The Sounds are on their 2008 West Coast swing and pennant fever is in the air. Not for us, we couldn’t see first place with the Hubble telescope, but Sacramento is preparing for their obligatory place in the post-season. They win so much it makes me want to puke and I would if I weren’t writing this on a bus full of players who would strap me to the roof if I did. Sacramento may have a sense of entitlement to the playoffs, much like the Yankees do, and for the last three years prior to this one, so did the Sounds, but its hard to not enjoy yourself there. We stay in a pretty nice Holiday Inn Express (same as visiting teams do in Nashville) that is attached to a nice mall and the park is within walking distance and the park is great! Sacramento leads all minor league baseball in attendance as they have pretty much since they opened the gates in 2001. The fans are pretty nice (at least to me they were, they booed the brass buttons off of Danny Shafer when he walked in a run) the weather is always 88 degrees with no humidity and nary a cloud in the sky, The Sounds, by the way, split with the Rivercats, no small feat. The only real complaint I have about the Rivercats is the name, the Rivercats. It seems the Sacramento ownership group drew the name out of the hat. One hat has a geographical feature, a lake, a river, a swamp or a hill. The other hat has a creature such as dog, cat, dragon, porcupine, etc. Draw a name from each hat and you have a team name. I pretty certain they don’t always keep the first ones drawn or we might wind up with the Sacramento PuddlePoodles or the Savannah CliffLemmings. Lets face it, another name for a RiverCat is “Drowned Kitten” since cats are not known for their swimming ability. It’s really nitpicking. I really couldn’t care less what they call themselves. They could call themselves the Sacramento Hell’s Angels Chapter for all I care. Its still a great park and a great place to stay and the fans turn out in droves.
I should be happy but an impending sense of dread hangs over me and I don’t know why.
Yes, I do. I am on a bus heading to Fresno, a prospect I look forward to as much as a prostate exam. The difference being that a prostate exam doesn’t last four days, like the Fresno trip does. The park is nice. It has a new name, named after an Indian Reservation Casino. I can’t quite remember the name, but if you backed up about 20 feet and got a running start and leaped on your keyboard, you’d probably type out something pretty close. The hotel is not bad, but it reminds me of the Ambassador Hotel in Beirut, Lebanon; nice enough as long as your room is not on the north side because that is where all the artillery shells land.
The fans are another matter. Trying to figure out people in Fresno is like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube, but a Rubik’s Cube that is always asking you for change and some of the squares are broken off. There are some nice people there, but they just seem to be fewer and farther between. I kid you not; I walked out of my hotel room and was greeted by an Imperial Storm Trooper and the Joker from the “Dark Knight” movie. There were adults in the lobby swinging fake swords and shooting each other with laser guns. Half the people in there were off their nut.***Just as I wrote this, one of these Obi Wan Idiots set off the fire alarm. The Fresno Fire Department responded and were NOT amused***.
There are some encouraging signs for this club. Luis Pena is normally lights out in a save situation. Unfortunately when he appears in a non-save situation you have a strong desire to turn out the lights so you don’t have to watch. In Sacramento, though, something clicked. He had two solid outings without a save on the line and that is big since he very likely will get a call up this year and when he does make it to Milwaukee, it won’t be a s a closer, it will be as a back of the bullpen guy to start. Two other relievers deserve mention; Tim Dillard and Joe Bateman. Both have good arms and both have two pitches. On Bateman’s case, he throws 91-93 and can either run the ball in on the hands of righties or away. With Bateman, the result is usually not known until the last few feet. Dillard has consistently touched 93-94 mph and is much more polished than he was during the ’07 season. Three guys you might see in a Brewers uniform someday.
That’s all for now
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
"What? They Were Here a Minute Ago..."
One of the scariest movies ever made was James Cameron’s “Alien”. It was the movie that caused thousands of movie-goers to scream, “YOU IDIOT! DON’T GO DOWN THAT HALLWAY ALONE!” Of course the characters on the screen could not hear the fans screaming and walked down the hallway anyways..alone. Of course the alien creature would either:
1. Run them through with it’s tail
2. Hiss, and then chomp them in the head
3. Make them watch American Idol
While option number three was not really in the movie, it would have made the movie much grosser and creepy. And after the obligatory chomping/stabbing/Idol viewing the remaining characters would look around and say something like “Wait a minute! Where’s so and so? Let’s split up and find him!” How these meatheads ever piloted an interstellar spaceship is beyond me.
I bring up the movie “Alien” because it seems like every time I look around the Sounds clubhouse somebody else has disappeared. The ’08 Sounds have played 47 games as of May 23rd and have had 51 transactions. In the last two weeks alone, Mark DiFelice, Zach Jackson and Tim Dillard have wandered off alone down the dark hallway never to be seen again. The only difference is that they haven’t been turned into toothpicks for the “Alien” monster to pick his teeth with. They have gone up to the big leagues. A much better option, trust me. And, while it seems that something is drooling acid on the Brewers playoff bubble hopes, it is still a great life. As Crash Davis said in “Bull Durham” “You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.” Not to mention you fly charter, you get to stay at Wyndham and Marriot hotels as opposed to “the Sleep Inn” In Memphis (Good Lord, I hate that place more than Karl Rove hates Democrats).
The Sounds have made 59 transactions as of May 29th and that’s a lot of stickers on your suitcase. It has also caused the Sounds to disrupt a number of things that help the flow of a team. The teams that have done well historically have had a fairly stable roster all season, allowing players a chance to play together and learn each others abilities.
Some of the moves have helped. Getting DiFelice from extended, getting Stetter for a bit from the big leagues have all helped and the team may be better off for it once the September call-ups go. The September call-ups, when the major league rosters expand have been pretty hard to adjust to, but with this team on pace for about 130 transactions they may just shrug and say “Whatever. No biggie” the Sounds have had so many transactions I think that even I’ve been placed on the DL, sent to Helena and placed on the Temporary Inactive List…twice. In my case it should be Permanently Inactive since I sit in a chair all game.
Here’s hoping the roster starts to settle down ands the Sounds can continue to try and climb out of the cellar, because sometime soon, they bust the door off the hinges.
Okay, I’ve been listening to a lot of music on the road. A whole lot of White Stripes, some Raconteurs and these two bands. One musician is from Chicago and his album is due out soon, here’s a sneak peek at Eric Howell the brains behind Eric and the Implants. The other band I’ve mentioned before and their new album rocks. Check out “Superstar Parade” from November.
1. Run them through with it’s tail
2. Hiss, and then chomp them in the head
3. Make them watch American Idol
While option number three was not really in the movie, it would have made the movie much grosser and creepy. And after the obligatory chomping/stabbing/Idol viewing the remaining characters would look around and say something like “Wait a minute! Where’s so and so? Let’s split up and find him!” How these meatheads ever piloted an interstellar spaceship is beyond me.
I bring up the movie “Alien” because it seems like every time I look around the Sounds clubhouse somebody else has disappeared. The ’08 Sounds have played 47 games as of May 23rd and have had 51 transactions. In the last two weeks alone, Mark DiFelice, Zach Jackson and Tim Dillard have wandered off alone down the dark hallway never to be seen again. The only difference is that they haven’t been turned into toothpicks for the “Alien” monster to pick his teeth with. They have gone up to the big leagues. A much better option, trust me. And, while it seems that something is drooling acid on the Brewers playoff bubble hopes, it is still a great life. As Crash Davis said in “Bull Durham” “You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.” Not to mention you fly charter, you get to stay at Wyndham and Marriot hotels as opposed to “the Sleep Inn” In Memphis (Good Lord, I hate that place more than Karl Rove hates Democrats).
The Sounds have made 59 transactions as of May 29th and that’s a lot of stickers on your suitcase. It has also caused the Sounds to disrupt a number of things that help the flow of a team. The teams that have done well historically have had a fairly stable roster all season, allowing players a chance to play together and learn each others abilities.
Some of the moves have helped. Getting DiFelice from extended, getting Stetter for a bit from the big leagues have all helped and the team may be better off for it once the September call-ups go. The September call-ups, when the major league rosters expand have been pretty hard to adjust to, but with this team on pace for about 130 transactions they may just shrug and say “Whatever. No biggie” the Sounds have had so many transactions I think that even I’ve been placed on the DL, sent to Helena and placed on the Temporary Inactive List…twice. In my case it should be Permanently Inactive since I sit in a chair all game.
Here’s hoping the roster starts to settle down ands the Sounds can continue to try and climb out of the cellar, because sometime soon, they bust the door off the hinges.
Okay, I’ve been listening to a lot of music on the road. A whole lot of White Stripes, some Raconteurs and these two bands. One musician is from Chicago and his album is due out soon, here’s a sneak peek at Eric Howell the brains behind Eric and the Implants. The other band I’ve mentioned before and their new album rocks. Check out “Superstar Parade” from November.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Greatest Baseball Movies
Here we are. The 2008 season is underway and the Sounds are 4-15…*blink blink* Whaaaaaaaaaatttttttttt?
Yeah, it has been a disappointing start to the season. We seem to excel during the day games and have, so far, been pretty opposite of excellent during night games. This is not a good trend. Kind of like being good at javelin catching. The Sounds are NOT a 4-15 team. They have some real pop in the middle of the lineup in players like Brad Nelson, Russell Branyan, Laynce Nix, etc. and also some good pitchers in DiFelice and Narveson as well as Bray and hard throwing rightie Luis Pena. This team is a long way from being bad and I have faith that more wins are on the way.
This weeks/months/years (I tend to procrastinate at times) blog was actually inspired by a day off in Omaha, normally not a source of inspiration. This blog is about baseball movies. More than almost any other sports movies, baseball movies tend to lend themselves to our best sides. Football has Rudy, but it is mainly populated by movies such as Everybody’s All-American or North Dallas Forty or Any Given Sunday. Boxing has Rocky I-CVII but it also has Raging Bull. Basketball has Hoosiers yet it also has a sports movie starring the guy from Welcome back Kotter. If you know what the name of the movie or the actor is…don’t contact me, you are obviously obsessed with stupid things. Get a life.
Let’s look at three great baseball movies. The Natural, Field of Dreams and Bull Durham.
The Natural stars Robert Redford who, despite being a pretty boy, has done some great movies Three Days of the Condor, The Candidate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid among them. The best way to look at this movie is that, to me, it is everything baseball CAN be. The golden age of baseball. Sentimental, sappy, full of hope. Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a can’t miss prospect who encounters disaster on his way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs. He drops off the face of the earth for 16 years before deciding to give it another shot. His outstanding talent and desire to play the game the right way and help his team win wins out in the end. He even utters Ted Williams famous line, “All’s I want is that when I walk down the street, people would say, There goes Roy Hobbs, the greatest hitter who ever lived.” The only complaint I ever found in this movie is that it is based on a classic book by Bernard Malamud. In the book, Hobbs character is not a nice guy at all. He is an egotistical primadonna who takes the Judges bribe to throw the game before having a change of heart but his bad karma catches up to him and he strikes out with everybody thinking he did it on purpose. Then again, this such a hopeful film that Redford and director Barry Levinson probably had the right idea. Randy Newman’s soundtrack (yeah, the same guy who wrote “Short People”) is also a bonus.
If The Natural depicts everything that baseball CAN be, Field of Dreams depicts everything that we HOPE for in baseball and the impact the game has had on our lives. It pays tribute to the role baseball can have in the father-son relationship and the wonderful memories it can provide.
Field of Dreams revolves around Ray Kinsella, a family man trying his hand at farming. He has a great family and a great life but, he is haunted by the specter of his father, a man he cut out of his life at a young age in a moment of youthful rebellion. One day Ray hears voices in his cornfield telling him to build a ballfield in his cornfield. This starts a series of events which delves into the spiritual as ballplayers long dead come out of the corn to play on Ray’s field. The highlights of he movie to me revolve around Burt Lancaster who is great as Archie “Moonlight” Graham. Kevin Costner (Ray) and James Earl Jones first learn of Graham when they attend a Red Sox game and the scoreboard goes ballistic, kind of like the Guitar Scoreboard at Greer Stadium when it rains. Archie Graham turned out to be a ballplayer who played one game for the New York Giants and never got an at-bat, leaving baseball after the season. The two go on a quest to a small Minnesota town to find Graham only to learn that Graham died some 20 years before. Before they leave town Costner is transported back 20 years where he encounters an older Graham (Lancaster) who is the town doctor. Lancaster utters a great line only he could deliver. When Costner reminds him that he only had about a five minute career as a ballplayer before leaving to become a doctor, Lancaster tells him “Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.” Still a classic. James Earl Jones speech in the movie has been reprinted in ballparks all over the country.
Bull Durham is still the closest Hollywood has come to accurately depicting the minor leagues. Hilarious on so many levels it has a real affection for the struggle minor leaguers go through and just how difficult it is to reach “The Show”. From the bus rides to the everyday grind to the end of a players dream, Bull Durham captures the spirit of it all. Costner (again) does a great job as the grizzled veteran catcher, Crash Davis, sent down to Single-A Durham to teach prized prospect Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh(Tim Robbins) the in and outs of the game. Susan Sarandon plays a devoted fan who also happens to look like, well, Susan Sarandon. As the movie goes on, Costner teaches Robbins to respect the game while Sarandon teaches Robbins how to grow up in other ways. Of course Costner and Sarandon wind up together at the end. The conversations on the mound with pitching coach Robert Wuhl are priceless. Costner’s visits to the mound are even better. Costner was a pretty good ballplayer in his own right and the movie was written and directed by a former minor leaguer, Ron Shelton and they both worked hard to give the film an aura of authenticity.
There are some other good baseball movies like Major League and some bad ones like Babe. John Goodman looked like he was going to hit his own head with that swing of his. If you have some other favorite baseball movies, send me an email at chuck@nashvillesounds.com.
Yeah, it has been a disappointing start to the season. We seem to excel during the day games and have, so far, been pretty opposite of excellent during night games. This is not a good trend. Kind of like being good at javelin catching. The Sounds are NOT a 4-15 team. They have some real pop in the middle of the lineup in players like Brad Nelson, Russell Branyan, Laynce Nix, etc. and also some good pitchers in DiFelice and Narveson as well as Bray and hard throwing rightie Luis Pena. This team is a long way from being bad and I have faith that more wins are on the way.
This weeks/months/years (I tend to procrastinate at times) blog was actually inspired by a day off in Omaha, normally not a source of inspiration. This blog is about baseball movies. More than almost any other sports movies, baseball movies tend to lend themselves to our best sides. Football has Rudy, but it is mainly populated by movies such as Everybody’s All-American or North Dallas Forty or Any Given Sunday. Boxing has Rocky I-CVII but it also has Raging Bull. Basketball has Hoosiers yet it also has a sports movie starring the guy from Welcome back Kotter. If you know what the name of the movie or the actor is…don’t contact me, you are obviously obsessed with stupid things. Get a life.
Let’s look at three great baseball movies. The Natural, Field of Dreams and Bull Durham.
The Natural stars Robert Redford who, despite being a pretty boy, has done some great movies Three Days of the Condor, The Candidate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid among them. The best way to look at this movie is that, to me, it is everything baseball CAN be. The golden age of baseball. Sentimental, sappy, full of hope. Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a can’t miss prospect who encounters disaster on his way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs. He drops off the face of the earth for 16 years before deciding to give it another shot. His outstanding talent and desire to play the game the right way and help his team win wins out in the end. He even utters Ted Williams famous line, “All’s I want is that when I walk down the street, people would say, There goes Roy Hobbs, the greatest hitter who ever lived.” The only complaint I ever found in this movie is that it is based on a classic book by Bernard Malamud. In the book, Hobbs character is not a nice guy at all. He is an egotistical primadonna who takes the Judges bribe to throw the game before having a change of heart but his bad karma catches up to him and he strikes out with everybody thinking he did it on purpose. Then again, this such a hopeful film that Redford and director Barry Levinson probably had the right idea. Randy Newman’s soundtrack (yeah, the same guy who wrote “Short People”) is also a bonus.
If The Natural depicts everything that baseball CAN be, Field of Dreams depicts everything that we HOPE for in baseball and the impact the game has had on our lives. It pays tribute to the role baseball can have in the father-son relationship and the wonderful memories it can provide.
Field of Dreams revolves around Ray Kinsella, a family man trying his hand at farming. He has a great family and a great life but, he is haunted by the specter of his father, a man he cut out of his life at a young age in a moment of youthful rebellion. One day Ray hears voices in his cornfield telling him to build a ballfield in his cornfield. This starts a series of events which delves into the spiritual as ballplayers long dead come out of the corn to play on Ray’s field. The highlights of he movie to me revolve around Burt Lancaster who is great as Archie “Moonlight” Graham. Kevin Costner (Ray) and James Earl Jones first learn of Graham when they attend a Red Sox game and the scoreboard goes ballistic, kind of like the Guitar Scoreboard at Greer Stadium when it rains. Archie Graham turned out to be a ballplayer who played one game for the New York Giants and never got an at-bat, leaving baseball after the season. The two go on a quest to a small Minnesota town to find Graham only to learn that Graham died some 20 years before. Before they leave town Costner is transported back 20 years where he encounters an older Graham (Lancaster) who is the town doctor. Lancaster utters a great line only he could deliver. When Costner reminds him that he only had about a five minute career as a ballplayer before leaving to become a doctor, Lancaster tells him “Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.” Still a classic. James Earl Jones speech in the movie has been reprinted in ballparks all over the country.
Bull Durham is still the closest Hollywood has come to accurately depicting the minor leagues. Hilarious on so many levels it has a real affection for the struggle minor leaguers go through and just how difficult it is to reach “The Show”. From the bus rides to the everyday grind to the end of a players dream, Bull Durham captures the spirit of it all. Costner (again) does a great job as the grizzled veteran catcher, Crash Davis, sent down to Single-A Durham to teach prized prospect Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh(Tim Robbins) the in and outs of the game. Susan Sarandon plays a devoted fan who also happens to look like, well, Susan Sarandon. As the movie goes on, Costner teaches Robbins to respect the game while Sarandon teaches Robbins how to grow up in other ways. Of course Costner and Sarandon wind up together at the end. The conversations on the mound with pitching coach Robert Wuhl are priceless. Costner’s visits to the mound are even better. Costner was a pretty good ballplayer in his own right and the movie was written and directed by a former minor leaguer, Ron Shelton and they both worked hard to give the film an aura of authenticity.
There are some other good baseball movies like Major League and some bad ones like Babe. John Goodman looked like he was going to hit his own head with that swing of his. If you have some other favorite baseball movies, send me an email at chuck@nashvillesounds.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)