The Season in Review - April

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!!!

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!

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*

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!

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

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.

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.