Newly discovered European dinosaur thought to have disemboweled prey with razor-sharp talons, or just sat there sipping coffee and listening to techno

Posted on by
1

The discoverers reported on Monday that the dinosaur, the size of a gigantic turkey, was a meat-eating creature that lived more than 65 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period. They named it Balaur bondoc, which means “stocky dragon.”

Romanian scientists and other experts said that Balaur is the first reasonably complete skeleton of a predatory dinosaur from Europe at that time. Of perhaps surpassing importance, they said, the discovery may provide insights into the development of dinosaurs and other animals in a long-ago European ecosystem much different from that of today.

– John Noble Wilford, New York Times.

OK first of all, it’s funny to say something is “about the size of a gigantic turkey.” Why not say it’s the size of a small rhea or a tiny ostrich or a freakishly large chicken?

Second, it’s described as something of “a kickboxer” later in the article, so it’s good to know there was European precedent for Jean Claude Van Damme.

The dinosaur scientists maintain that this is a new breed of predator, different from any they have previously identified, but then they’re probably reserving the right to do a complete 180 and announce that this is discovery is complete B.S. and the Balaur bondoc is exactly the same as some other dinosaur we’ve already known about for years, because that’s something dinosaur scientists do sometimes.

They’re also using the discovery to make reasonably interesting extrapolations about dinosaur evolution in isolation, but those seem like pretty bold claims considering how much we all know about how little we really know about dinosaurs.

And I mean no disrespect, dinosaur scientists. Seriously. But make with the cloning or stop acting like you’ve got dinosaurs all figured out.

Kiner’s Korner Revisited: Ed Kranepool

Posted on by
3

Fun fact: After their careers ended, both Kranepool and Cleon Jones worked with my grandfather. He was the foreman at a lithography factory and they were in sales, since I guess people are more likely to contract a lithographer that is represented by ballplayers. Kranepool came to my aunt’s wedding when I was real young and I got to wear his World Series ring. Pretty awesome.

The real Clemens trial

Posted on by
Reply

As far as I’m concerned, the real Roger Clemens trial will be for the newspapers covering the event, since the judge has put a media gag order on everyone involved. How will they keep this interesting without any actual information?

Well, the Daily News took a hell of a step today.

By far the most interesting thing about the entire baseball steroids scandal, to me, has always been that Victor Conte played bass in Tower of Power. How perfectly random.

And not only did the News convince him to write about it, they included a link to his recent composition, the BALCO Bebop, based on Take Me Out To The Ballgame.

It’s cheesy as all get-out, but the dude can really play:

But it is a market where you can go .500

Posted on by
20

It’s not a market where you can go young.

– Omar Minaya, on New York.

Man, this gets my ire up. You know what I’d like, just once? I’d like to root for a team that doesn’t worry about what type of market it’s in and instead concerns itself only with putting together a winning ballclub.

I wish I could run an experiment. Me and another GM get identical teams in identical cities with identical situations. The other GM has to worry about selling tickets in the particular market, pleasing the press and appeasing the offseason whims of the fan base. Me, I just focus on putting the best possible baseball team on the field.

Who do you think sells more tickets in the end? Whose network gets better ratings? Whose ballpark ads yield more money? Which GM then has more revenue to invest back in the team, in free agents, the farm system, the draft and international scouting?

Mejia runs the awesome down

Posted on by
4

So Jenrry Mejia went ahead and had his way with the Syracuse Chiefs last night, allowing five hits, one run and one walk and whiffing nine over eight innings. Apparently he yielded mostly ground balls, too, like he did in most of his starts in Binghamton. Electric stuff, they say.

And word is the Mets are thinking of calling him up to start Saturday’s game in Chicago, which I will be attending. So that’s awesome.

Let’s put aside for a moment the silly bullpen experiment that nearly everyone on the Internet knew was a terrible idea from the outset and instead think of how much brighter the future will look if the Mets get a few decent starts out of Mejia in the waning days of this weird, crummy and often stupid season.

And then let’s stop, take a deep breath and remember that Mejia’s still a baby in baseball terms, and that entering 2011 counting on him as a member of the rotation — no matter how well he performs in an audition this year — with no contingency plan would be foolhardy.

I’m getting ahead of myself. This is really an offseason concern. But then there’s not much left to talk about outside of the Mets’ epic middling. So here’s this: Regardless of what happens in September the Mets would be wise to bring in a solid starter in the winter.

I’ve still got my concerns over whether Mejia’s ready for Major League competition, and no 35 1/3 Minor League innings and four or five September starts are likely to change that.

And it seems like the Mets might be best served bringing him along slowly at first next year in Triple-A, giving him more time to hone his secondary offerings and limiting his innings, then unleashing him on the big leagues midseason or something. I don’t know; I’m no expert and I kind of hope he proves me wrong because as a fan I’m excited as anything for him. But I’m trying to remain patient.

I don’t think there’s any particular harm in a September audition, mind you, and I’m obviously interested to see how Mejia performs. I just don’t think it’ll be enough of a sample to show us anything meaningful.

In the meantime, enjoy some electric stuff:

Bulleted review of The Expendables

Posted on by
6

I hoped to write a cohesive review of The Expendables today but I got real busy. Plus I realized it would be more in keeping with the film, thematically, to haphazardly list all the points I want to make — with bullets, no less — rather than try to carefully make sense of them all. So here we go:

• For some reason, I thought this was going to be a sort of meta action film, like in the way Zombieland was a zombie movie or even the way Drag Me To Hell was a horror movie. It wasn’t. It was wholly unironic.

I really appreciated both those movies, the way they both toyed with their genre conventions but still played up their best points, but I also very much respected that The Expendables just all out went for it. It was like Sylvester Stallone was bellowing, “Film is not dead!” Except you couldn’t really make out what he was saying, because, well, you know.

• My main concern was that there wouldn’t be enough Jason Statham. I’ve got all the respect in the world for Sylvester Stallone but I don’t want to sit through two hours of an old-ass man pretending he can still kick ass like Jason Statham can. No offense, dad. Luckily, there was sufficient Statham.

• Someone is going to write an awesome college paper someday about the way video games have influenced film. Aw, what am I talking about? Probably that college paper has already been written millions of times. I feel like Statham movies in particular tend to draw on video games, but I guess most modern action movies do. Anyway, there’s a lot of BFG action in this movie.

• About 45 minutes deep, I grew really concerned that there would be way too much talking in the movie. I thought, man, it’s about time Jason Statham threw a knife in someone’s head. And then, sure enough, Jason Statham threw a knife in someone’s head and from there on out it was pretty much awesome.

• But I should make this clear: This movie wasn’t just about a team of mercenaries with an arsenal of amazing weapons overthrowing the government of a small Caribbean island nation. It was about salvaging the last surviving vestiges of Sylvester Stallone’s battered soul so he wouldn’t go dead inside like Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eric Roberts all did. Apparently in The Expendables‘ world there’s some dimmer switch on every man’s soul that only women have access to, and once it goes all the way off it can never come back on.

• Jet Li is getting old. Turns out he’s 48. He was mostly used for comic relief in this movie, which was sad considering all the awesome things I’ve seen Jet Li do.

• Put The Expendables down on the list with every other movie ever made (except possibly Idiocracy) under the heading “Films that have underutilized Terry Crews.”

Don’t get me wrong, Crews was awesome in The Expendables, but there should have been way more of him. This man is a towering talent who needs a better vehicle. I’m not kidding. I watched every episode of Everybody Hates Chris only because of how amazing he was in it. He took a mediocre sitcom, put it on his giant shoulders and carried it into hilarity.

I feel like because he’s a huge, jacked black guy, Crews is doomed to get typecast in Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr. roles. But he is clearly capable of so much more than that. I would go see Eat Pray Love on opening night if Terry Crews played the romantic male lead. Or the Julia Roberts part. Whatever. Dude is unbelievable.

• Schwarzenegger’s cameo is awful. It’s during the boring, talking part of the movie, but even considering that it kills the whole pace of the thing. I mean screeching-halt bad. I guess it’s cool that the governor of California was in the movie, but he didn’t even kick any asses. I could’ve done without the whole part. Plus that was the only part of the movie that broke the fourth wall in the meta wink-wink way I referred to earlier, and it just came off as lame and forced.

What’s happening in Oakland?

Posted on by
1

So I think maybe the reports of Billy Beane’s decline were greatly exaggerated.

The A’s currently have in their starting rotation Trevor Cahill, a 22-year-old with a 168 ERA+, Gio Gonzalez, a 24-year-old with a 126 ERA+, Brett Anderson, 22 with a 123 mark, Vin Mazzaro, 23 with a 113, and familiar king-of-the-hill Dallas Braden, freshly 27 with a 124 rate.

But here’s the sort of interesting part: Of the five, only Gonzalez really strikes many batters out, and not really a ton. Cahill and Anderson get a lot of ground balls, but nearly everyone on Oakland’s staff is outperforming his peripherals.

So what’s that about? Most likely it has something to do with the A’s big park and good defense and a little bit of good luck. But I want to stay open to the possibility that Beane has figured out something about pitching that the stats community hasn’t picked up on yet.

I kind of doubt it. But then Braden is going on his third straight season of being about a run better than his xFIP, and Andrew Bailey’s like that too. Certainly far stranger things have happened within the normal course of randomness, but I’d like to be able to maintain this mancrush on Billy Beane as long as possible because he sort of looks like Norm MacDonald, so it helps me identify “my type.”

Anyway, Jeff Fletcher of AOL Fanhouse and I preview the A’s-Yanks series here:

What the…

Posted on by
3

An accomplished 13-year-old motorcycle racer died Sunday after he fell off his bike and was run over by another motorcycle at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The racer, Peter Lenz of Vancouver, Wash., was pronounced dead by the Marion County coroner, who said Lenz had sustained “traumatic injuries.” Lenz crashed on a warm-up lap before his race and was struck by 12-year-old Xavier Zayat, who was uninjured.

– Associated Press.

Yikes. Look: I’m not one to make sweeping value judgments, especially when it comes to parenting. And any way you look at it, that’s an awful, awful tragedy.

But holy crap, what the hell? 13-year-olds and 12-year-olds racing motorcycles at 100 miles an hour? Who thinks that’s a good idea?

I’m sorry. Just… I’m sorry. The AP story mentions that the accident may “fuel a debate about how young is too young for racers to be competing,” and I’ll go ahead and say 12 is too young. Have you seen a 12-year-old lately? That’s a child.

And don’t get me wrong, I was doing plenty of stuff that put my life in danger when I was 12 — most of it involving fire. But that’s exactly the point: 12-year-olds have terrible judgment. If someone said to 12-year-old me, “hey kid, you wanna go race 100-mile-an-hour motorcycles?” I’d be all, “Hell yes I do!” Now, at 29, I’d think about it more.

Just seems like a situation where some responsible party has to step in. The state, the sport’s governing body, someone.

Terrible things happen all the time and no amount of governing will prevent every tragedy. But to me it seems like a good idea to at least take kids out of harm’s way.