Jonathan sends along this video about a sports photographer in Germany with a cool-looking technique, and points out how well this would work for baseball. Not to be this guy, but I have to imagine it’d sell pretty well too. Certainly better than James Franco’s imaginary steamboat.*
Fun fact: I wrote a couple of show-jumping recaps for the now-defunct WCSN.com back in the day. Classics, if you ask me.
*- Which is kind of a sweet band name.
I’m still elsewhere. Here are some questions from last week. If anything has massively impacted since the weekend, maybe some of my opinions have changed since I wrote this. Maybe not. Some grim questions:
I don’t know… fear? Guilt? Shame?
Seriously why do so many people ask about what food I’d want if I were on death row? Do you know something about me that I haven’t figured out yet? Why not ask what food I’d want if, I don’t know, a genie came out of this here Vitamin Water Zero bottle and offered me any sandwich in the world?
Off the top of my head, and working from a very small sample size, it’s probably the breaded steak sandwich from Ricobene’s. I’ve been thinking about it since I ate it. I might get it with bacon on it, though — even if that wasn’t an option and doesn’t seem to go with the sandwich. It’s hard to imagine my last sandwich not having bacon.
Are we talking my last meal ever all told and I’m eating it at Citi Field, or my last meal ever at Citi Field? Stupid 140-character limits make it difficult to specify, I know.
If it’s the former, I’d probably try to get there early enough to brave the Shake Shack lines without missing any of the game. I don’t know what scenario has me eating my last meal ever at Citi Field, but there are worse ways to go out than eating a Shackburger and watching a ballgame.
If it’s the latter, and I’m at the game knowing I will for whatever reason never be permitted to eat at Citi Field again but that I’ll still be able to eat elsewhere, I’d probably get the tacos. As far as I know they are still unavailable outside the park.
A few people have asked me this and I keep answering the same thing: No reason to pick between Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner and Ruben Tejada yet. Since Ike Davis and David Wright look like they’ll be out until at least the All-Star Break, there will be plenty of at-bats for all three potential second basemen before the team needs to make any decision. Obviously teams should work with the most evidence possible, and since all three — and especially Turner and Tejada — are still dealing in small samples, there’s no rush to name a favorite.
But that’s a cop out. If we’re saying for the sake of things that Tejada, Turner and Murphy maintain their current lines (as I write this, Tejada’s is .274/.352/.305, Turner’s is .279/.348/.388 and Murphy’s is .291/.346/.409), then I would hope the Mets go back to the Murphy/Turner platoon, with Tejada starting at shortstop in Triple-A.
Tejada has played well and is likely the best defender of the trio, but he’s also likely the weakest hitter and I’m not certain he would save enough runs with his glove to make up for the difference on offense. Plus Tejada appears the best in-house option to replace Jose Reyes if he leaves via free agency or trade, so if the Mets are looking down the road a bit — even if they hope to sign Reyes — it can’t hurt to have Tejada racking up reps at shortstop.
Murphy could get the bulk of the starts against right-handers, with Turner starting against lefties and, if Terry Collins is looking to get him some at-bats, when groundball heavy pitchers like Jon Niese and R.A. Dickey are on the mound.
Here is Tom Brady smiling at a dog while flexing his biceps with a camera attached to his groin:
Via Barstool Sports, via Greg.
As you may know, the trailer for the forthcoming Moneyball movie hit the Internet last week. It looks, well, kind of terrible. Here it is:
If you’ve read this site with some regularity, you might know I prefer movies in which things explode. There are precisely zero explosions in the trailer for Moneyball, unless you count Brad Pitt (as Billy Beane) upending his desk.
Anyway, it looks from the trailer like the Moneyball movie is going to be more about a ragtag group of unlikely heroes than exploiting market inefficiencies (which obviously makes a lot of sense, movie-wise). But the way I see it, if Michael Lewis dramatized the story a bit when he wrote it and now studio execs and screenwriters are taking liberties of their own, why not really push it?
Here are versions of the Moneyball movie I would more likely enjoy:
– Action: Jason Statham stars as a rogue general manager who probes too deeply into baseball’s numbers and discovers something he wasn’t supposed to know. Now 29 other GMs will stop at nothing to destroy him, unless he takes care of them first. Vengeance is the new market inefficiency. Features scene of Statham as Billy Beane and sexy spreadsheet vixen Megan Fox diving from exploding stadium.
– Sabromance: Billy Beane (Paul Rudd) has everything: Smarts, good looks, a great family, and a dream job in baseball. But when tough times force him to make some unpopular decisions at work, he finds out that what he needs most is a loyal friend. A story of two men who learn that stripping baseball of its soul just might save their own. Some gross-out manboob humor. With Jonah Hill as Paul DePodesta.
– Musical: The stuffed-shirt commissioner of baseball has banned dancing, but a young hotshot GM is ready to change all that. Starring Matthew Morrison from Glee.
– Film Noir: I can’t figure out how Moneyball might be remade as a film noir, but I bet it’d be sweet. You know I’m on vacation, right?
– Any movie with Terry Crews: We don’t spend nearly enough time discussing how great Terry Crews is. I watched about a half hour of the movie White Chicks the other night because it had Terry Crews in it. Guy steals every scene he has ever been in.
Dave sent along ESPN the Magazine’s “Ultimate Team Rankings,” and though usually I try not to get worked up over something so obviously arbitrary, it’s notably random even for this type of exercise.
The magazine ranks every major sports franchise in “Bang for the Buck,” “Fan Relations,” “Ownership,” “Affordability,” “Stadium Experience,” “Players,” “Coaching,” and “Title Track,” based largely on polls, then weights each category by its importance to the fans polled to create a master ranking of sports franchises.
“A more detailed breakdown of the rankings” is available to subscribers, but a visitor need only sort the baseball teams to note that something is probably a bit wonky. Predictably, the Mets are last — but that seems rather justifiable compared to some of the other placements.
The Red Sox, who play in a historic ballpark that sells out all the time, spend tons of money on payroll and make the playoffs almost every year, are ranked 24th — just below the Washington Nationals. The Yankees are 22nd, closely trailing the Marlins and Pirates.
Probably the polls say a bit more about the attitudes of the respective fanbases than the relative fan experiences.
The owners of the Long Island Ducks and the New York Mets have pitched competing proposals to build a minor-league baseball field in Nassau County.
Oh, man. I should mention for those who don’t know that I grew up about ten minutes south of Mitchel Field, the proposed site of this Minor League baseball field. I worked close by at Nassau Community College for a while, and I used to go to the batting cages at Eisenhower Park all the time. It’s well within my frame of reference, I guess I’m saying.
And it’d be sweet to have Mets prospects playing full-season ball someplace so accessible. I don’t know if it makes any sense economically, and I imagine there might be plenty of pissed-off taxpayers if the proposal goes through. Plus the article makes the Mets’ proposal sound more like a last-minute counter to the Ducks’ than anything else.
But it’s fun to think about. The South Atlantic League now stretches as far north as Lakewood, New Jersey, so I suppose it’s possible the Mets could try to convince that league to let them move a club to Long Island. That club’s road trips would be brutal, though.
It seems like a Double-A Eastern League team would make more sense logistically, since the Eastern League has teams in Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. The Mets have been affiliated with Binghamton since 1991.
Also: Full-season Minor League clubs start playing in early April, and this stadium would be practically next door to Nassau Coliseum. If the Islanders were ever to advance deep into the NHL Playoffs, any night both clubs were home the traffic would be unreal. But then… well, easy punchline.
I’m on vacation. I meant to have more cued up for this week before I left, but time did that pesky thing it often does. There will be posts all week, but it will be slow. I’ll be back in a week, rested and (I hope) with several new sandwich experiences to share.
Of course, for the true connoisseur, they’ll want to dream bigger—such as spending $100 on a full-scale imaginary steamboat that was used in Franco’s imaginary movie, which imaginarily floats and features imaginary rooms to live in. Or even dropping $10,000 on “Fresh Air,” which is an endless supply of air all around you, forever, that you can actually breathe. Again, all of these pieces are meant to “open our eyes to the unseen universe that exists at every moment” as “we exchange ideas and dreams as currency in the New Economy.”
– Sean O’Neal, Onion A.V. Club.
This has got to be the best evidence yet for the case that James Franco is messing with everybody, right?
And if he is, does that count as performance art or just a funny longform prank?
Via Catsmeat.
Hard to figure if he definitely needed to in this case, and not as awesome as the last time either way. But still pretty awesome.
Rev’s from HalosHeaven.com.
Maho Beach on St. Maarten is located awfully close to the airport. Yahoo! has a whole gallery.
If you’re bored in Northern Virginia and you like the underside of planes, I heartily recommend taking a trip to Gravelly Point. Good times.
Tedquarters 