Marquard was a career 201-177, with 1593 career K’s. He had a career 3.08 ERA, and he never led the league in ERA. Nothing at all that really hints and a career that would merit being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Joe Kelley- This guy seemed like he could really hit, but all his good years were pre-1900 so, as with the others I am not really passing judgment.

Harry Hooper- Yes – I have had the luck to have read two books about Hooper, and I have discovered a lot of interesting things about it. However, the most important to the cause here is the fact that year in and year out he was considered one of the best defensive outfielders in the game, one of the smartest players, one of the fastest, and best base runners, and one of the strongest armed as well. He hit .281 for his career with a .368 OBP and he collected 2466 hits. He was an excellent postseason performer with a career .806 OPS in 4 different World Series appearances.

Chick Hafey-No- The Frankie Frisch Veterans Committee strikes again, this time with a Cardinal instead of a Giant. Same principle though. Hafey was a good hitter, although his .898 OPS are greatly inflated by the era. He was a terrible defender though, and I mean Dave Kingman bad. Not only that he really only had two seasons in his career where he played in more than 140 games, and he barely got to that mark. It was due to injuries, but still he was essentially a career part time player. He only gathered 1466 career hits.

Jack Beckley- Bah all of these damn pre-1900 players. Baseball shouldn’t count before 1900.

Dave Bancroft-No – Who is keeping count? Here is another Giant brought in by the Veteran’s committee. Bancroft was a decent but unremarkable player who put up a .714 OPS while suffering from the same problem as Hafey; Most of his career was spent in 100-120 game seasons. An unremarkable player undeserving of the Hall of Fame.

1970-Jesse Haines, Earle Combs, Lou Boudreau

Jesse Haines-No- Once again a Cardinal instead of a Giant brought in by Frisch. There is not one single reason that Haines should have been picked other than he was a friend of Frisch. His career ERA was 3.64. He had 210 wins to 158 losses, which is ok, but not stellar considering the really high ERA. Only had 981 career strike outs, never lead the league in wins, or ERA or anything really. Was completely average except for the fact he pitched 17 seasons with the Cardinals. That I respect, but it is not reason enough to be a Hall of Famer. It should be telling that he was a career Cardinal, and he had a number, yet it is not retired. Ken Boyer’s number is, and he isn’t a Hall of Famer, but Haines isn’t. Why? Because he was that valuable to the Cardinals.

Earle Combs-No- Basically just repeating all the stuff I have said many time in this decade for Veterans Committee picks. Combs could really hit, but his career was really short, just like all the other Vet picks. If he could have sustained it for five more years he would be a Hall of Famer, but unfortunately he got a late start.

Lou Boudreau-Yes- I am making a border line pick based on personal reasons. I had a Lou Boudreau card as a kid and I though he had the coolest name and I wished my name was Lou Boudreau. I thought it would have been cool if my Dad had named me Boudreau after him rather than Ryan after Nolan Ryan. Actually I think Boudreau did a lot more for his teams to help them with than Nolan Ryan did. He was a good shortstop, not great but he could hit. Career percentage numbers of .295, .380, .415.

I hate to admit it but I agree with Terrell Owens.

2009-07-26T14:34:00.000-07:00

This hurts me, deep and to my heart, but I have to admit it to myself and to the world that I agree with Terrell Owens. He recently came out and said that players and the Players Union need to get involved in the NFL issues a 4 game suspension to Michael Vick. He feels that its ridiculous for a man to get suspended for 4 games after he has just been punished by the legal system for his crimes with a two year prison sentence. I agree with him, it just seems like piling on to add a 4 game suspension to Michael Vick. Michael Vick has paid his debt for his crimes, and served two years in prison. Its ridiculous and frankly a bit pretentious for the NFL to follow that up with a punishment of their own. NFL PA rep for the Bills George Wilson agreed wholeheartedly with what his teammate Owens was saying, so perhaps I will just say that I agree with the former Razorback George Wilson, rather than Owens. Of course the people that know me, know that I am practically a PETA member when it comes to being cruel to animals, but I also believe that when a man has served his sentence he has paid his debt and deserves a chance. Of course I have often disagreed with Mr. Roger Goodell. In regards to Pacman Jones, everybody knows that this man is a thug and an idiot, and nobody was really surprised when he got a one year suspension for his legal woes. But not many people realized that when he was suspended for a year for being involved in three crimes, in none of those instances was he ever convicted of a crime. In the first two they never even made it to court as they were thrown out. We all know he is a punk, but Goodell suspended him for a year for being in trouble with the law, when technically Mr. Jones was never guilty of committing those crimes. Seems a bit silly when you look at it that way. Its a bit steep when we get punished for being accused of a crime, isn't that a bit like guilty until proven innocent?

Hall of Fame Blog Part 3, The Eighties

2009-07-23T02:46:00.001-07:00

Alright its time to start part 3 of my amazing Hall of Fame list. This section will deal with those that were elected in the wonderful decade of the 1980’s. The same decade that brought me life.

1989-Carl Yastrzemski, Red Schoendienst, Johnny Bench (A couple of guys that probably couldn’t spell their last names till High School. I still can’t spell them without looking)

Carl Yastrzemski-Yes- Triple Crown Winner, which is impressive, even if he did it in an offensively repressed year. Other than that he was a fine hitter who put up 3419 career hits and a career .841 OPS while playing in some pretty pitching dominate years.

Red Schoendienst-No- This guy had TB and it drug down his system in the second half of each year, so he put great first half numbers up, then struggled in the second half. Red is, based purely on his numbers, not really a Hall of Famer. However, he really isn’t in the Hall of Fame based purely on his numbers. He is in because if you take all that he has been in baseball, (player, manager, executive, coach) there is no question that he belongs in the Hall of Fame. I will not dispute that, but since I am taking players based on their careers, and not other contributions, his .724 OPS when coupled with the fact he fell short of 2500 career hits is going to keep him out. He was a great defender, which does help his case somewhat, but still, not in my Hall of Fame.

Johnny Bench-Yes- Rocket Arm, Good defender, one of the best offensive catchers of all time, its hard to keep him out of the Hall. Actually impossible, as much as I would like to given my dislike of the Big Red Machine. His .817 OPS is really strong for a catcher, and he had the other skills to back it up.

1988- Willie Stargell

Willie Stargell-Yes- Pops could rake, no question. This man was a professional hitter. His percentage numbers ended up being a very nice .282, .360, .529, and although he ended up 25 homers short of 500 his .889 career OPS is very strong. He was a very good player, and a team leader.

1987-Billy Williams, Catfish Hunter,

Billy Williams-Yes- This is a guy who seems to always slip through the radar, but he actually had a very nice career. He his .290 for his career, and ended up with a .361 OBP and .492 SLG, for a nice .853 OPS. He played in some bad hitters years, and Wrigley often played in the pitchers favor during his career. He is not the greatest player of his time, but he was one of the best.

Catfish Hunter-No- Catfish Hunter is a tough, tough call. He won 20 games five years in a row, with a great percentage. He was legitimately one of the best pitchers around during that span, but the problem is outside of that five-year span he didn’t put up great numbers. His career record of 224-166 is very good, but it is just not a very high total, and he was well short of 3000 k’s. His career WHIP was good at 1.134 but his ERA is a tad high at 3.26 given his lack of other cumulative numbers. I just would have liked to have seen more than five great years.

1986-Willie McCovey, Bobby Doerr, Ernie Lombardi

Willie McCovey-Yes- If your name is Willie, there is a likelihood you might be a good baseball player. There seem to be lots of really great Willie’s who played the game. He was as slow as frozen snot, but he might have swung the bat harder than any man who ever lived. He had 521 career homers, with good percentage numbers of .270, .374, and .515. Not to mention the fact that he probably lost a lot of career homers due to the park he played in. Definitely a Hall of Famer.

Bobby Doerr-Maybe- This is a tough call, and I will admit at this point I just don’t know enough about this guy to make the call. Perhaps when I revise this column I will have made a decision, but right now I don’t know enough about him, and the numbers are not clear cut enough to make a decision. His career .823 OPS is pretty damn good.

Ernie Lombardi-Yes- Slow, Slow, Slow, but this guy could hit like a fiend. Two battings Titles, and MVP, and he only struck out 262 times in his career. His .306 career average is impressive considering he had no chance of ever beating out a ground ball, even if it was booted. The reputation is that he makes a Molina brother look fast. His percentage numbers of .306, .358, and .460 are very impressive and he was a very good defensive catcher. His OPS of .818 puts him in a class with Bench, although with not quite as much power.

1985-Hoyt Wilhelm, Arky Vaughan, Enos Slaughter, Lou Brock

Hoyt Wilhelm-Yes- Possibly one of the more underrated pitchers in the Hall of Fame. A career reliever with a career ERA of 2.52, he put up some pretty ridiculous numbers, including 227 saves, over 1600 K’s and 143 wins. He spent one season as a starter and he didn’t do that until he was 36, when he did he led the league in ERA with a 2.19. What is even more ridiculous about him is that he didn’t even pitch in the big leagues until he was 29. He did all of this in his career while not having started playing until he was nearly 30!!

Arky Vaughan-Yes- The great player no one has ever heard of. He is probably one of the five or six best short stops of all time. He was short on cumulative numbers, but while he was playing he was truly great and posted percentage numbers of .318, .406, .453. That leaves a career OPS of .859 which is really, really good.

Enos Slaughter- Yes- You know, when I first got to Enos, I thought for sure that he was going to be a player that would be excluded from my Hall Of Fame. However, after looking at his stats I was surprised to discover that I am inclined to include him. It is true that he does have a relatively low number of career hits (2383) but he does have over 1200 runs and Rbi’s. The real turning point for me though was his career OPS of .834. He also throws in a nice career .300 average, which of course is secondary, but it does look nice next to the very nice career OPS. He is by all accounts a capable if not spectacular defender. He does have a reputation as being a racist, which I don’t approve of, but it’s truly not the Hall of Nice Guys.

Lou Brock-Yes- Whoo boy, I really think Brock is a very marginable Hall of Famer. His percentage numbers are .293 .343 and .410. The OBP is lower than you would like to see in a Hall of Fame leadoff hitter, but the slugging is actually a bit higher than you might expect to find. He did score a large number of runs (1610) and he got 3000 hits, barely. (3023) But I do think that the only thing keeping him in my Hall of Fame is the fact he stole 938 bags. That’s a high number, with only Henderson beating him. Since he did however, I will include him. He was also a terrible fielder, with a below average arm. When I review this blog in the future he may be one of the inclusions that might eventually get booted.

1984-Pee Wee Reese, Harmon Killebrew, Rick Ferrell, Don Drysdale, Luis Aparicio

Pee Wee Reese-Yes-When looking at Reese its hard to see why he was included into the Hall of Fame. At first glance his 2170 hits seems very low with his average percentage numbers. I have decided though, that he is probably a quality member. He was of course, a very good defender, and is remembered fondly as a man who befriended Jackie Robinson. His percentage numbers are .269 .366. .377. Of course the slugging is a bit anemic, but the OBP is nearly 100 points better than his batting average, which is very good considering he was never a batter that was feared. That is because he took 1210 walks in his career. He was dedicated to his craft of getting on base and drawing walks. His hit total, of course, would have been much higher if he was not so patient. Also he stole 232 bases during a time when almost nobody was stealing bags. All in all when included with his defense he is included, although only marginally so.

Harmon Killebrew-Yes- Big Harm was a career DH that played in an era without a DH. He played 1^st, 3^rd,and the outfield. He was pretty paltry at each position. Basically the idea was to always try and hide him. He was remembered as a bigger man than he actually was in real life. He was listed at 5’11” and 213 lbs for most of his career. He was though, whatever his size was, one of the strongest men to play the game. He could flat out crush a baseball, and had tremendous power to the opposite field. That at a time when that was more unusual than it is now. Harm had a very nice career .884 OPS. He would take a walk, which he did 1559 times, and always posted a great ops. He led the league in homers 6 times, including three times in a row from 1962-64.

Rick Ferrell-No- I will admit I don’t truly know enough about Ferrell to pass judgment on him subjectively, so I am basing this purely on the numbers. His numbers aren’t bad. His hit .281 with a .378 OBP, the only problem is that his slugging is actually lower than his OBP, a very anemic .363. He only had 28 career homers and 324 career doubles. Of course he only had 1692 career hits. He did have some very good years, but the numbers just don’t seem to be good enough, unless he is one of the best defensively, and I don’t know enough about him to rate that.

Don Drysdale-No- This man is sort of the opposite of Enos Slaughter. With him I expected to see much better than I got. He won 209 game with 166 lost for a .557 winning percentage. That pretty good, but honestly his career ERA of 2.95. Giving the fact that he 1. Played in an era known for being a pitching era, and B. Played in Dodger stadium, which was an extreme pitching friendly ballpark. He also only won 20 games twice in his career. He was a very good pitcher, whose career ended at 32. If he had played a few more years then perhaps I would include him, but baseball is filled with great players who just missed the Hall of Fame because of shortened careers.

Luis Aparicio-No- Next to Ozzie he might be the next greatest defensive shortstop of all time based on reputation. However, that seems to be mostly reputation, as the numbers don’t seem to back that up. His OPS is actually lower than Bill Mazeroski’s. His percentage numbers are .262, .311, and .343. The one thing that separates them is the fact that Luis lead his league in Stolen bases 9 years in a row, and he generally stole a very, very good percentage. However, as I did not take Maz, it would be hard to take in Aparicio. And I am not really inclined to anyway.

1983-Brooks Robinson, Juan Marichal, George Kell

Brooks Robinson-Yes- Brooks might be the greatest third basemen of All-Time defensively. He was not great offensively, but he was just good enough to make my all given his defensive prowess. His ops were not great at .723, but he did have 1357 RBI’s, 268 homers, and 2848 hits. Although I am not generally a fan of cumulative totals with weak percentage numbers, most of his value is actually in his defense.

Juan Marichal-Yes- Marichal didn’t hit the 3000 k mark, but I am not concerned about that. What Marichal did was win, and win at a very high percentage. His career record was 243-142 for a nice winning percentage of .631. Very nice. He also had a nice ERA of 2.89 and he won 20 games 6 times, including a very nice 26-9 record in 1968 and 25-8 in 1963. His ERA could be lower, but his winning percentage makes up for that.

George Kell-Yes- All of us from North East Arkansas has a special affinity for Mr. Kell since he was a born and raised native of Swifton, Arkansas. Not only that he always lived here even after his baseball career, and he gave back much to his community. Despite that, he is marginable by just about everybody’s standard. He had three really good years, but other than that he was a slightly above average singles hitter with no speed and below average defense. However, I am going to include him. Just because I want to, and he is the closest thing to a local Hall of Famer my area has. This is my one, just because I want to pick.

1982-Frank Robinson, Travis Jackson, Hank Aaron

Frank Robinson-Yes- Can’t really argue with this man. Plus if he found out I said he didn’t belong he might track me down and beat my ass. But in truth I have no desire to do that. Mr. Robinson was a GREAT player. Career .926 OPS with 586 homers and 2943 hits. And most people forget he did win a triple crown, even though it only took a .316 average to win it that is still impressive. That was in 1967 and it gets overshadowed because in 1968 Carl Yastrzemski won it. If I could give him two votes for the Hall I would.

Travis Jackson-No- Another Arkansas boy and perhaps the last of the picks chosen by a veteran’s committee that was notorious for picking marginable Hall of Famers just because they were buddies with them. He was a good defender, and a decent hitter, but he just didn’t sustain greatness long enough to be a member of the Hall of Fame. He played 15 seasons yet he still missed even getting 2000 hits.

Hank Aaron-Yes- Not much needed here. Great hitter, great defender, Great Hall of Famer and the rightful Home Run champ. And a great man as well.

1981-Johnny Mize, Bob Gibson,

Johnny Mize-Yes- Johnny Mize might have missed some milestone numbers, but he was an absolute monster with the bat in his hands. He just missed the triple crown in 1939, and he topped a 1.000 OPS four times in his career. He did it 3 times in a row from 1938-40. During this period he was locked in putting up some absolute monster numbers, and was likely the best player in baseball. He deserved 2 if not all 3 of those MVP’s but somehow in 1938 he was clearly one of the top 3 players in the league, and should have won, yet finished 12^th in the MVP voting. He lost the MVP in 1939 to Bucky Walters when they were both about equally valuable, but in 1940 he lost to Frank McCormick when the OPS difference was 1.039 to .850. He should have at least been a two time MVP and very easily could have won the award 3 years running.

Bob Gibson-Yes- Everybody remembers 1.12 but that might not have even been his best year. He won 20 games five times, had 3117 career K’s and put up a nice .591 winning percentage. He was also probably the greatest World Series pitcher of all time.

1980-Duke Snider, Chuck Klein, Al Kaline

Duke Snider-Another no doubt Hall of Famer. He was a great defender with a rocket arm and posted a career .919 OPS. His percentage number was a very nice .295, .380, .540. A most excellent player.

Chuck Klein-Yes- He was an absolute professional hitter with maybe the best arm ever next to Clemente. He was one of the few guys who played wearing glasses. His career OPS was .922 which is very strong with a career BA of .320. He could just flat out hit, and he was one of the few good picks that the Veteran’s committee made during this time.

Al Kaline-Yes- A truly great defender that put up some very good offensive numbers in a very bad offensive park. His OPS was a very solid .855 which is more than quality considering his great defense and great arm. He just missed a career .300 BA by 3 points, and he managed to hang around to gain 3007 hits. Not the greatest player, but he was one of the best of his time.

Ryan Howard for the All-Star team!! What a Shame!

2009-07-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

Normally I don't get to up in arms about guys who are named to the All-Star team, but Ryan Howard being named to the team just because Charlie Manual wanted him is a bit of a farce. There were already 3 first basemen on the roster, all of which clearly deserved to be on the team in front of Howard. Howard is, probably in the bottom five of first basemen in the National League. For example he is not having a better season than Albert Pujols, Derek Lee, Lance Berkman, Joey Votto, Adam Laroche, or Prince Fielder. Essentially Howard is the 7th best firstbasemen in the six team central. Todd Helton is also clearly better, and I would also give Nick Johnson the nod over him as well. I don't think that the 9th or 10th best guy at his position deserves to be on the All-Star team when there are already 3 guys at that position on the team.

Movie Review Public Enemies 7/10

2009-07-07T00:49:00.001-07:00

I am not quite certain if this is a true Biopic or not as I am not really knowledgable enough about John Dillinger to know how accurate it is. It does seem like a movie that is trying to not go overboard with the over sensationalism of its characters. The movie was beautifully shot and cut, and one seen in particular involving a stop light is one of the best I have seen in a good long while, beautifully shot. It is not an action movie, and there is only a couple of shoot out scenes, but that is not really the purpose of the movie. Its about the love interest and about the life and personality of John Dillinger rather than his exploits. The love part seemed a hair far fetched as they fell in love a little to hard a little to fast. I did like this movie, although it did have a couple of faults. It didn't highlight nearly enough the disdain people of the time felt for banks, and it only touched on Dillinger's desire to only rob from the bank, and his concern for keeping a good repartee with general population. It is actually somewhat surprising that I liked this movie as I generally disdain movies that glorify criminals and make you want to root for them. I like it because despite that it is a beautifully shot period piece with great attention to detail. And of course the acting was superb, although just like Terminator Salvation Christian Bale was overshadowed by the rest of the cast.

Errors and omissions in the first two Hall of fame blogs.

2009-07-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

I seemed to have overlooked a couple of Hall of Famers that should have already been reviewed by my two released blogs.

Dennis Eckersley-no- Essentially Eck had 7 good years in his career. Five of which were as a closer, 2 of which were pretty legendary. However, he was a very mediocre starter at best, and I really give him very little Hall of Fame credit for his time as a starter. Also the last five years of his career as a closer he had a cumulative era over 4.00 and was really bad in some of those years. He put up some good save numbers but during some of those years where he was putting up some decent save totals, he actually just wasn't a very good pitcher. He had 36 saves in 1993, but he put up an ERA of 4.16, and 1995 he was even worse, tallying 29 saves but with a 4.83. Sure he was older when he put up these numbers, but you don't get stats taken off your record just because you are getting older. On the whole his career ERA was 3.50, which isn't as good as the other relievers which I have decided not to include. Career wise Eck was the worst of them.

Joe Gordon-yes- He had a very short career, but he was nearly an All-Star every year of it. He may not have quanitity but the years that he spent in the league were quality, and quality is always better than quantity as long as you played the required amount of years. His career OPS of .822 is very good for his position, and I might be a little biased because I like his story. He was to Larry Doby as Pee Wee Reese was to Jackie Robinson.

Hall of Fame Part 2, the Nineties

2009-07-06T00:56:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of my Hall of Fame Series. This section will detail those elected from 1990-1999.

1999-Robin Yount, Nolan Ryan, Orlando Cepeda, George Brett.

Nolan Ryan-no- He is the all time strikeout leader, has over 300 wins, and pitched 7 no hitters. He was hard to hit. And also probably the most overrated pitcher of all time. I am excluding him. He won 324 game but you know what he lost 292. He was very nearly a .500 pitcher for his career. He walked 200 batters not once, but twice in his career and he never won a Cy Young award. He only won 20 games twice, and both times he lost 16 games as well. He did play for some bad teams, and had some bad luck but there is a lot of pitchers that put up good careers that suffered because they were on bad teams. If you take away his strikeouts, which do not make you a great pitcher, what you have is a very average pitcher who pitched for a very long time.

Robin Yount-no- He had some good years, but other than the 3000 hits I don’t think you could say he was a great player. As my cousin pointed out to me he only made 3 all-star teams. And its true that that is not always an accurate indicator, but you would think that if he was truly one of the best more managers would have picked him for the team. I have a familial connection to him of sorts, my nephew’s wife’s maiden name is Yount, and they are related, so I hope she doesn’t kill me in my sleep.

Orlando Cepeda- maybe- I will admit I don’t really know enough about him to make an informed decision, but looking at the raw data his percentage numbers are pretty damn good and he played in an era where a .500 slg. Meant something. I may add him via the veterans committee in a few years.

George Brett-yes-This man could hit, and play defense, and steal some bags. It is hard not to include him in the Hall of Fame.

1998-Don Sutton, Larry Doby, George Davis

Don Sutton-yes- Sutton was a very good pitcher in the National League, and then hung on a little to long in the American League when he should have called it quits, so that hurt his numbers a little bit. He won the exact same number of games as Nolan Ryan, with a much better Winning percentage.

Larry Doby-yesx2- Jackie Robinson got all the press, but this guy had it even worse. They both made their appearances in the same season; Jackie was first in the National League and Doby a couple of months later in the American League. However, Jackie had it easy in comparison. The spotlight was on Jackie Robinson because he was the first. The spotlight tempered some of the things he went through, as well as being on a team with more media coverage. (Robinson still had it horrible, Doby just had it worse.) In the American League Doby played for Cleveland, which no one cared about, and was younger than Jackie. He was terrorized to a degree that Jackie wasn’t and nobody ever really knew about it. It is unfair and a shame that Jackie Robinson has a day and nobody even remembers that Larry Doby went through even worse for Baseball integration.

George Davis-yes- Not only is he a Hall of Fame pick for me, he is also one of my five best shortstops. His .295 .361. .405 were very, very impressive for the time.

1997-Phil Niekro, Nellie Fox

Nellie Fox-No- Another veteran’s committee pick before they made the switch making it more difficult to get elected that way. Nellie Fox put up a decent average (.288) and a decent but not spectacular obp of .348. He couldn’t slug his way out of a wet paper sack. His career OPS of .710 is not that great. He was however, a very, very good defender. I just don’t know if he was good enough to make up for the fact that five or six of his full time seasons were truly terrible. He was selected to several all-star teams, which aids to his cause, but he comes up a bit short for greatness.

Phil Niekro-yes-Not a great career winning percentage, but he did get 300 wins and 3000 k’s. Unlike a lot of other marginal pitchers though, Niekro was a good deal better percentage wise than the teams he played for. For a four-year stretch he lead the league in losses each year. Still in each of those years he was a lot better than his team. I understand that sometimes a pitcher plays for a bad team and that hurts him, but if you want to get sympathy for that you had better have a superior winning percentage than those poor teams, and Niekro does. Plus I got to say the 245 complete games are kind of impressive.

1996-Jim Bunning

Jim Bunning-no-I am not really sure why this guy is in the Hall of Fame. He didn’t get close to 300 games; he had a pretty decent winning percentage, but not good enough to counteract the 300 games given the period he pitched in. He never won a Cy Young; he didn’t get 3000 k’s. He only won 20 games once. Doesn’t seem like a Hall of Famer to me.

1995-Vic Willis, Mike Schmidt, Richie Ashburn

Vic Willis-yes- It’s tough to know a ton about these guys that ended there career in 1910 and before, but I am going to have to go with a no for Willis. He was considered a good pitcher, but his 2.63 ERA is pretty high when compared with others from his time. However, he once lost 29 games because he played for perhaps the most legendarily bad team ever. When given the chance to pitch for even mediocre teams, he did well.

Mike Schmidt-yes- Not much to say here, perhaps the greatest third basemen to play the game. He get hit it 800 miles and he could play his position. Plus he is a great golfer.

Richie Ashburn-yes- He came up short of 3000 hits but his career average of .308 and career obp of .396 is very, very strong. He was a lead off man who knew what he needed to do, and he was excellent in the field as well. He also won two battings titles. Maybe the best leadoff man of his time.

1994-Phil Rizzuto, Steve Carlton

Phil Rizzuto-no- If I can take his playing career and combine it with his broadcasting career then maybe, but as it is he is a big time no. His most noteworthy statistical achievement is that he led the league in sacrifice bunts 4 years in a row. He is a very modest .273, .351, .355. He also only amassed 1588 hits, not a very convincing total. He did win an MVP and it was a worthy year, but one MVP does not a Hall of Famer make. He is perhaps one of the most marginal of Hall of Famers and he is not in my Hall of Fame.

Steve Carlton-yes- Steve Carlton won 20 games 6 times, and won over 300 games with a good winning percentage. He also had over 4000 k’s. A pretty convincing number. Not only that he had one of the most impressive seasons of all time. In 1972 he had 27 wins, and his team only had 59 in total. It took a 1.97 era to get those 27 wins though.

1993-Reggie Jackson

Reggie Jackson-Yes- He is not my kind of player, but he is a Hall of Famer, I guess. He has a pretty good reputation for coming through in the clutch. He does have a good total of home runs with 563. However, I found his career OPS of .846 underwhelming, especially since his career slugging is under .500. But with over 550 homers I guess I will take him, although I am not feeling thrilled about it.

1992- Rollie Fingers, Tom Seaver, Hal Newhouser

Rollie Fingers-yes- See comments on the other relievers in the 2000’s section. He is better than both Sutter and Gossage so I included him.

Tom Seaver-Yes- Possibly the best pitcher of all time. He had an astounding career winning percentage of .605 for a 311-205 record. He also had 3640 k’s. He won 20 games five times, and he won three Cy Young awards. There isn’t any possible argument to make that he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame.

Hal Newhouser-no- He does meet one of my requirements for induction. For a three-year period he was truly great. In that three-year period he won 80 games and picked up 2 MVP awards. He won 20 games 4 times in a short career. The problem with him is that he was pretty much only good those 4 years. He just wasn’t good for long enough to really be considered one of the all time greats. For three years though he was stellar.

1991- Rod Carew, Fergie Jenkins, Tony Lazzeri, Gaylord Perry

Rod Carew-Yes- 7 time batting champ with a career .328 batting average with a nice .822 OPS. He was a mediocre fielder, but man he could really hit. He also got over 3000 hits in his career and stole 353 bases as well.

Fergie Jenkins-Yes- Not the greatest in the Hall, but he did win 20 games 7 times with a good winning percentage and that is pretty impressive. He didn’t win 300 games, but that is not a requirement really and he did get over 3000 k’s. I do have concerns over the fact that he was only named to three All-Star games.

Tony Lazzeri-Yes- Well this guy doesn’t have the cumulative numbers, but he could really play. He was good defensively, and he was pretty legendary as a leader. His percentage numbers were really good at .292, .380, .467, which ends up with a very nice .846 OPS. Probably the second best second basemen of his time.

Gaylord Perry-No- Maybe I think I will take a stand here. This is a guy whose numbers don’t really matter, and who had made a mockery of the game. He did win 300 games with a decent percentage and won 2 Cy Young awards, but, does someone who blatantly breaks the rules deserve to be in? Everybody knows that Gaylord Perry used the spitball, A LOT. That is an illegal pitch and has been for years, and many pitchers have used it illegally. Just not as brazenly as Perry. Knowing what I know about his wet one, I don’t think I want him in the Hall of Fame.

1990- Joe Morgan, Jim Palmer

Joe Morgan-Yes- Joe Morgan is a pompous prick who doesn’t understand near as much about the game as he thinks he does, and routinely makes the people around him want to throttle him. However, that doesn’t change the fact that he was an excellent second basemen. He was an absolute on base fiend who could find away to draw a walk on three pitches. He was also a great defensive second basemen and two time MVP. He also stole 689 bases while only getting caught 162 times.

Jim Palmer-Yes- Great pitcher, with an absolutely stellar winning percentage of .638. That’s a really rocking percentage. He didn’t get 300 wins, or 3000 k’s, but when you trotted him out there you knew more often than not you were ending the day with a win, and that counts for a lot.

In Recap, for those elected in the 1990’s I have retained the following for my Hall of Fame:

George Brett

Don Sutton

Larry Doby

George Davis

Phil Niekro

Vic Willis

Mike Schmidt

Richie Ashburn

Steve Carlton

Reggie Jackson

Rollie Fingers

Tom Seaver

Rod Carew

Fergie Jenkins

Tony Lazzeri

Joe Morgan

Jim Palmer

Hall of Fame Part 1 of Many

2009-07-01T22:55:00.000-07:00

My cousin gave me a great idea for a blog, and this is really his idea, but I decided to run with it. Since this is the last Hall of Fame election of this decade it seems like a good time to start this project. I am, starting with 2009 and going backwards to 1937 going to create my own Hall of Fame out of the players that have been enshrined in Cooperstown. I will try and quantify my picks to the best of my abilities. I am going to skip over executives and managers because they are by and large life time achievement awards more than anything else, and I generally don’t have a problem with those that have been elected. This first post is for those elected from 2000-2009

2009 Class Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson.

Rickey Henderson-Yes- There is nothing to argue about here. He is a legit all time great. Sure he might have been selfish at times, and responsible for some wacky quotes but the man had a career OBP of .401. And he played A LONG time. Plus he is the all time steals and runs leader. He is beyond reproach.

Jim Rice-No- Jim Rice is, I do believe, a man who benefitted from the steroid era of baseball. If steroids had not taken such a forefront in voter’s minds I do not think that he would have ever gotten in. Don’t get me wrong, he is a good player, just not in my mind a Hall of Fame player. And I am sure some of you will say, but yea this guy got in, etc, etc, and Jim was better than them. Well keep in mind that player may not make my list either. Jim did have some decent percentage numbers, but he missed most all of the mile stone numbers and his percentage numbers aren’t exceptional enough to get over the fact he didn’t have any milestones. If he brought defense to the table, which he doesn’t at all, I would take him with those numbers, but if all of your value is offensive then I want to see an OPS more around .900 at least. Jim’s is just a bit short at .854. I think he is close, and I won’t say that he is a bad choice for the hall of fame, as there are MUCH, MUCH worse players in the Hall, he just isn’t in my Hall of Fame.

2008-Goose Gossage

Goose Gossage- No-Why him and not Lee Smith? As a relief pitcher the save is paramount as a stat. As far as career ERA goes Gossage is 3.01 to 3.03, but Smith has 478 saves to 310 Saves for Gossage. Now I do think the save stat is a bit overrated, but I don’t think I buy Goose Gossage as one of the greats of all-time, and I do give Sutter an edge over Gossage because he invented a pitch.

2007-Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr.

Tony Gwynn-Yes- This man could hit, and before he got fat could steal bases like a fiend and was a great defender in the outfield. The man had a .338 career batting average, and although I value OBP more than BA, and his OPS is not as high as some other guys, Gwynn brought more to the field than just his bat for most of his career and he did get 3000 hits.

Cal Ripken Jr.-Yes- I respect what Cal Ripken did with his streak, but I do find him a tad overrated because he was a Good player for most of his career, not a great one. Even though I think he is overrated, I still think he is a Hall of Famer.

2006 There were several Negro league greats elected this year, and frankly I don’t know how to quantify there inclusion, so I will leave that debate to the Negro League scholars. Bruce Sutter was the one non-Negro Leaguer.

Bruce Sutter-No-See Goose Gossage

2005-Wade Boggs, Ryne Sandberg

Wade Boggs-Yes-The Man liked his chicken and his women. He might not have slugged the ball much but he was a plus defender at third and his career .415 OBP was absolutely ridiculous. He also had a career .328 BA and .443 SLG, neither of which is to shabby either.

Ryne Sandberg-yes-I really wanted to say no, and to be honest he is a very marginal pick for my Hall of Fame. His percentage numbers are not that good, but good enough I guess, and he sure played for some horrible teams, with little to back him up. But he brought power, speed, and absolute top flight defense to the field every day, and because he did everything at a high level I am including him.

2004-Paul Molitor

Paul Molitor-yes- Only marginally better than Jim Rice. The reason he is in and Rice isn’t is because I do respect the 3000 hit threshold and Molitor also added over 500 steals to his resume. He is also a marginally addition.

2003-Gary Carter, Eddie Murray

Gary Carter-No- A fairly average player. He was slow as snot, didn’t hit for average, didn’t slug to much, didn’t get on base much, and was highly overrated as a defensive player.

Eddie Murray-Yes-Has there every been a player to put up more similar seasons than Murray? Probably not, he was a poster child for consistency. There is something to be said about greatness over longevity, but Murray had 500 homers and 3000 hits, and that’s hard to ignore.

2002-Ozzie Smith

Ozzie Smith-yes- There is no statistical analysis system out there that doesn’t have Ozzie Smith as possibly the most valuable defensive player of all time. However, what most people don’t realize is that Ozzie contributed more than just his glove and for most of his career with the Cardinals was a plus offensively as well. He was a good on base man and nearly had 600 career steals. He is and forever will be the man that all good defensive shortstops are compared to.

2001-Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield, Bill Mazeroski

Kirby Puckett-yes-Good percentage numbers combined with a shortened career and excellent defense make him a yes in my Hall of Fame, however, only marginally so. Probably the weakest player so far that I have included.

Dave Winfield-No-Jim Rice was a better hitter than Dave Winfield. It is true that Dave Winfield had 3000 hits, but he was a good defender not great, and his numbers are good but less than impressive. In my opinion he is an example of a player who only got in because he got 3000 hits.

Bill Mazeroski-No No NO NO- His inclusion in the Hall of Fame is a travesty. He had a good glove, but not that good. He might have been the best ever at turning the double play, but it wasn’t that much more than the average second basemen. He was a good defender, but far from the best at his position, and his being included with the greats is a joke. He had a career .299 OBP. He was slow, and was nowhere near the most valuable second basemen of his time. He hit a big homerun and got a reputation and rode it into what was apparently a drunken veterans committee, either that or the committee all had the last name Mazeroski.

2000-Bid McPhee, Tony Perez, Carlton Fisk

Bid McPhee-No-If you played before 1900 and you didn’t have a .300 BA don’t apply you don’t belong.

Carlton Fisk-yes-Team leader, good numbers, great defense, and great teammate.
Tony Perez-no-Other than being a member of the Big Red Machine, I am not sure what he even brings to the table. .803 OPS isn’t that stellar even given the decades he played in. He did have a ton of RBI’s but that’s a bit of a worthless stat as any decent hitter in the middle of the lineup will get 100. He didn’t reach any milestones other than RBI’s and he played for a long, long time. So basically you have a guy who you can’t say was short of milestones because he had a short career, and his percentage numbers aren’t that good either.

So for those elected from 2000-2009 My Hall of Fame team is as follows:
Rickey Henderson
Tony Gywnn
Cal Ripken Jr.
Wade Boggs
Ryne Sandberg
Paul Molitor
Eddie Murray
Kirby Puckett
Carlton Fisk
Next up will be my assessment of the 1990’s.

Player Memorabilia and Auto's I really want Part 1.

2009-06-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I collect memorabilia. I have bobble heads, seats from Old Busch, scoreboard cards from Old Busch, certified autographs, autographed insert cards, and memorabilia cards. I have a pretty good collection, almost exclusively Cardinals stuff. I used to have a ton of stuff from other Hall of Famers, but I liquidated a good bit of it to pay for this and that. My collection ranges from Mike Gallego, to Johnny Hopp, but there have always been a few guys that I have always wanted that I have just never been able to obtain. Of course the prized crown jewel of my collection is an autographed photo containing the signature or Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Ted Williams. Of course the names on this list are a list of signatures that I consider obtainable. Some signatures truly aren't obtainable such as Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, or the like. The true legends from the early period of baseball are really hard to even find, much less pay for when you do, autographs just weren't as prevalent back then. So I am putting no signature on my list that would cost more than 1,000 dollars to buy. That excludes Rogers Hornsby, even though he could be found, and bought, but he barely misses the cut with his signature going in the 1000-1500 dollar range for an average sample.

1. Branch Rickey - The GM who put together the Gas House Gang. He is a legend, and few people realize just how big an effect he had on the game. Mr. Rickey (as Diz called him when he really wanted something) was the sole inventer of the modern Minor League Baseball system. Before him and his vision, all minor league teams were indenpendenly owned, with all of their players being independently contracted. Not only that he was the GM responsible for bring Jackie Robinson to the big show. He barely makes my criteria as his signatures at the bottom end are just below the 1000 dollar mark.

2. Dizzy Dean - An absolute legend. Not just for his playing, more so for his antics and personality. He won 30 games in 1934 and maybe might have been the most confident player to play the game. Its amazing that I don't have one of these auto's yet, since they are easily obtained, and always available on ebay in PSA certified variety. They are actually fairly affordable for a player of his stature due to his staying in baseball as a broadcaster until his death. He had a good look period of fan exposure and he signed a ton, so you can find this one in a good example for around 300 dollars.

3. Peyton Manning - Probably my favorite football player, and I have just recently decided that I would pursue non-baseball auto's for some of my favorite players. He isn't hard to obtain, although his can be pricey.

4. Tim Duncan - See above.

5. Tony LaRussa and Whitey Herzog - Career managers are hard auto's to get especially if you are looking for a released baseball card with a certified auto. These are two very different but very important managers in Cardinals history. The price isn't an issue so much here, as just finding a good one on a medium that you like.

There will be a part 2 to this.

Draft Pick Salary Demands

2009-06-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

I thought about this for a while this morning. Most people are quick to say that baseball draft picks should shut up and take very little, and not demand a lot of money since, unlike the NFL and NBA they will not be contributing on the field for their team for at least a year or two. I decided to think about it by putting myself in their shoes and try to come up with what I would do if faced with the same decisions they were. First of all, I was as big a fan of baseball when I was playing high school ball as I am now, and I am sure some of the players drafted are the same. I was a student of the history of the game, and I had allegiances and ideas about teams. I would find it impossible to just go where I was drafted and not say anything, or not to tell certain teams that frankly I am just not playing for your club. I am honestly amazed there is not more of this. If I were good enough to be drafted in the first round I would have had teams that I would play for, and teams that I would not play for. If I were going to drafted out of high school by say the Cubs, Yankees, Giants, or Braves, then they would have very limited options. They would either have to make me the highest paid draft pick ever, or I would be going to college, or playing in the frontier league for a year. But I would be honest with their scouts before the draft, so as not to surprise them, I would just have to say, I hate your team, I have always hated your team, and I can't really be honest with myself and say I want to take your money. Secondly, I can't fall these guys for trying to get as much as they can in their first contract. Many of them are foregoing college, and this might be the only big contract that get. Its got to last for a while, and give them something to fall back on if say, they have a catastrophic injury, or can't hit a professional slider.

Transformers Ramblings

2009-06-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Normally when I do a movie review I try to give the movie a fair and honest rating on a scale of 1 to 10. I see a lot of movies, probably more than anybody I know and even when I don't enjoy the movie and think I have a fair eye for what is good, well-made and quality, and try to rate movies accordingly. I cannot in any fairness give this movie a rating. If I did it wouldn't be accurate, because I would give this movie a full 10/10 and obviously its not a great work of film making. Normally, I am a big fan of Rotten Tomatoes, and I think its generally a good way to get an honest representation of the quality of a film. However, it misses the boat with films like this. Most of the reviewers just don't understand what this film needed to do, and what they were trying to accomplish. Most of the reviewers said that this film was to thin on plot, to much action, and was to violent and adult for a film that is marketing a line of toys that Hasbro is trying to sell. This reviewers obviously don't understand the purpose here. This movie is marketed towards people like me. To mostly males, who are in their late 20's to early 30's who grew up loving the Transformers, not so much as a toy (which most of us did love) but the cartoon. We don't need much of a plot, and we don't need much character build up. We already had a built in attachment to the primary characters, because for many of us Optimus Prime's fight in the movie was our first real taste of learning that sometimes the good guys die. This film accomplishes a lot. The only real emotion this movie is trying to stir is that same feeling most of us had when watching the end of the animated Transformers movie back in the day, and to be honest, I would say for many of us that movie resulted in tears, not as a result of being scared by a movie, but at the loss of an honorable character. The movie did accomplish that goal, and the mid movie fight scene with Optimus is truly epic. As for the rest, what more would you want from a Transformer movie. Lots of robots, and lots of explosions. You don't need an Oscar winning script to make this work. Very few times I would advocate this, but in a series like this the more explosions the better. One of the other things about this movie that people seem to want to make into an issue is the racial typecasting of the twins. Critics said this was inappropriate and that this characters only played the fool and contributed nothing. Those people really need to shut up. They aren't making fun of race, its more like a Malibu's most wanted thing making fun of posers, or people trying to imitate what they think is "gangster." And as for them doing nothing they are perhaps two of the bravest autobots in the movie. Being the smallest combat robots, they took on the largest combat robot with no fear, and those saying that they showed nothing and were a bad representation are idiotic and just looking for something to stir up something contraversial. One thing that made me laugh was Dr. Claw, I mean Soundwave. He is voice by Frank Welker, who of course is a legend in cartoon voicing. He also voiced Dr. Claw in the Inspector Gadget cartoon and for Soundwave its the EXACT same voice he used for Dr. Claw. The first time he said anything I laughed so hard I think the people in the row in front of me thought I was crazy.

Odds and Ends so far this season.

2009-06-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

You know verbal mess ups, mispronunciations, and unusual sayings by announcers are always fodder for being repeated over and over again. Some have become legendary like one by a particularly departed Cubs announce "hey Steve, Did you know that Piazza spelled backwards is pronounced AZAP." This is not a new phenomenon, and Dizzy Dean was famous for it for years. Cardinals announcer Mike Shannon is building his own senile reputation for saying some incredibly silly things. One man however, which you don't here much about is Tim McCarver, which is weird, because one would think that he has a plethora of malpropisms, as he can tend to be redundant at best and downright idiotic at worst. My personal favorite ingame flub was by this man when he was going a Yankee's/White Sox game some years ago. I believe this was during Marcus Thames rookie season for the Yankees. Thames name is actually the same as the river in England and is pronounced "Tim's." Joe Buck was calling with him then as well calls Thames by the appropriate pronounciation, and McCarver interrupts with his great wisdom and says your saying his name wrong its Thames (he says it with the TH like the way it looks) and then says "just like the river in Eurupe." Both making himself looking silly by mispronouncing both and then looking even sillier by trying to correct Buck who was, in fact, correct.

Alex Rodriguez is not my favorite player. Ok, if i were to make a list of every Major League player and organize it from favorite to least favorite he would probably be in the bottom two. However, even I will say that he seems to be getting a raw deal by Yankees manager Joe Girardi. For the first time in his career he is getting the chance to play Major League baseball in his hometown of Miami this weekend. He had given out nearly one hundred tickets to friends and family including his mother, who still lives in Miami. However, apparently Girardi decided to bench Rodriguez for the first two games in the series due to fatigue. It is true that Rodriguez is struggily mightily, but given his reaction it seems that perhaps Arod himself didn't know he was having fatigue problems. When you do have a superstar of the caliber of Arod (once again, not a huge fan) even if he is struggling and recovering from an injury its not really fair to him to bench him when he is coming home to play for the very first time. He has done enough in his career to get a little bit of a pass on starting slow and why bench him right now? Why not next week? Let him play at home, especially when the replacement is going to be Angel Berroa. Pretty busch league stunt by Girardi, most managers wouldn't do it, not this series anyway.

NEWSFLASH Albert Pujols is good. He isn't quite getting the Bonds treatment, but I truthfully I don't think Major League pitchers will ever embarrass themselves to the point they did with Bonds again. It is true that his average is down a little bit, for him anyway, .320 would be good for most people. Even it wasn't for him the Cardinals wouldn't be anywhere near where they are right now. With the All-Star game in St. Louis I guess its hard to hope that he won't enter the home run derby. The Cardinals will really suffer if he loses his swing for even a little bit while trying to put on a show for the home town Cardinals fans, or even worse, if he injures himself like Jim Edmonds did when he was in the Home Run Derby.

The Skip Schumaker move to 2nd hasn't been as big a problem as I thought it would be. He might not be a gold glover, but he doesn't seem to be a glaring weakness either. What he lacks in nimbeness turning the double play at second he makes up for by having a seriously plus arm for a second sacker.

Dave Duncan is a very good coach, maybe the best ever as far a pitching coaches go. A question I have been thinking about is does he deserve to be a Hall of Famer. I am not for certain if he does, but there aren't any coaches in the Hall of Fame. Tony LaRussa is going to be a Hall of Famer, and perhaps Duncan deserves to be, since he has been with TLR every bit of his Hall of Fame managerial career.

Is anxiety in Major League Baseball an epidemic? I am not one for belittling issues, but Joey Votto (he was slugging when he went on the DL not struggling like the other guys) Khalil Green (he does look like a guy who has never had fun on the DL) Zack Grienke, and Dontrelle Willis. Is it just that guys are using this as a way of working through slumps without getting dumped? Or are Major League teams just more sensitive to problems like this.

Speaking of Khalil Green, the Cardinals have been playing him at third, partially because they have a hole there, are partly because they think it will help with the anxiety. They think that its a less cerebral position, and that at third he will do more reacting and less thinking about the play. Interesting take, and we shall see how he responds to bunt coverages.

Sammy Sosa and steroids.

2009-06-17T11:18:00.001-07:00

BREAKING NEWS: SAMMY SOSA TESTED POSITIVE FOR A PED IN 2003. Ok, so its true that apparently Sosa did test positive for a performance enhancing drug and it made headlines in the sports world yesterday. But lets be honest about this, is anybody actually surprised anymore when a name like Sosa's pops up testing positive? I for one am not shocked by any name that comes up from the late 90's and early 2000's anymore. And frankly did we need confirmation to know that Sosa was on them? Anybody that watched him play had to have him on their top 2 or 3 list of players most likely to be taking a shot in the butt. My top 4 list was Big Mac, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens. I have been screaming for a while now that Roger Clemens was the one pitcher I was certain of to hitting the juice, and truthfully he is the only player other than Bonds that I have felt a certain vindication and satisfaction in seeing the news come out. The question though that I feel needs to be asked is was it worth what Big Mac and Sosa did to themselves and the game? I would have to say yes. Those of you who know me well know that I am a rules nazi. I am fair to the rules to a fault, when I play softball I have actually called myself out when an umpire was umping that didn't know all the rules. I hate it when my team gets the benefit of a bad call and I tell an umpire when I think he missed a call, even if it is one that helped my team. But at the same time, 1998 was a magical season for baseball fans. Outside of hard core baseball fans, baseball was not doing well after the 1994 strike and 1995 lock out ( I do believe the owners were more at fault than the players, and they get a bum rap on this, but thats a blog for another day) and he game was struggling mightily to get butts in the seats. Sosa and McGwire's home run chase changed that. It created interest in the game on a national level that baseball had not enjoyed in a long time. That interest did not go away, it maintained through the 2000's and even though baseball can't compete with football for television ratings (this mostly has to do with the number of games) people were going to game at a great rate in most cities, Florida and Montreal of course were exceptions. Montreal baseball was destroyed by the strike, and never recovered. They had a hell of a team in 1994 and had real chances of going places that year, and their fans got their hearts ripped out. But for most teams 1998 was magical. Not only was it home runs in numbers never seen before, but it was a rivalry between two players in the same division, and each on teams that historically have one of the best rivalries in baseball. Everbody was watching, everybody wanted to know what was going to happen next, and everybody was enchanted by the fact Sosa and McGwire were pushing each other to play better via encouragment rather than animosity. Sure the steriods make the season seem a bit hollow now, but you can't take away what it did for baseball, even now baseball is doing all right and its in part due to that season. And you can take away some of the gloss on what they accomplished on the field with their numbers, but you can't take away the grace they handled themselves with during that chase and embracing what they were to baseball. And lets keep in mind that in 1998 they weren't technically even breaking any baseball rules, which means that perhaps baseball administration is far more on the hook for steroids than the individual players are. Was it worth it, yea, it probably was, without 1998 contraction was a very real and ugly possiblity, and the face of baseball could have been drastically different. Would baseball have been better if the owners and administration had been more responsible in their drug testing? Absolutely, but us and the players have to play with the hand they were dealt, and we still have to look for a silver lining in a cloudy sky.

Thoughts on Literature

2009-06-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

Recently one of those literary survey doohickies came around on facebook, and I being the listless literary geek that I am, I felt compelled to fill out its questions, and pass it around to my friends. While I was reading it, the inevitable question came up as to what what your favorite novel is and as usual, I without thought filled in "The Sun Also Rises." This is as most of my friends know, my absolute favorite work of literature. When I typed it in I thought to myself that this was the first thing in my life that I read that made me realize that there is in fact great literature in the world. The first time that I had a real experience where what I was reading made me think, deeply and introspectively about life and it was the first work I had read that made me realize literature as a true art form. I have a feeling that all great lovers of literature have a similar transcendental moment as this. The type of moment that just can't be delivered by your general run of the mill authors (i.e. The Twilight Series, Dean Koontz, etc) and can only be delivered by a true master of the written word. I am curious as to what some of those written works may be for the rest of you.

Best Five Movies About Baseball!!

2009-06-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

Well as many of you know I am both obssessed with movies and with baseball. So a logical step would be to release a best five blog rating the best baseball movies of all time.

5. Major League- This movie is no Oscar winner, and its not exactly the dramatic stuff of legends, however it does have a lot going for it. It has lines and scenes that are repeatedly quoted and easy to remember, and its just darn fun. Bob Uecker is an absolute riot, and although no best actor nominees will come from this movie it is perfectly cast.

4. Bang the Drum Slowly-This is for some reason an oft forgotten film. Its a great bit of work with a good script, heart wrenching story, and good acting. It features a very young Robert De Niro as Bruce Pearson, a role that is often considered to be one of his most tragic and emotional roles. This is not a feel good movie about baseball but what it is, is a movie that puts professional baseball in perspective with the realities of life.

3. Bull Durham- I am sure this is number 1 on a lot of people's lists. I do enjoy this film, but I think that it is a hair over rated. It is very well acted and it does have some very quotoble scenes, and it gives a perspective on minor league baseball as opposed to the big show.

2. The Natural- This was actually the first baseball movie that I am watched. It is as good to me now as it was back then. It has a great cast with Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger and the perfect cast Wilford Brimley and Richard Farnsworth as the coaches.

1. The Pride of the Yankee's- This is hands down the best movie about baseball. Gary Cooper is legendary in portraying Lou Gehrig. Gehrig's heart wrenching speech upon his retirement is enough to bring tears, and made even sadder by the fact that this speech really happened (more or less, lines are slightly different) and that Lou Gehrig truly meant what he was saying and is one of the greatest men to ever suit up and play a professional sport.

A little touchy about Arkansas

2009-06-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

I have realized that even though I have left Arkansas, and probably plan on leaving Arkansas to live somewhere else after Law, I am incredibly defensive about it as my home. This is not a new tendency for me, I think I have always been like that, I just think I am not starting to come to terms with it. I remember back in August of 1999 when I was at music camp for Harding. Back then there was daily kitchen duty and certain people each day would go around getting people refills and the like. There was a girl named Rachel Cooper from New Jersey who came to our table, a very cute girl, so being the flirt that I am I paid attention. She was talking to the person across the table from me (Jeff this might have been you, I can't remember, I know we met at this music camp, and hung out at it a lot. It was either you or Adam Sullivan) and she said "I can't believe I ended up in Arkansas, I hate it here, it such a backwards pitiful state." I was infuriated, although I didn't really show anger. I politely told her that this was my home and that she was welcome to leave at any time. But I was really seething on the inside. I think at that point was the first time in my life that I had seen someone outside of Arkansas, an outsider so to speak, come into my home turf and blatantly bad mouth my home. Before it had only been grumbling by people who actually lived there, and people always have the right to grumble about their home. It definitely set up an immediate defensiveness towards those that back fun of Arkansas. My family has been farming here for near two hundred years, and I am the first of my fathers line since coming from Holland in the 17th century not to be a farmer. I feel a sense of pride in that, I come from people that understand what hard work is, and what battling the natural landscape of the South is like. I guess that is why it is ingrained in me to protect the integrity of this area, and people that wish to speak ill of it front of me are going to be in for some fighting words. And those that know me, know that when that happens you will know you have been in a fight, that is for sure.

Best Five Starting Pitchers Pitching today.

2009-06-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about baseball, as I normally do, and I was wondering to myself who are the best five starting pitchers in today's game? I am not going to base this purely on numbers, because with pitchers more than hitters a lot of their numbers are deceptive, and with pitchers more than hitters injury concerns are also always more of a risk. But still, I came up with this list.

5. Roy Oswalt- Undeniably he is losing his stuff a bit, and he may not have the stuff of a number 1 any more. But he also hasn't really had the benefit of a very good team behind him. But I want him for one reason. This guy will battle you each and every pitch. He is a bulldog, and his attitude towards pitching will spread to all on the staff. As a long term investment I don't like him as pitchers under six feet that are right handed do not have a very good history of having long careers.

4A.Tim Lincecum- Yea I cheat, 4A and 4B. This guy is young, and has lights out stuff and he is just purely hard to hit. There is no question he has the potential to be great for many years to come. On the other side he is very short and as a short right handed power pitcher the odds say he will have some injury troubles.

4B. David Pryce-Not much of a track record yet, but many I don't know if there is a left handed pitcher who looks harder to hit than David Pryce. 97 with movement and a slingshot wide up, if he can stay healthy and keep it in the strikezone he will have some Cy Young type seasons.

3. Johan Santana-Best changeup in baseball + knowing how to pitch= lots of unhappy NL East batters.

2. Roy Halliday- Consistently he is one of the best pitchers each year. He has a killer slider and pin point control with his 94-95 fastball. I wouldn't want to be in the box against him.

1. Chris Carpenter- I would not have put him in until this year. There is something about this guy, he can be out for a year and half and then just show up and throw a shutout. He has given up two earned runs this year in his 28 innings, and both of those shouldn't have been, since they were Chris Duncan missplays. This tells me that he has something beyond stuff. This man knows how to pitch. Even if he goes out there and has his D grade stuff he is going to get guys out. And when he has his A grade, or even B grade stuff, teams don't score runs, period.

Top Five Movies with Kurt Russell !!!

2009-06-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

Now for a very special Top five blog honoring the greatest actor of our time, Kurt Russell. ( A bit tongue in cheek)

5. Deathproof- Only a actor of his talent could make a middle aged man disgustingly eating a greasy pile of nachos interesting.

4. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes- Gotta love a very young Kurt getting the a computer put into his brain due to a little electric shock. Pfft, and all he got out of it was a photographic memory.

3. Escape from New York- A legitimate classic, and one of the coolest movies of the 80's. Women wanted to be with Snake Pliskin, and the men just dreamed of being him.

2B. Captain Ron- One of the greatest action heroes in movie history.

2A. Tombstone- Actually a very good movie, and a good performance by Kirk, no joke here. And Val Kilmer got to utter some of the most quotable lines in movie history.

1. Big Trouble in Little China- My favorite movie of all time, I could watch this movie daily when I was a kid, and probably did for large stretches of time. This should have one best picture, and Kurt Russell should have won best actor, because "its all in the reflexes."

Movie Review, Drag Me to Hell 9/10.

2009-05-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

Sam Raimi do us all a favor and unentangle yourself from that Spider-Man franchise and get back to making the movies you were meant to make. For the last few years I have seen just about every horror movie that has come out. That means I have seen a lot of bad horror movies. In fact, I can't recall the last time I saw an American horror movie that was worth the price of cereal price. (well grindhouse was good, but almost more of a comedy than a horror movie) There have been a few foreign films of quality, but on the whole the American genre has gone to just remaking Japanese and Korean Horror/Thrillers, well, horribly. Finally there is horror movie that I was glad I went to the theatre and watched. This movie is a perfect combination of campy and funny (something Raimi does very well, Army of Darkness anyone?) and extremely scary. This is an awesome and hard to obtain combination. Alison Lohman is good as the main protagonist, although she does have the body of a ten year old boy. Justin Long is equally good, and the product placement around him is hilarious. If you don't recognize him by name, you will recognize him when you see him, as he is known not only for acting, but for starring in a certain products commercials. The supporting cast is good as well, although don't be looking for any A listers in this film. If you like horror movies do yourself a favor and go out and see this one, its a rockin good time and worth the trip to the theatre. Prepare to laugh, be scared, and be grossed out all at the same time.

Five Best Works of Literature from the 20th Century.(excluding Theatre, Thats a different list )

2009-05-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Those of you that know me understand that I have a bit of a bias towards certain authors, but I guess that is just the way it is in regards to literature, we tend to like what we like and hate what we hate and often there isn't a lot of reason for which category it goes in other than we like it, or don't. Regardless, here is my top five.

5. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans- This work probably hits home more if, like me, your parents are older. My Mom was born as sharecropper in circumstances very similar to the farmers that are featured by James Agee, and it gives some unique and touching insights to what life was like back then. It is also unusual because Agee wrote the words, but Walker Evans was actually given co-authorship for his photographic work. The images tell the story just as much as the words do, and I might be a bit biased because I am a photographer and Evans is my favorite. Either way it is recommended reading.

4. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson-A wonderful collection of intertwining short stories that encapsulate the good and the bad (mostly the bad) of living amongst colorful characters in small town Ohio. Anderson in this work is an exquisite writer, and just reading the words he puts on the page is a treat.

3. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller- Dark, scary, hilarious, touching, and socially provocative. Those are all ways to describe Joseph Heller's one literary success. Quirky characters immediately pull you in and let you know that war is in fact hell.

2. Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut- With him the question is which one do you pick? Most people tend to pick Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse-5. Myself, I tend to enjoy Hocus Pocus, Bluebeard, and Breakfast of Champions more. I decided on Bluebeard, because it is the closest he comes to creating a real character, not a caricature of one. I immediately became attached to the elderly painter with a very real idea of his own mortality and the fascination with panty lines.

1. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway- I have been told that I am obsessed with this book, and that could very likely be true. I read it for the first time when I was very impressionable, and I still remember the first time I realized that Jack Barnes was, how to put it, damaged. Its a wonderful written novel that really shows us the meaning of torment and escapism.