Matthew

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Posts posted by Matthew

  1. Posted

    58 minutes ago, Brad said:

    I thought you were a Giants and/or As fan????

    *Sigh* It's complex, it's the opposite of David's story of Yankees love, so sit down kiddies and listen to my baseball fandom story.

    I grew up in San Diego, and my first baseball memories is listening to Vin Scully, not a bad way to start, and his "it's time for Dodger baseball" is permanently emblazoned into my skull. I was a Dodgers fan before the Padres hit the MLB (they were PCL, and the first pro game I ever went to was Padres AAA team at Westgate Park, John Boozer - what a name! was the pitcher, and a group of fans behind me kept yelling "Boozer the Loser" throughout the game, I was hooked on baseball after that. I was all of seven. So when the MLB Padres hit the beach, I, of course became fan -- team number two that I followed.

    I wasted a lot of my youth in the 1970s watching terrible Padres baseball. We lived a five minute drive from the stadium, so my parents would drop me off to go to a game on my own (different time and era) nowadays, CPS would be all over that! So, I was a Padres fan, but durning the 1970s and 80s, the Dodgers were a very interesting team be a fan of, and I even convinced my parents to take me to Dodger Stadium many times to see the Boys in Blue play. Dodger Stadium is a great place to see a game. So there I was, living in SoCal, fans of the two NL teams.

    Fast forward to the 1990s, and I'm in Berkeley for six years, and I'm discovering that the two teams there were interesting and fun to follow; I mean, you had the Bash Brothers, the Roger Craig Giants, it was interesting baseball to watch, so, I became a fan of those two teams. For the A's, I could take the BART from Berkeley to their stadium, no problem. Going to Candlestick was tougher, but I made it out there. So, now I had four teams I followed and enjoyed.

    Since then, I've spent more time in NoCal than SoCal, with that, the Giants are my main team.

    So the Official Matthew Teams Rooting For Rankings:

    1. San Francisco Giants

    2. Los Angeles Dodgers

    3. San Diego Padres

    4. Oakland A's

    That's my story, yeah, I know you're supposed to be a "one team fan", but life is short and baseball is fun, so what the heck!

  2. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    24 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

    Mookie Betts now the first player in World Series history to hit a home run, steal two bases, and score two runs in the same game.

    Not that familiar with the Dodgers' pitching staff beyond Kershaw and Buehler--are they using an opener tonight, I take it?

    Yeah, Tony Gonsolin is pretty good, about a K for every inning. Basically, the Dodgers feel if they can keep the other team to four runs or lower, they're winning the game. It'd be nice to see the Dodgers win, last Championship was 1988, I went to one of the Series games in Oakland (student in Berkeley at the time), of course, it was the only game the Dodgers lost. It was the game where McGwire hit the homer in the bottom of the ninth to win the game. What I remember the most about that at bat is that Jay Howell threw McGwire about five straight fastballs, and McGwire was on them, but kept fouling them off straight behind, but you could see he had it timed, and me and my friend (from the Valley, big time Dodgers fan) kept begging for anything off-speed, but no, Howell threw one last fastball, and it was gone. Lasorda always called Howell a brain-dead pitcher after that because Howell kept shaking off the curve from Scioscia. Sometime it pays to listen to you catcher!

     

  3. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    I think have the DH actually helped Roberts manage, I was deathly afraid that he'd tinker around and pull Urias for the ninth. Also, knowing anyone he brought in had to face two batters dampened the over managing that Roberts in notorious for.

  4. Posted

    Dodgers live to see game seven. Like the Dodgers of old, three runs in the first, great pitching to hold the lead for the win. It'd be nice to see them win, but I don't have good vibes about tomorrow, this is where Roberts tends to go off the rails.

  5. Posted

    21 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

    I don't know what happens but I am torn between my affection for Dave Roberts and Mookie Betts and my long festering suspicion of them as the NY Yankees of the west coast, throwing money all over the place just without, you know, the championships.  Wait a minute - they ARE the NY Yankees of the west coast:

    Gobs of money

    No championships to show for it.

     :g

     

    You're right! And as how the Yankees keep blathering on and on and on about The Yankee Way® , so the Dodgers keep on yammering and yammering about The Dodger Way®. Just win some World Series' before the blather and yammer please! 

  6. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    These Dodgers, what happens to them in the post season? It always seems when things get tight, they disappear. I DO NOT LIKE THE WAY ROBERTS MANAGES EITHER, in big games he's frozen into some kind of predetermined game plan, and by heaven, nothing's going move him off that plan! Kershaw, come on, if anyone followed the Dodgers, you know that he should have come out after five innings. The idea of manufacturing runs has become a lost art for the Dodgers (and most teams), what ever happened to the idea that "little baseball" can win games? Lone gone in this day and age.

  7. Posted

    2 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

    Miami is not the south, properly understood. And Tampa ... not exactly southern the way North Florida is. And I was told in no uncertain terms in grad school that LBJ was a Texan, not a southerner, and that there are material differences. 

    So really the only southern MLB team is the one from Atlanta.

    And to think I really popped into this thread to state that the Rays cannot blow this series.  I would be extremely aggravated if any other MLB team ever does what the Red Sox accomplished in the 2004 ALCS.

    I always taught in history classes that the "classic definition" of a southern state was membership in the confederacy, has that changed now?

  8. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

    Ironic, isn't it, that in the last four years the NY team that got closest to the World Series was Girardi's 2017 swan song--and in a season when they weren't expected to be competing at that level.

    In the present-day postseason, I'm not shocked that the Rays are rampaging over the Astros... but I am mildly surprised that the Braves are handling the Dodgers with such ease so far (outside of L.A.'s furious near-comeback in the 9th last night).  Would a potential Atlanta-Tampa Bay matchup be the first all-southern MLB World Series?  

    No, believe it or not, the St. Louis Cardinals played the St. Louis Browns(!!!???) in the 1944 World Series, I think St. Louis is considered southern, isn't it? Also, the Cards played Texas in the World Series (sorry to bring that one up JSangray!)

    1944 World Series

  10. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    44 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

    Damn--Joe Morgan has died.  Such an integral part of those 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds teams, which belong on any top 10 list of ultimate powerhouse World Series champions list.  

    That is sad, RIP to a great player. I was lucky enough to see the Big Red Machine in person many tines in San Diego, and that was an amazing team, with Morgan especially playing a style of game that you rarely ever saw. Plus, who can forget his homer as a Giant that put the nail into the Dodgers pennant hopes. RIP Joe.

  11. Posted

    Great performance by Rafa, Novak overmatched, to say the least. Shaking my head over the abysmal state of American men's tennis. You know it's bad when John Isner is still the top ranked USA player with Taylor Fritz and Reilly Opelka being the top "young" players.

  12. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    26 minutes ago, Dave James said:

    From Pinstripe Alley, probably the best post-mortem I've come across.  Most interesting is the suggestion that the decision to pull Gerrit Cole in the 6th inning may not have been made by Aaron Boone.

    https://www.pinstripealley.com/2020/10/11/21510940/yankees-alds-exit-rays-mlb-postseason-2020-gerrit-cole-aroldis-chapman-aaron-boone-mike-brosseau

    Is the thinking that the call was made by the GM? I know the Giants operate that way, but the Yankees also? The article just dropped the point after it was made.

  14. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    My Whitey Ford story:

    I knew a man, Ken F. (RIP! He was a great guy!), who grew up in New Jersey, he was an umpire for high quality amateur baseball games in Jersey. One day, he's umping an exhibition game where some of the Yankees are playing a good semi-pro team and Whitey Ford is pitching. Something happens in the game getting Ford really pissed off, and so he starts to throw pitches "high-and-tight", if you know what I mean. Ken was the umpire behind the plate and knows what's going on. So he goes to the mound to tell Ford to cool it, telling Ford how dangerous it is because these guys aren't big league players and never will be, so they're way overmatched and Whitey can really hurt someone bad. Ken goes back behind the plate, next pitch, high-and-really-tight, Ken goes to the mound and kicks Ford out of the game, chaos ensues. 

    A couple of years later, Ken is in Yankee Stadium, sitting close to the Yankee bullpen before the game with his newlywed wife, Irene (RIP, great woman!), and here comes Whitey Ford, ambling towards the bullpen, he recognizes Ken, stops and apologizes for putting Ken in a bad spot and agrees that he should've been kicked out of the game. Ford spends time talking and congratulating Ken & Irene on their marriage and being the classy guy that everyone knows he is.

    Ken loved telling this story and I heard it many times.

  15. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    24 minutes ago, Dave James said:

    Speaking of pitching on less than four days rest, does anyone know where or how that unwritten rule became the norm?   

    Just saw where Whitey Ford passed away, sad news RIP.

    About Dave's question: I always felt that those 1980-81 Oakland A's teams, where Billy Martin ground the starters in mulch, killed the rotation and any thought of just three days rest. MLB coaches looked at that, ran away from anything like that, and started to add a fifth starter to the rotation. I seems to me that by the end of the 1980's, everyone had a five-man rotation. Pitch count put the final nail in the coffin in the possibility of three days rest. Nice article of the starters that Billy Martin ruined.

  16. Posted

    I love the app the TCM has for smart TV's if you have them on your tv package, it's a great way to catch movies that I miss, and TCM keeps most films on the app for at least two weeks after their tv appearance. I hope Direct TV doesn't bump them up to a higher bracket.

  19. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

    :)

    Did they combine the "hit one for the sick kid" with the "called shot"? :g

     

    Yeah, they did. There's a good movie to be done of Babe's life, the guy came from absolutely nothing, no education, no family, and became a national hero. He deserves better than William Bendix or John Goodman trying to be "larger that life". Maybe there's no way you can put that on film, who knows, but I find it an amazing story.

    You start out like this, in the world's most depressing Christmas picture (Babe on left, his father on the right)

    Baltimore Maryland - estherdelurgio

    And you wind up with the idol of kids and hero to the nation.

    The Babe Bows Out | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time

    It must of been one hell of a ride.

  20. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

    Yeah but you can't tell if he's pointing at the pitcher, centerfield bleachers, what. This is Gehrig himself saying that's what happened.

    and apparently unheard for 80 odd years!

    Hey, it's all on film!

     

  24. Posted · Edited by Matthew

    Hot & windy, with very thick smoke from the Glass Fire. We expect an evacuation order sometime today or tomorrow, the fire is at the boarder of Rutherford, and we're next in line. Plus, there's a new fire, Campbell Fire, that is right above us, it's smaller, but we'll see what happens.