Who doesn't want a little Teej Thursday filler? I think it was about a year ago that we participated in a similar captioning exercise with me behind a podium outside the Capitol. Similar proximity, slightly different shot(s). Have at it, folks...
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Lovely Human Tricks
I don't think much of Ed Sheeran. Or rather, I don't think about Ed Sheeran very often. His music is inoffensive and toe-tappy, if a bit slight, though he's clearly a talented vocalist. In general, his stuff just isn't in my musical wheelhouse. Galway Girl is kind of a bop, though
It occurred to me today when I saw an Instagram post from Sheeran that nearly every time I see something about him on the interwebs, he's doing something that shows sincere humanity. For instance, he cut this video to celebrate his boyhood football club's return to the Premier League (he's a 1.4% owner in Ipswich Town, known as the Tractor Boys):
His fan interactions seem genuine and lovely, as well, as you can see in this video where he surprises a young singer performing one of his songs:
All of which brings me to the video I saw this morning, where he serenaded a jogger who happened to be running along a canal where Sheeran was filming a video onboard a boat. Check it out:
The young jogger in question, who's named Nikki Atkins and is a teacher in London, spoke about her experience with the BBC. In all, just a lovely moment from a guy who seems to specialize in such things. Since Dave Grohl has stepped on a banana skin recently, we may be in the market for a new good human celebrity.
Monday, September 16, 2024
MLC x GTB: Vol. 1, Episode 6
Shitty-Ass Red Sox Update
Record: 75-75
4.5 GB AL Wild Card, 6th place in Wild Card race
When we commenced this exercise in fandom, futility, and friendship, the Red Sox stood at 65-57, a mere 2.5 games out of the postseason picture. Since then, the math ain't been kind. 10-18 during the season's stand up and be counted phase is suboptimal. Redolent of the 2011 Fried Chicken and Beer Kerfuffle when the Sox went belly up, finishing the campaign on a 5-16 run to miss the playoffs after leading the AL East for 72 days during the season. As in, they both stink.
So were left effectively playing out the string and having fun with great baseball terminology. We talked about TOOTBLAN in a previous episode. Today we bring you ducksnorts, seeing-eye singles, bloops, and gorks. Cedanne Rafaella gave us the former to plate a couple of runs in a win over Baltimore early last week before the Sox shit the bed in the Bronx. The letter three came during a lively text conversation between me, Whit, and Marls as the Sox and Mets were part of an epically poor series of results last Tuesday.
On that evening, we were following six games with outcomes that impacted the race for the postseason. the teams we were rooting for all...ALL...lost, by a combined score of 49-10. I'm told by reliable sources that such a combination is scientifically impossible, and as such have filed a protest with CERN.
Those gorks led us to one of the great baseball movie quotes of all time, from likely the greatest baseball movie ever made:
“You know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. Twenty-five hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points, OK? There’s six months in a season. That’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week, just one, a gork, a ground ball — a ground ball with eyes! — you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week and you’re in Yankee Stadium. You still don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
And so, if I get nothing else out of this godforsaken exercise, I get to talk ball with my pals. And that's worth something.
This Week in Mets (T.W.I.M. Notes)
9 GB NL East, Tied for Last NL Wild Card
- Losable win vs Jays, a real gift thanks to 8th inning progression of walk / infield single & error / walk / wild pitch / passed ball
- Ugly loss vs Jays, former Met Chris Bassitt confounding our guys
- Losable win vs. Jays, Mets were no-hit through 8 innings, then Lindor homered to open the 9th* and the Mets poured it on for 5 more
- Lovely win vs. Phils, an 11-3 romp with Earl Weaver's principles ("pitching, defense, and the three-run homer") on full display... Alvarez, Nimmo, and Bader each hit 3-run bombs
- Winnable loss vs. Phils, blew a 4-run lead, bullpen was leaky, Mets' bats were 2-14 to close the game out
- Winnable loss vs. Phils, blew a 1-run lead in the last pair of frames and the Phillies walked off with a Diaz loss
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Picks Are Back!
Credit for the push goes to Whit. Thanks? Please don't mistake this for a precedent. And if I may motion for this to be an open-source sort of post, Aye. Ya got some winners? Slide'm in here mate. Perverts. If you're looking for completely anecdotal, non-evidentiary backed picks, you've come to the right place.
Much has changed since the last time we did this, which was...'18? '17? Dare I ask? Whatever the year, the amount of football viewing afforded to me then was considerably different than today. More then, less now. Damn kids. Well let's get on with it, shall we?
Texas A&M -3.5 at Florida
What little football I have watched included games w/these two mediocre squads. Plus, I'm pretty excited to report that my middle daughter & I will be in attendance for this one.
When A&M played Notre Dame, the team of GTB and me, I was at a neighbor's house sitting around a table sipping on wine pretending to be fully engaged in conversation while peeking at my phone. I made it home for the 4th qtr. As any real fan would do, I watched the game in its entirety a day later. Yes, it was a great win for Marcus Freeman and ND, but by the time the game was over, I wouldn't go as far to say that it was apparent to me that both teams were not that good, but the possibility was considered. ND b/c of QB & endless mistakes that have carried over from last year, namely penalties (coaching), and A&M b/c of their QB, Conner Weigman. Even after playing McNeese State last week and winning by 6 TD's, he's 23/44 w/2 INT's and a lowly 5 yards per reception through his two games (taken out early in last week's blowout).
Big game for Billy Napier. His seat is warm. They lose this and it is....swahm-puy. A couple of his coaches bolted to A&M last year along with a pair of players adding a dash of extra incentive. A&M has the 12th man, but last I heard they don't make road trips. UF has Super Senior Graham Mertz - 6th season. Alliteration. Coming off an injury in the Miami game, Graham is questionable. But that's okay, because the next guy up is frosh DJ Lagway who killed it against Samford last week. Though I'm long on A&M and new coach Mike Elko, Florida is going to get in Weigman's kitchen early and often, rendering him useless. Chomp chomp. I'm going Gators outright. Come'n get sum.
Gators 24 - Aggies 20
Oregon -16.5 at Oregon State o/u 49.5
If you haven't been paying attention, Oregon hasn't been "Oregon", eeking out a win last week at home against Boise, and struggling a wee bit in week 1 at home against Idaho, scoring 61 points between the two games. WTF Ducks? Looks like Bo Nix was their everything. As a reminder, this will be the first time these two have met as nonconference opponents since the Beatles we're getting hot. This used to be one of the biggest rivalry games of the year, named the Civil War. I wonder what Honest Abe would think of that moniker.
Oregon State has a stout D allowing under 80 yards of rushing per game. Lo and behold, this is where Oregon's struggles reside, in the rushing game as well as pass protection.
The oddsmakers know what they're doing obviously. And that scares me. Does Oregon have its coming out party this week? I'm saying no, but they should come out victorious. (but don't be surprised by a home team victory)
Oregon 27 Oregon State 24 (and the over)
Week 3 of CFB, coming at ya!
Friday, September 13, 2024
The Most Unexpected Sort of Joy
San Marino is a mountainous, verdant, and generally beautiful country in the Apennine Mountains, fully surrounded by Italy. It's the fifth-smallest country in the world, home to only 33,000 people. Since 1990, the country has fielded an official FIFA national team. And since 1990, that team had played 176 matches, drawing five and losing 171. Had being the operative word in that sentence, for last Thursday La Serenissima scored a 1-0 win against visiting Liechtenstein in a home UEFA Nation's League match to break one of global sports' most impressive losing streaks.
On his national team debut, teen striker Nicko Sensoli broke a 0-0 halftime deadlock early in the second frame, poking the ball home after a mistake by Liechtenstein keeper Benjamin Büchel to give San Marino the only goal they'd need. After a nervy final few minutes, the final whistle blew, and the most interesting sort of unbelieving pandemonium set in.
San Marino's most fervent supporters call themselves "Brigata Mai 1 Gioia" (Never Any Joy Brigade), and embrace their nation's standing as the 210th-ranked side in the FIFA World Rankings. There are 210 official national teams. Now, they're distant cousins to pre-2004 Boston Red Sox fans, trying to navigate a world they only hoped to ever visit.
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
The Things They Carried
My wife has a new role in the educational system. After more than a decade in the classroom as first a Teaching Assistant and then a middle-school Special Education teacher, she got hired this summer as an Educational Diagnostician. Basically, the diagnostician's role is to test kids who are referred for evaluation for eligibility for a number of different kinds of services, prepare reports based on the test results, and sit on the evaluation panel that makes a determination about the student's eligibility.
We're about a month in to her new role, and I'd say it's going well. In fact, I got a text from her on Friday which read: "I. Love. My. Job." Instead of working in one school, she supports a cluster of three (one elementary, one middle, and one high school), all of which are within five minutes of our house. Her biggest concerns at the moment seem to be feeling weird that she has free time to get coffee, or leave for lunch, or go to the bathroom whenever she feels like it. Not wherever, like Dave. It makes me happy to see her happy.
There was a moment last week that, while a little bit related to her new role, completely and tangentially took me back nearly 45 years in a flash of memory and stuck with me as an example of how our wildly complex and lunatic brains process information and retain ephemera.
She was reviewing one of the testing kits that she uses as part of the evaluation process. The battery in question is called the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA). It's a fairly standard instrument that's been in use for a long time. As she flipped through the pages, I had a flashback.When I was 9 or 10, I was tested by the school in Alabama where I lived to see if I was eligible for the district's gifted and talented program. (I know what you're thinking, and I agree: wasn't it obvious, and why did they even bother with a test?) I don't remember very much about the test, save for one thing, and that memory is as vivid as if it were yesterday. The question in, um, question offered a logic question in the guise of a spatial relations question. I was presented with a square that represented a pasture, and told by the woman doing the testing that my ball was lost in the pasture. The task was to use my pencil to trace the path I would take to most efficiently and effectively find the ball.
Friends, I tell you verily that my pencil tip roamed all over that fucking pasture, to, fro, up, down, diagonally in no particular pattern with no particular rhyme or reason. The lady testing me did an excellent job of disguising her amusement at the little whackadoodle sitting in front of her. My answer looked something like this:
Monday, September 09, 2024
MLC x GTB: Vol. 1, Episode 5
Let's write about baseball again, he said. It'll be fun, he said. Pennant race, he said. He's a jerk.
This Time in Red Sox
72-71
10 GB AL East (we should probably stop worrying about the AL East), 4 GB the last AL Wild Card
Chris Flexen is the very definition of a journeyman. The 30 year-old righthander has started 109 games over seven seasons (including three as a Met). He won 14 games for the Mariners in 2021, nearly half of his career total of 29. He sports a career ERA of 5.04. And this season, he's broken records as a member of the Chicago White Sox rotation.
Going into today's game in Boston, the White Sox had lost 20 consecutive games when Flexen started. He's 2-14 with a 5.26 ERA and a 1.52 WHIP. There's an argument that he's been the worst pitcher in baseball this season. I think you know where this is going.After winning the first two games of the series against Chicago, the Red Sox took a 1-0 lead into the sixth inning, where they promptly gave up two unearned runs. Wilyer Abreu tied the game in the bottom of the frame on a homer, and it stayed 2-2 until the top of the 9th. When the White Sox scored five times, two of those runs scoring on an - altogether now - error. 7-2 bad guys, while the good guys have fallen into sixth place in the American League, even as the gap to the final playoff spot has remained stubbornly constant.
Nineteen games to play, against the Orioles (3), Yankees (4), Rays (6), Twins (3), and Jays (3). Nine at home, ten on the road. Not that much ball left, and the target's annoyingly out of reach. Whitney rooted for the Sox in 2004 when it became apparent things weren't going the Mets' way. I'm not that far from breaking out my blue and orange stuff.
Right Now in Mets
78-65
7 GB NL East, Tied for Last NL Wild Card
Not so fast, my friend.
What the last 24 hours in Mets Township have taught us is that anything can happen in baseball in a single game or a short series. 19 games is a season's equivalent of a short series. The Sox have 9 games against sub-.500 teams and 3 against a Wild Card foe. As Kate Bush sang to Peter Gabriel in 1986, Don't Give Up.
Meanwhile, the Mets' own n-n-n-nineteen games come against the Jays (3), Phils (7)(!), Nats (3), Braves (3), and Brewers (3). 7 home, 12 away. 10 games against division-leading teams assured of playoff spots, maybe runs. It's a stretch that leads off with a telling week in Toronto and Philadelphia. Yipes.
But let's take a quick second to pat the Metsies on the back. Putting together 9 victories in a row during a key turn in the season has proven absolutely vital. The Braves, our nemesis this year as in history, have won series after series, annoyingly so. But they dropped 3 of 4 to the surging Phillies, and that gave the Mets a chance to pull even in this sprint.
Francisco Lindor, please keep up this torrid pace. Need ya down the stretch. Pete, keep on clubbing it. Mark Vientos, stay the course. And to the pitching staff... please continue firing away. Build on the very good we saw lately.Yesterday's smothering by the scrubby Reds and their so-so arms was frustrating, but I guess those games are just going to happen. Winnable losses are still something we are looking to dodge.
But let's face it -- the road to the postseason is fraught with potholes and landmines, darting squirrels and deer, slowing gravel and halting road signs. The Phillies themselves represent a scowling statey with flares checking for inebriated drivers. So let's not get too drunk on a great nine games.
So much work left to do. But we are where we wanted to be when we began this sprint. LFGM.
Saturday, September 07, 2024
Ch-Ch-Changes
Get me a fat guy with a chain, he said |
Thursday, September 05, 2024
Things That Suck
Croix Bethune is a star in the making. The rookie attacking midfielder for the NWSL's Washington Spirit tied the single season league record for assists last month, dropping her 10th dime in a 4-1 Spirit win over the Kansas City Current. We gave her a shoutout at the time. She also won a gold medal as an alternate on the U.S. Women's team that took the title in Paris. She was flying.
Life can be cruel sometimes.
On August 28, Bethune joined fellow DMV-area athletes Torri Huske, Casey Kreuger, and Hal Hershfelt to throw out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game. Yesterday, it was reported that Bethune tore the meniscus in one of her knees and will miss the remainder of the NWSL season. She'll end her rookie campaign with five goals to go with the aforementioned assists.
Just one more bit of evidence that baseball is stupid.
Wednesday, September 04, 2024
MLC @ GTB Vol. 1, Episode 4
Yes, GTBers, it's more Mets and Red Sox drivel. Hoping you are enjoying this throwback venture, and if not, well, I guess I'd suggest that you get off your collective keister and add some content of your own. Other than a solitary Teej joint in June, only OBX Dave has buffeted the (mostly) rob and (way less) Whitney show this summer.
Game 2 of the GTB Derby
Red Sox at Mets
7:10pm, Tuesday, September 3
With our Sox correspondent RR taking in some of New Zealand's finest smooth music (ever) tonight, that leaves me to watch the Met-iocrity and paint something of a picture for him upon his return from the Trap. We'll drop a few Crowded House references in here for fans.
Met lefty David "Sgt." Peterson on the hill tonight. Last season he spent six months in a leaky boat (Not even Crowded House! Their brother act Split Enz! Wow!), but this year he's plugged the holes and is sporting a 2.83 ERA.
Oh, and it's his birthday tonight. O/U on mentions of that unimportant fact in the broadcast: 16.5.
Peterson is on tonight: 3 K's in the first. (Ed Note: 8 K's through 4, and he ended up with 11 through six frames.) But Sox hurler Kutter Crawford matched him -- if not in strikeouts, sheer dominance. He surrendered just one hit and 2 walks over six strong innings while fanning 8.Thing is... that one hit was a 2-run job by Francisco Lindor. Crushing it, my man.
So, I think I failed to get through to the GTBitterati how good a reference this was in the last post:
His name sounds like Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera had a baby.
See, for the uninformed, Roger "Shamuel Longhorn" Clemens named his sons Koby, Kory, Kacy, and Kody to reference his lofty K total. It's cool, no, really. And Mariano Rivera was the maestro with his cut fastball, referred to as the "cutter." You know what they say about jokes you have to explain. Sigh.
Anywho, Kutter Crawford kept the Mets hitters utterly locked out beyond that one mistake. Kid has some sick off-speed weapons in his arsenal.
Peterson leaves after 6, up 2-1. His only allowed run came on a flare, a gork, a dying quail, to quote Crash Davis. Not bad.
José Buttó comes on in relief. I'm not thrilled. This guy's work makes me mangle his name in a horrible way utilizing a certain Long Island Lolita Lothario and the f-word. Be cool, Whit. Deep breaths. And then he mows the Sox down 1-2-3.
Keith Hernandez sees a toddler smiling adorably for a sideline camera and takes the time to point out that there's chocolate on her face and that her mother should clean her face. Yeah. You tell her, Keith.
Crawford leaves after 6, down 2-1. Mark Vientos promptly hits something so strong into the left field seats in the bottom of the 7th. That's our 3B, baby.
Then the same Mets pitcher walks the first two batsmen in the Red Sox 8th. Buttofucko! He's quickly yanked for Reed Garrett, but after an infield single, there are bases loaded with nobody out. A sac fly later, Rob's speedster Masataka Yoshida comes up with a chance to break our backs. Don't dream it's over, boys. (You knew it was coming at some point.)
4-6-3. Phewwwwwwww. Feels like we've seen that go the other way too many times, but as we know, history never repeats.
Need some insurance here, Metsies, I say aloud to a television. Up 3-2, bottom 8. As if to say "I got you," the Mets bats come alive. 38-year-old Sox reliever Chris Martin is in trouble immediately, firing nothing at the speed of sound (gauche to mix bands, but that's his name). McNeil singles!
"You know, if I thought Alvarez could bunt, I'd say it'd be a perfect spot to let him do something successful offensively."
-- Gary Cohen backhanding our catcher, who's free-falling in a slump
And then Alvarez, in defiance of that slap, hits one the opposite way. 2 runners aboard. Then Flushing's conquering hero Lindor doubles off the wall. Keep it up, lad.
Darude's "Sandstorm" is playing at Citi Field. Um, that's a Gamecocks song! Ask Mark or Greg! Oh well. It's out. And it's fun.
A sac fly and a strikeout later, Polar Pete crushes one to left to make it 7-2. Hoo boy.
The Sox go down in order in the 9th as the Met with the worst haircut (Ryne Stanek) closes it out. Mets win. Happy Birthday, David Peterson.
I'm hoping rob isn't giving up the ship yet. But I need one more W tomorrow night.
Tuesday, September 03, 2024
MLC @ GTB, Vol. 1, Episode 3
Actual photo of Tyler O'Neill with his glove |
Monday, September 02, 2024
Small Victories
Jeff German |