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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2022 20:50:54 GMT -5
Cue the Brass Bonanza! The Whaler-successors take down the hated Boston Bruins 5-1 in the opening game of their 1st round playoff series.
-M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 2, 2022 22:05:47 GMT -5
Alright, I need some help from the baseball folks. I’m reading a brand new, not yet published, biography of Jim Thorpe. Besides being the greatest track star of his day and the greatest football star of his day, Thorpe also played Major League Baseball for six seasons. Looking at his stats, I think that John McGraw absolutely screwed up his (Thorpe’s) career. But maybe I’m wrong.
Essentially Thorpe sat on the bench his first three seasons with the Giants. He never played in more than 30 games a season and never had more than 52 at bats. Then in 1917 he was traded to Cincinnati where he played in 77 games and hit .247 before being sent back to the Giants. McGraw mostly sat him in 1918 and the first part of 1919 before he was sent to the Boston Braves where he played in 60 games and hit .327/.360/.429.
So in 1920 and 1921 he played in Akron and then Toledo, which were at that time the equivalent of Triple-A teams. He started full seasons and hit .360 and .358 with slugging percentages of .563 and .535.
I’m not trying to contend he was ever going to be a Hall of Famer in baseball, like he was in football. But he should have spent a couple of years in the high minors to hone his game instead of riding the bench. McGraw brought him in as a sideshow attraction and then killed his career is my contention. But correct me if I’m wrong. I think the numbers in Boston and in the minors indicate he could have been a very good, if not great, baseball player.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 3, 2022 11:10:19 GMT -5
Alright, I need some help from the baseball folks. I’m reading a brand new, not yet published, biography of Jim Thorpe. Besides being the greatest track star of his day and the greatest football star of his day, Thorpe also played Major League Baseball for six seasons. Looking at his stats, I think that John McGraw absolutely screwed up his (Thorpe’s) career. But maybe I’m wrong. Essentially Thorpe sat on the bench his first three seasons with the Giants. He never played in more than 30 games a season and never had more than 52 at bats. Then in 1917 he was traded to Cincinnati where he played in 77 games and hit .247 before being sent back to the Giants. McGraw mostly sat him in 1918 and the first part of 1919 before he was sent to the Boston Braves where he played in 60 games and hit .327/.360/.429. So in 1920 and 1921 he played in Akron and then Toledo, which were at that time the equivalent of Triple-A teams. He started full seasons and hit .360 and .358 with slugging percentages of .563 and .535. I’m not trying to contend he was ever going to be a Hall of Famer in baseball, like he was in football. But he should have spent a couple of years in the high minors to hone his game instead of riding the bench. McGraw brought him in as a sideshow attraction and then killed his career is my contention. But correct me if I’m wrong. I think the numbers in Boston and in the minors indicate he could have been a very good, if not great, baseball player. There was blame all round. Thorpe was signed by the Giants in a bidding war with several other teams for what was then an enormous fee. There was no way that an attraction like him was going to be sent to the minors for a few years, but as superb an athlete as he was, he just couldn't be a major league regular on raw talent alone. And he and McGraw just were a bad mix. McGraw was a tough, no-nonsense manager, and Thorpe was no angel. They clashed frequently about everything from his work habits to his off-field behavior, though, to be fair, McGraw always kept those disagreements in the clubhouse. Now, McGraw was no angel. Like Thorpe, he was drinking way too much himself, and he was not a patient teacher, especially if his pupil wasn't prone to listen. Remember that by the time Thorpe signed with the Giants he was essentially a combination of Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown, a worldwide celebrity who was the greatest athlete of his era, an astounding athlete who could dominate semi-pro and even high minors pitching. However, baseball calls for a whole different method of applying speed and strength, the skills Thorpe relied on in track and football. He had difficulty not only hitting the breaking ball, but at judging flies. He had the talent, but never quite got the hang of being a good teammate (he was known for pulling risky pranks, like dangling a teammate from the fourteenth floor of a hotel and getting into friendly scuffles that would get out of hand, leading to the teammates' being injured) or of simply listening to coaching. In simplest terms, he never learned to hit the curve, a fact he himself admitted. Thorpe was just not "coachable." Meanwhile, McGraw was less and less open to trying to coach him. And he wanted to win ballgames, niot be a celbrity's sidekick. (There was definitely jealousy on McGraw's part.) I don't think Thorpe's heart was truly ever in baseball; he played it as a way to get from football season to football season. I also don't think that McGraw expected that Thorpe would be as raw a ballplayer or as undisciplined a person as he turned out to be. It was a bad mix, unfortunately. I wouldn't blame McGraw entirely. I'm not even sure there was much more he could have done or was capable of doing at the time. And I say this as someone who has always loved Thorpe.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 3, 2022 11:54:59 GMT -5
Alright, I need some help from the baseball folks. I’m reading a brand new, not yet published, biography of Jim Thorpe. Besides being the greatest track star of his day and the greatest football star of his day, Thorpe also played Major League Baseball for six seasons. Looking at his stats, I think that John McGraw absolutely screwed up his (Thorpe’s) career. But maybe I’m wrong. Essentially Thorpe sat on the bench his first three seasons with the Giants. He never played in more than 30 games a season and never had more than 52 at bats. Then in 1917 he was traded to Cincinnati where he played in 77 games and hit .247 before being sent back to the Giants. McGraw mostly sat him in 1918 and the first part of 1919 before he was sent to the Boston Braves where he played in 60 games and hit .327/.360/.429. So in 1920 and 1921 he played in Akron and then Toledo, which were at that time the equivalent of Triple-A teams. He started full seasons and hit .360 and .358 with slugging percentages of .563 and .535. I’m not trying to contend he was ever going to be a Hall of Famer in baseball, like he was in football. But he should have spent a couple of years in the high minors to hone his game instead of riding the bench. McGraw brought him in as a sideshow attraction and then killed his career is my contention. But correct me if I’m wrong. I think the numbers in Boston and in the minors indicate he could have been a very good, if not great, baseball player. There was blame all round. Thorpe was signed by the Giants in a bidding war with several other teams for what was then an enormous fee. There was no way that an attraction like him was going to be sent to the minors for a few years, but as superb an athlete as he was, he just couldn't be a major league regular on raw talent alone. And he and McGraw just were a bad mix. McGraw was a tough, no-nonsense manager, and Thorpe was no angel. They clashed frequently about everything from his work habits to his off-field behavior, though, to be fair, McGraw always kept those disagreements in the clubhouse. Now, McGraw was no angel. Like Thorpe, he was drinking way too much himself, and he was not a patient teacher, especially if his pupil wasn't prone to listen. Remember that by the time Thorpe signed with the Giants he was essentially a combination of Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown, a worldwide celebrity who was the greatest athlete of his era, an astounding athlete who could dominate semi-pro and even high minors pitching. However, baseball calls for a whole different method of applying speed and strength, the skills Thorpe relied on in track and football. He had difficulty not only hitting the breaking ball, but at judging flies. He had the talent, but never quite got the hang of being a good teammate (he was known for pulling risky pranks, like dangling a teammate from the fourteenth floor of a hotel and getting into friendly scuffles that would get out of hand, leading to the teammates' being injured) or of simply listening to coaching. In simplest terms, he never learned to hit the curve, a fact he himself admitted. Thorpe was just not "coachable." Meanwhile, McGraw was less and less open to trying to coach him. And he wanted to win ballgames, niot be a celbrity's sidekick. (There was definitely jealousy on McGraw's part.) I don't think Thorpe's heart was truly ever in baseball; he played it as a way to get from football season to football season. I also don't think that McGraw expected that Thorpe would be as raw a ballplayer or as undisciplined a person as he turned out to be. It was a bad mix, unfortunately. I wouldn't blame McGraw entirely. I'm not even sure there was much more he could have done or was capable of doing at the time. And I say this as someone who has always loved Thorpe. He clearly wasn't going to get by on sheer athletic ability. But the reports of his being "undisciplined" appear to be, to a decent extent, sheer retrospective racism. Thorpe was absolutely able to buckle down and train. He did at Carlisle when he was training for the Olympics. He had never competed in either the javelin or the pole vault, but he trained extensively in both as well as the longer distance runs. And in that era I'm not sure he was any more boisterous or disruptive than the vast majority of ball-players. He definitely struggled to hit curve balls. No doubt there. Baseball was absolutely not an afterthought for him. It was really his best ticket to make a living. Pro Football was so far down the pecking order in sports at that point that it was barely above working as a ditch-digger. And he didn't start playing pro football until the 1915 season. He'd been with the Giants since the 1913 season. So he didn't start playing pro football until it had become apparent the Giants didn't know what to do with him. He also never played football until the baseball season was done. I get that McGraw overpaid for him. But the investment didn't make any sense if you're just going to let him ride the bench. But what do I know?
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Post by Prince Hal on May 3, 2022 16:30:18 GMT -5
Oh, he wasn't undisciplined when he was in training for track and field, @slambradleybut Thorpe just didn't take to McGraw's style of coaching, perhaps understandably. Even football games were more like personal, one-man events for him; he ran, threw, kicked and defended like no one else. And he wasn't used to being just another guy on the team, with justification. When McGraw dumped him early in the 1919 season, not least because the war was over and the pool of available players had increased and improved, Thorpe went to the Boston Braves and his average kept pace was a solid .327 at the end of the year, but that was in just 60 games. (He did mange to hit the curve that season, he always claimed.) He again ran into trouble with his manager, though, and that would be his final season.
Had Thorpe had different managers, had he not drunk quite so much, and had he not been prone to distraction (there more incdents of his pranking with Boston), he certainly would have been a far better ballplayer. It's just too bad that it had to be McGraw and the Giants who signed him because he might've made a far better living had he beeen with a manager who could have worked with him. But I'm not sure there were too many of those in the 19-teens. As it was he was a gate attraction at times and a source of publicity for the Giants.
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2022 22:54:19 GMT -5
Wow, the triple overtime game between the Penguins and Rangers tonight was amazing. The Penguins goalie had to leave the game halfway through the second overtime and their back up had only played 4 NHL games in the last 3 seasons, and had been sitting for almost 4 hours and had to come in the game cold, and he stops 17 shots to pitch a shut out in overtime before the Pens netted one to win it with about 5 minutes left in the third overtime. Hey The Captain have you been following the Pens this year? -M
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Post by The Captain on May 4, 2022 6:16:53 GMT -5
@mrp, I have absolutely been following the Pens this year. Hockey is my favorite sport among the “Big Four” here in North America (while English football is probably my favorite overall).
This is probably the last ride for the Pens’ core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. They’re all at least 34 years old, and both Malkin and Letang are unrestricted free agents after this season. While the sentimental argument is to keep them together as long as possible, it probably isn’t feasible with the salary cap restraints. Crosby isn’t going anywhere (I will almost guarantee he never wears another teams’ sweater), but I can definitely see Malkin jumping somewhere else to spend a few seasons out of Crosby’s shadow. Letang should be brought back, but he might want to cash in on a final big money contract.
As for the game last night, it should be noted that they had to bring in their THIRD-STRING goalie to finish the game. Tristan Jarry, their starter all season, was injured in mid-April, so Casey DeSmith ascended and NHL journeyman Louie Domingue took the back-up role. Just a gutty performance to stay in the game while Rangers’ goalie, and likely Vezina Award winner, was just freaking incredible, making 79 saves on 83 shots against.
On a related topic, one of my favorite hockey/college memories involved the Pens and Flyers playing a five-OT epic back in 2000. It was a night during finals, and I listened to almost the entire game on the radio while writing a paper on the Battle of Quebec for my US Military History class. The only part of the game I missed was when I went to the nearby Catholic church for their “midnight pancake recharge”, which they did for the students during finals for those of us who found ourselves up extra late. I left around 11:45, got back to my dorm around 12:30, and still had 2 hours of hockey to listen to while I finished my paper.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2022 18:42:25 GMT -5
So want a snapshot of the Sox season. They lead 1-0 (the only way they can win a game it seems) through 8 innings, so of course the bullpen gives up the tying run in the top of the ninth. Bottom of the ninth, hey they manage to get runners at second and third with 1 out. Pinch hitter Bobby Dalbec strikes out looking on 4 pitches. Big money acquisition Trevor Story pops out on the first pitch. No runs scored on to extras where our thin bullpen has to try to keep putting up zeroes but we're already 4 arms deep into the bullpen and have Matt "I throw batting practice fastball now" Barnes coming in to try to keep it tied with a runner already at second. And why the hell call up Duran for 1 day. The kid did more in that one day than Kiki Hernandez has done all season but we'll send him back down as a reward as soon as Kiki tests negative for COVID because that will help his confidence after it got shattered last season in the show. Prince Hal it's getting really hard to keep following this iteration of the Sox. -M
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2022 18:43:08 GMT -5
And Barnes promptly gives up 2 runs.
-M
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Post by Prince Hal on May 7, 2022 22:08:17 GMT -5
And Sox 2-3-4 hitters go down in order in the tenth.
Sending Dalbec to the plate in the ninth was cruel and unusual punishment for him and us both. Arroyo could at least have put his bat on the ball and dalbec would have been spared further mental anguish.
It says a lot when Jackie has been your best hitter lately. And despite all the attempts by the Sox flacks to tout JD Martinez' hitiing streak and other seemingly above-average stats, every Sox fan worth his or her salted peanuts knows that his stats are hollow. The stats-nerds can haul out all the WAR stories they want and pooh-pooh the notion of clutch hitting, but we can all see that he has been worthless in ke ta-bats, waving his bat at unhittable low outside sliders or standing there looking dumbfounded when he's been out-thought and a fastball down the middle catches him by complete surprise. He shuffles back to the dugout impassively and buries his snout in his I-pad, "watching video." (A euphemism for pretending he has a clue.)
Sox are giving away at-bats like the Salvation Army dishing out mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. Hernandez is back to being Joe Hardy; Devers still swinging at everything and mostly missing, and don't the opposing pitchers know it; Story is this year's Carl Crawford; Barnes is not even an American legion-level pitcher; and the "starters" are pulled even when they are perfect through four or five, because analytics.
It's not even a hot mess anymore, it's a cold, soggy pile of c-r-a-p. Suddenly my evenings are looking a lot more open for me and my wife, @mrp.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2022 22:19:24 GMT -5
And Sox 2-3-4 hitters go down in order in the tenth. Sending Dalbec to the plate in the ninth was cruel and unusual punishment for him and us both. Arroyo could at least have put his bat on the ball and dalbec would have been spared further mental anguish. It says a lot when Jackie has been your best hitter lately. And despite all the attempts by the Sox flacks to tout JD Martinez' hitiing streak and other seemingly above-average stats, every Sox fan worth his or her salted peanuts knows that his stats are hollow. The stats-nerds can haul out all the WAR stories they want and pooh-pooh the notion of clutch hitting, but we can all see that he has been worthless in ke ta-bats, waving his bat at unhittable low outside sliders or standing there looking dumbfounded when he's been out-thought and a fastball down the middle catches him by complete surprise. He shuffles back to the dugout impassively and buries his snout in his I-pad, "watching video." (A euphemism for pretending he has a clue.) Sox are giving away at-bats like the Salvation Army dishing out mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. Hernandez is back to being Joe Hardy; Devers still swinging at everything and mostly missing, and don't the opposing pitchers know it; Story is this year's Carl Crawford; Barnes is not even an American legion-level pitcher; and the "starters" are pulled even when they are perfect through four or five, because analytics. It's not even a hot mess anymore, it's a cold, soggy pile of c-r-a-p. Suddenly my evenings are looking a lot more open for me and my wife, @mrp. I was excited when they called up Duran and inserted him in the lead off spot. Every article was "calling up the offensive spark plug" and well 1-4 wasn't a great debut and it was a single misplayed into a triple, but that speed looked good on the basepaths. And it felt like they were doing something to shake things up. But one day later, bye bye Duran, hello same ole, same ole. And every day it's the same freakin' article on the official Sox page on the MLB site. Headline Sox hitters confident things will turn around; article some player who's not hitting-I feel we're on the right track t's just going to take a big day to break us out of it, we're doing all the right things and we can't change anything. Um. excuse me. You keep doing the same thing and expect a different result? Yep, that's a good plan. Waiting for somebody to wave the magic wand (which doesn't resemble a Red Sox bat in any way shape or form) to turn on the magic hitting formula where what you've been doing for a month and a half that's resulted in jackshit will soddenly result in buckets of runs. Can we possibly peddle any more stupidity into the vapid world of sports interviews? They need a shake up. They need to light a fire under their ass. Cora needs to be the bad guy and bench some guys, Bloom needs to demote some others and bring in some blood and tell them, play better or sit no matter how much you make or what analytics say. They've wasted so many good starts, hell even Pivetta had a good start tonight but got no support. They need a CG shutout every night to have a chance to win. Their starters aren't efficient enough despite stat lines-100 pitches in 5 innings is too much. They've got maybe 1 or 2 major league relievers on the roster, if that, and their vaunted overpriced lineup can't be bothered to try to figure out why their approach isn't working. They're behind the Orioles in the standings and I am not sure that's going to change all season if they keep on with the same ole same ole. But at least they're not the Reds who may be lucky to crack double digit wins by the All Star Break. But it's the complacency in the moves and the comments I see each day that is infuriating. -M
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Post by Prince Hal on May 8, 2022 22:32:38 GMT -5
Instant replay today, @mrp.
But at least the B's won!
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2022 23:04:17 GMT -5
Instant replay today, @mrp. But at least the B's won! Grrr! I still root for the Whaler successors, so the Bruins winning was not a consolation. -M
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2022 14:53:39 GMT -5
Prince HalI think Josh Naylor of the Guardians had more RBI from the 8th inning on last night than the Red Sox have in the 8th inning on all season... -M
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Post by Prince Hal on May 10, 2022 15:42:50 GMT -5
Prince Hal I think Josh Naylor of the Guardians had more RBI from the 8th inning on last night than the Red Sox have in the 8th inning on all season... -M I'm pretty sure Sox have yet to score more than two runs in an inning all season.
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