Shakespeare In The Alley

i guess it got him in a good spot. he never went down, and he sounded sharp and alert when the coaches and trainers came out to the mound. im no expert, and hopefully nothing's suddenly wrong with him today, but he seemed ok. definitely a scary situation regardless, especially with what mccarthy went through earlier this year.

the giants, man. ive never seen a team catch every possible break the way those guys have been lately. im not saying theyre playing anything less than great baseball (they certainly deserve all these wins), but geez. the shattered bats spinning the ball three different ways, line drives hitting the base and the pitchers head, bunts somehow staying fair. crazy stuff. did not expect this series to be 2-0 at this point, especially not 2-0 giants.

I also have no interest in seeing him back as a Giant.

it'll be interesting to follow. the way they've carried on without him makes it kinda weird to imagine him back, but he'd probably be relatively cheap now. im in dc and ive only seen one article implying the giants will try to bring him back. whats the word in san fran on this?

but no one said that

Would the Giants have made the postseason without a drug-enhanced Melky Cabrera?

they basically did. if i remember correctly they were neck and neck (or at least very close) with the dodgers when melky was suspended, and they really put the division away without him. of course he was a big part of them competing for the first half of the season anyway, but they've done fine without him. i thought it was cool that they left him off the postseason roster. would have been a slap in the face to one of the guys that played the last two months to suddenly not be able to play in the world series. wouldnt shock me if hes back in san fran next year though.

was not expecting last night at all. this giants team is on fire at the perfect time

but then there'd be no more baseball and i dont see how thats desirable at all

probably why i, as a short and scrawny guy, pull for him. he looked great as a reliever so far this postseason, but last night wasnt a great outing for him. it'll be interesting to see what happens after this season. i hope the giants dont give up on him completely, but pitching's such a weird thing that its not too ridiculous to think he'll never be dominant again.

perhaps

he also lost a bunch of weight last offseason and has an inherently weird delivery that can easily fall apart. i like the guy a lot so i'd like to see him return to form as a starter, but he might be quickly heading towards a second career as a bullpen guy.

i still want to see the giants somehow pull this out, but cards/tigers would be a hell of a series, and a great test of detroit's dominant pitching.

i think those springsteen ads are the worst part of the tbs coverage

Both. It's been my position that the Nats aren't quite fundamentaly sound enough for the trophy. Ironically, I thought the bullpen was the least of their worries. And the Cardinals are relentless opportunists.

id agree with this. the nats were never gonna win the title this year, which is why the strasburg thing never bothered me. their main core is too young and inexperienced, pitching especially. storen's a talented young closer, he just didnt have it last night. it happens. the cards have consistently showed why playoff experience matters. it was a great season for dc and they fought hard. cant call it a disappointment by any means. a lot of key players on the nats got big game experience over the last week, and thats the big takeaway. it was a learning experience from the start, and im excited to see how they come back from last nights heartbreak.

i guess im pulling for giants and tigers now, but anyone except the yankees would be alright with me.

again, content in any lyrical music form can be terrible and offensive. there's a whole lot of misogyny in a whole lot of legendary rock and roll songs, do you avoid listening to them or write off the genre because of it? if rapping as opposed to singing makes the difference (which i can totally understand. for me rappers are just like singers in that some have voices i can listen to and some cant) in whether you like the music or not, that makes sense. but the content argument doesn't really hold much water, because there's plenty of rap that doesn't objectify women or violence, or even use profanity at all. the lazy part is assuming thats not the case.

rap may be inescapable, but the best and most powerful of it isn't, and thats my point. it seems like you're judging a great deal of it on the awful crap that sells millions these days, when that doesn't speak for the whole genre by any means.

and you're confusing sampling and stealing. they aren't the same at all. yeah there are examples of producers ripping off someone else's music in a lazy fashion (again, in other genres as well), but there are also examples of producers taking bits and pieces of someone else's music, adding their own contributions, and forming a new sound. anyone can take a full instrumental track from another song and rap over it, but thats not what sampling is about. pauls boutique by the beastie boys is one of my favorite albums of all time, and each song is composed of dozens, even hundreds, of music samples. its about tweaking and layering sounds in the same way using guitar bass and drums is, and it requires just as much creative vision to accomplish. sampling, when done right, is a beautiful thing, and calling it stealing is just wrong. yeah there are cases of lazy producers just stealing other people's work, but there are also cases of using the art of sampling to create sounds no one could have envisioned, and push music into strange new places just like the electric guitar or any other technological innovation. even the grey album isnt "simply" a mash-up of other people's work. that would imply danger mouse just took jay z vocals and laid them over beatles instrumentals, when in reality there's more to it than that. just as i can listen to a lot of jazz and enjoy it but not quite get why, you apparently can't see the vision and talent required to accomplish something like the grey album or pauls boutique.

speaking of jazz, i would suggest you give a tribe called quest a listen if you havent already. "the low end theory" is a landmark in hip hop, and pop music in general, and it's so deeply rooted in jazz i think you might enjoy it. hell, ron carter even plays bass on it. in exchange for his playing, q-tip (who has one of my favorite rapper voices. very pleasant and smooth. easy to listen to) promised not to use profanity on the album. theres a lot of respect between jazz guys and rap guys, im honestly a little surprised you're so opposed to rap music. a lot of great hip hop comes from a great love (or at least knowledge) of jazz music.

again, im not trying to make rap lovers out of anyone. there are just a lot of criticisms of the genre that bug me

lol

 

Jay-Z/Kayne --- Watch the Throne

Outkast --- Stankonia, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Jay-Z/Beatles --- The Grey Album

not a bad batch

you could do better with jay and kanye albums though, if you're interested. late registration is probably kanye's best, and the blueprint or the black album for jay.

although i kinda prefer the grey album to the black album, so thats a good one to have

Not really. If you don't think you like jazz, are you going to listen to a ton of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny G, Chuck Mangione, Eberhard Weber and John Abercrombie just to be sure? I have heard more than I care to of just about all the major rap stars, and then when people tried to "open my mind" to the "greats" of the genre, I also tried listening to Public Enemy, The Roots, Lil Wayne and The Beastie Boys. I hated every single second of it. Why should I torture myself just to make sure I really, really dislike something? I have already proven to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm not "lazy" for not delving further and further into something I find utterly without merit.

no, thats not quite what i meant. disliking the whole genre isn't lazy criticism. if you've given it a fair shot (which you seem to have done) then thats fine. youre right, at a certain point there isnt much sense in digging deeper. my beef is that louie's criticism is exactly what you could say about the majority of any genre, and doesnt really say anything about why hip hop beyond public enemy hasn't done much for him. objectifying women is a reasonable qualm, but hip hop is far from the only place you'll find that, and its far from the only thing rappers talk about

so just for curiosity's sake, why did you hate every second of what you heard? honest question here. im not the biggest hip hop fan by any means, but there's a great deal of it that i love dearly and have a hard time picturing someone not enjoying.

I have also gotten into those discussions here and admittedly there is some rap I can tolerate and Public Enemy had lots of social commentary involved which gives it some interest to me. But so much of the rest is just a bunch of crap cobbled together by folks who borrow beats, samples and simply can not sing and have nothing to say.

without getting into the fact that sampling can be as valid and creative an artform as writing songs on a guitar, this is basically as true about rock as it is about rap. you cant judge entire genres on their worst examples. it will require a little digging to find the truly great hip hop stuff, just like rock or jazz or whatever.

theres nothing wrong with disliking the whole genre, thats just lazy criticism

justin verlander in two alds starts, including a 122 pitch complete game tonight:

16IP

7H

5BB

1R (on the first AB of the first game)

22 Ks

0.56 ERA

But what is it about Ryan's statement that makes him a "dick wad"? Ryan said that it wasn't the best time for all involved for him to quit. Hamilton himself said during the year that his decision to quit was impacting his performance. If it has that kind of detrimental effect on how well you perform your job for which you're paid millions of dollars, it would probably have been a wiser move to do it in the offseason, which is all Ryan said. There wasn't anything untrue or "dickish" about Ryan simply stating what happened.

 

Good luck to whatever team pays for Hamilton this winter. I like him as a player and as a person. He's overcome a lot. And he's certainly contributed greatly to the Rangers' success these last three years. But he's a high-maintenance drama queen and the money it would take to re-sign him will be better spent elsewhere.

i wouldnt say it makes nolan a dick, but that comment came across as something that didnt really need to be said in such a public way. its true, it wasnt the best time for hamilton the player to make a huge lifestyle change, but its a little callous to call someone out for trying to kick a destructive habit.

either way it does kinda solidify that he wont be back in texas next year. it'll be interesting to see where he ends up, and for how much.

fair enough. agree to disagree. we'll see what the next few years bring.

now here we have a baseball executive who cares about his players.

the world series is always the goal, but i dont think any gm would say his job is to put together a winning team for just one year. every gm in the game wants to put together a team that can compete for many years, especially a gm like rizzo who hasnt really built his team through big name free agents. the nats organization is largely homegrown, and mostly scouted by rizzo himself. the nats were just barely out of the rebuilding stage when this season began. this wasnt the year they were supposed to truly compete, so they've been more or less playing with house money all year. he apparently decided shutting down strasburg was the best way to have more than one good season, and he's stuck to it. i know im not the only nats fan who has no problem with that. hell even strasburg is realizing it's the right call.

the closest thing to proof that it was or wasnt the right decision will come in a few years, when strasburg nears free agency. if the nats dont make the playoffs again, that's when it will really screw them over, not this year.

idk, winning a world series would be great but i cant justify maybe driving a young pitcher's career into the ground to do so. there are levels of sacrifices (kirk gibsons home run is iconic for a reason) but that seems too far in my mind. especially for a team that i couldnt see making the world series even when strasburg was pitching.

and thats a risk i'm ok with. apparently mike rizzo agrees.

and those players were never the same

i'd rather have a guy like strasburg available for several ws runs. apparently mike rizzo agrees

that seems to be the view of more people outside the nats fanbase than within. the shutdown is predominantly supported among folks in dc. if strasburg was their only talented pitcher or player, i'd think it was a terrible decision. but he wasnt.

on another forum the same people saying rizzo's an idiot for shutting down strasburg are criticizing dusty baker and the cubs folks for overworking prior and wood. it's a lose lose situation i guess.

I wonder how Mike Rizzo is feeling these days. It was a horrible decision several weeks ago and it's blatantly apparent it was a horrible decision now to shut down Strasburg. He's potentially cost the team and the fans a legitimate chance at a WS Championship.

for whatever it's worth he maintains that it was the right decision then and now, regardless of playoff outcome. you gotta at least respect that, right?

personally i agreed with the shutdown. strasburg's last few starts before the shutdown weren't up to par, his velocity was considerably down, and it was a good idea to not push him. baseball is unfortunately littered with great arms that wore down too quick, and though you can never really prove for sure if this was a good idea, it's certainly not "blatantly horrible" either. it's grounded in putting a young player's long term health over an immediate championship, which i think is refreshing as hell.

anyway, his absence isnt the reason the nats are on the verge of elimination. for one, the bats are doing nothing, and no pitcher in the game could win without any run support at all. second, gio and jordan zimmermann were just as good as strasburg during the regular season, and they both got rocked in their first postseason starts. its very likely the same would have happened to strasburg. playoff baseball's a crazy thing, and experience matters. the nats dont have it.

as cheesy as it sounds, i really believe next year is when the nats will truly come into their own, and this year was just a bonus preview. this team is filled with players on the verge of extraordinary things, and it'll be exciting to see next years braves/nats fight for the pennant. it was nice to see them in the playoffs in the first place, and if they lose today that's 4 games experience to build on next year. its been a fun season

you know the rule doesnt say that it has to be in the infield at all, right? hell, it can be even further into the outfield if the ump deems it so. it concerns infielders, and whether or not they can catch a pop up with a reasonable effort. not to say that was the right call in that game (personally I think it was wrong, more for the delayed call than the position in the outfield) but its at the umpire's judgement.

and the call was late, but not "after the ball hit the ground" late.

its a legitimate beef, but im pretty tired of hearing about it. win at least one game on the road, then you get three chances to win two at home. good baseball teams should be able to win anywhere.

it's a onetime quirk, and the owners voted on the damn thing in the first place.

home field is way more important in the next two rounds anyway (though world series home field is obviously the biggest flaw in baseball right now, something we can all agree on)