130 thoughts on “April 19, 2011: And the Oscar goes to…”

  1. Ha Ha Tonka at the Varsity tonight!
    Freealonzo is the first to take me up on my offer, but if you're free tonight, I'll buy you a ticket.
    Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 8. (Laarks and Spring Standards open.)

  2. Re: the King's Speech.
    I know so little about the Royals. Last night, while flipping around after the kids went to bed, EAR found a Barbara Walters special about some upcoming wedding for the potential King (if he survives his dad and grandma). She was as clueless as I was about recent history. She did say that she wanted the kids to be able to watch the wedding as she remembers watching Diana's wedding when she was a kid.

    A quick Wikipedia search and I ask "You remember that when you were 3?" EAR says yes, but there I am at wikipedia and I know nothing about these Royals, so I had to read up on the movie's script, find out about which king it was, etc. Is ten-year-old Elizabeth in the movie? She was second in line to the throne at Edward's abdication.

    Also, dang did they go through monarchs quickly for a while there. 1900-1952: 6 kings and queens. 1952-Present: One queen.

    1. My wife is hosting a Royal Wedding Party/Sleepover for some of the women friends. Thought it sounded like a fun idea, until I realized that I need to find somewhere else to go.

          1. Nope-UV Blue, Lemonade and Blueberries. ANd it's either $0.50 or $1.00 more than just a UV Blue + Lemonade (I can't remember exactly how much it was last time mo chailín got one). Some pretty expensive blueberries.

            1. I can see this given the bar markup and that blueberries aren't cheap when they're not on sale. I think it was like $4 for a pint last time I bought some? Yikes.

          1. And they fight off the aliens and she says, "Happy Independence Day, Daddy!" and everyone laughs.

            GREAT movie.

    2. My MIL is coming over at six in the morning to watch the wedding with the girls, just like she did with my wife 30 years ago. I don't understand. But I am going to watch to see my girls' reaction. I will also have something on hand to read.

    1. i've never done one before, but i'd be willing to be a pinch pinch hitter if you can't find anyone else.

    2. Everyone starts out by never having done one before, including me. It was a little rough, but I'm a better cob for it. I have faith in you jobu.

      1. ahh, what the hell, let's do this.

        [animated gif: spits into hands, rubs them together, steps into on-deck circle, steps on bat, flies into air, falls to ground]

  3. Minor league day game alert: Rochester has a doubleheader in Buffalo beginning at 11:00 a.m. central. The broadcast can be heard here.

    1. Thanks for the day game alerts Padre. I really enjoy having a ball game in the background at work.

    2. In a where are they now moment, today's managers are Tom Nieto for the Red Wings and Tim Teufel for the Bisons.

  4. Ok, I was meaning to ask this yesterday but kept forgetting. I watched Denver-OKC game 1 the other night, and it was some of the most entertaining basketball I've seen in awhile. Since that game ended, I've watched the play in which Kendrick Perkins supposedly touched the ball while it was in the rim and, unless I'm crazy, I don't see how it was in the cylinder when he touched it. It definitely wasn't 3/4 of the way down like George Karl is convinced.

    And because I also forgot to do this yesterday: HAHAHAHA at Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks.

    1. I haven't seen it, but the NBA league office apparently issued a statement agreeing that it was goal tending.

      1. Perkins definitely touched the net when he was going up, and was still touching it when he touched the ball, but no one is talking about that part of it. At the time it happened, I had no problem with the refs not making that call.

    2. I haven't seen the play, but I caught a quick snippet of the NBA's statement:

      Kendrick Perkins was improperly credited with a basket that should have been ruled offensive basket interference with 1:05 remaining in last night’s game. Although a player is permitted to touch the net while the ball is in the cylinder above the rim, Perkins also touched the ball while it was still in the cylinder which is a violation and constitutes goaltending.

      [Via The Sporting News]

      I'm gonna go find video and form my own opinion.

        1. Here's the Ball Don't Lie post with video.

          And here's a blog post on CBS sports outlining the difference between goaltending and interference, as Bootsy pointed out below.

          Personally, I'm a little torn. To me, the sticking point is Perkins getting tangled in the net on his way up. These sorts of tip-ins are pretty common, and almost never called, but this odd circumstance brought attention to it. And it's not as though Perkins is reaching well within the cylinder. To me, it looks like the ball is leaving (though how much is left depends on if you ask Karl or not). At this point, the definition of "in the cylinder" needs to be more defined. If any part of the ball is in the cylinder, then players cannot touch the ball in a cylinder that is the diameter of the rim + 99.99% the diameter. Obviously that's a bit ad absurdum, but this call looks to be in that gray area that I'd be OK with being called either way.

          1. I wasn't trying to be pedantic with my terminology. Blame my older brother--a MSHSL official for over 30 years--for repeatedly correcting Brent Musburger (and others) when I was a kid.

    3. And re: Mr. Anthony, slowly we are seeing recognition from the basketball intelligentsia that putting a ball hog with a great finisher is not the best pairing. Stoudemire may not play any defense, but he's an absolute beast with the ball on the run and in the paint. He was destroying KG in the fourth and then the Knicks went away from him. Carmelo's last possession was hi-larious: dribble the clock out and cast up a very long three when he hadn't been hitting anything all day long. Chris Paul with Amare' would have been devastating. Carmelo and a super max deal is what the doctor ordered, however.

      1. A long range, off balance, well contested three at that. The best part was that you could see such a terrible play coming from a mile away and the other four Knicks on the court looked none too happy about the play call. (I think, though I may be reading into their body language more than it actually says.)

    4. I thought it looked like basket interference and was shocked that it wasn't reviewed. I later learned basket interference and goaltending are not reviewable. They might wanna think about changing that.

    1. Total Zone and BIS agree with UZR. Remember, he had that catch crashing into the wall in Toronto and he had another nice running catch in the corner in the same series. He also had a diving/sliding catch in the final game against the Rays. I really don't recall seeing any fall in this year that I though should have been caught by an average LFer.

    1. That’s becauyse the underlying map data and the changes users submit are not open-source, the way they are with a similar project called the OpenStreetMap.

      That part bugs me.

      1. Yeah, I'm increasingly bothered by things like that, too. I already have begun transitioning my email to a personal domain. Now owing to some circumstances beyond my control I've decided I need to start keeping a personal journal again, so I've been looking for a program/platform without proprietary issues. Apart from a notebook, I haven't found much.

        1. You might be able to run WordPress on your personal computer. It's a pity that it requires MySQL though. Looks like a few other platforms might be easier to install and run locally.

  5. Laptop update:

    I finally got into the command prompt to format the HD. I used "FORMAT C: /FS:NTFS" to format to NTSF. In the first couple of hours, it shot up pretty regularly to 77%. That was Monday evening. As I left for work yesterday it was at 83%. When I went to bed last night, it was at 87 or 88%. I'm going to keep playing out the thread and see if I can get an OS on it, but it's pretty obvious this HD is shot. My new ThinkPad is being built right now, and should be here by Easter.

    Does anyone know the best way to sell the screen for parts? Are there online vendors for such things? Best I've found are people offering to sell me screens.

    1. I assume you only handled it with tongs until you could safely deposit it in a lead-lined box and bury it on hallowed ground?

  6. As DW posted in last nights game log, the Twins have brought up Eric Hacker. By the sound of things, he could be a nice addition. As ubes, DK, and other have pointed out, you can't tell much from 2 starts, but but his numbers for Red Wing are at least encouraging.

    In his two starts, Hacker is 1-0 with a 0.00 ERA, and a 0.36 WHIP. In 11 innings, he has given up no runs on four hits. He hasn't walked a batter yet and has struck out ten.

    1. I'm guessing they'll want to use Hacker in the "pitch 3-ish innings when the starter gets shelled" role (what I believe the WGOM Lexicon refers to as the "Groundskeeper"). They couldn't really use Burnett for that, they aren't going to use Perkins for that any more, and Manship wasn't viable for that right now either (since he wasn't getting any outs in his small sample). I'll be surprised if they use Hacker in a situation like they used Hoey last night, or like they've been using Perkins.

      1. Groundskeeper Willie! In the epic July of 2006, he was fully healthy for the whole month, but went 11 consecutive games (over 14 days) without pitching in a game. In half of his appearances that season (half!) the difference in score was five runs or greater when he entered the game.

        1. And 26 of his 42 appearances were multi-inning. It's possible that Willie Eyre will go down as the original and best groundskeeper the WGOM has ever known.

        2. Who all has worn this loftiest of nicknames? There was of course the original Groundskeeper Willie. Then there was El Jardinero Ramon Ortiz (still one of my proudest WGOM moments getting that nickname out there).

          1. From my cursory, three-minute research, candidates/successors to the Groundskeeper role (not saying they actually wore the nickname at the time, just that they appeared to qualify) include:
            The 2007 tag team of Glen Perkins, Ramon "The Blade" Ortiz, and Julio "AMR's Favorite" DePaula
            Brian Bass and Boof Bonser in 2008
            R.A. Dickey in 2009
            There wasn't really one last year except for maybe Manship in the short periods he was up.

            1. If we go by gmLI as a quick indicator, Groundskeeper Willie was at 0.39 in 2006. Of the other candidates:

              0.36 -- DePaula '07
              0.45 -- El Jardinero '07
              0.85 -- Perkins '07
              0.68 -- Bonser '08
              0.79 -- Bass '08
              0.75 -- Dickey/Ayala/Keppel '09
              0.56 -- Manship '10

              At the risk of being too exclusionary, I might say that you need a gmLI of roughly 0.50 or less in order to qualify as a Groundskeeper, and the Twins haven't had any legitimate Groundskeepers in a while. Looking back pre-Willie:

              0.61 -- Guerrier '05
              0.67 -- Mullholland '05
              0.40 -- Fiore '03
              0.67 -- Cressend '02
              0.51 -- Santana '01 (15 games, 11 in relief)
              0.51 -- Santana '00 (30 games, 25 in relief)

              I guess looking at that, I'd move it up to a Mullholland line of 0.67 gmLI, with around 15-20+ relief appearances.

              1. It's not easy to be a Groundskeeper for a whole season. If you're effective enough, you're almost certainly going to start getting higher leverage opportunities. If you're not effective at all, you're not going to be around long. Willie Eyre was a truly special pitcher.

                1. It definitely helped that a lot of the other options in the Twins' bullpen that year were clearly better than Willie.

  7. This is awesome. NCAA home runs down by half? Sounds good. How about run scoring? Or pitcher injuries from batted balls? Not sure why home runs get the headline.

    It sounds like high schools are adopting the new bat standards, too, which sounds like progress to me. I hope the ASA adopts similar standards. I hate, hate, hate how much having a good bat makes a difference in slow-pitch softball. I think it'd be a more fun game with more wood-like bats, and there are the obvious safety benefits.

    1. High Schools are definitely going in this direction although there is some controversy on what is considered an approved bat. Not surprising since the technology is new and rating systems haven't kept pace. However composite bats are taking up more space at the racks at Dicks and Sportsmart.

      Also my kids high school team now has a designated "wood bat game." Neither team is allowed to us an aluminum (or composite) bat. I can't wait.

    2. I played a couple coed softball games in Wyoming where the guys had to use wood bats. It's kinda fun to have some of the girls outhitting the guys.

  8. I know this is a little old (in internet age), but I can't stop watching it. It makes me giggle just thinking about it. Just watching it without thinking about balk rules or any of that, it's almost as though Verlander decides he's going to bean DeJesus by quick pitching him. The reaction from Verlander's catcher is priceless, too.

  9. Thoughts on the new site:

    1) Comments so fast you'll freak. Need a Jimmy John's parody logo somewhere.

    2) Are there archives set up yet? More specifically, will past CoC's be available, or are they lost to the ether when a new one goes up?

    1. yeah, I asked this roundabout-ly in the Suggestions post. there's no way to search for or list posts by category here, other than through the dashboard. that's going to be a necessity.

      1. You can click the category at the top of any post to get a list. I'll add an archives link in the near future as well.

  10. one step closer to skynet coming online.

    on a marginally-related note, one of my favorite exchanges from futurama:

    Bender: Now Wireless Joe Jackson, there was a blern-hitting machine!
    Leela: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns! I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
    Bender: Oh, and I suppose Pitchomat 5000 was just a modified howitzer?
    Leela: Yep.

      1. stomach flu == 24-hours.
        real flu == nasty respiratory infection. Could be a week or longer.

        1. Yeah. When I heard he was going to be back the next day, I thought that has to be the fastest flu ever. At least for those that lived.

        2. I was recently down with something that I would deem a stomach flu (as there was nothing respiratory), but I only diagnose illnesses on the internet. I felt terrible for about three days, was having difficulty staying well hydrated, and a couple days ago, I actually noticed a significant increase in my sewer bill from that month. Not good times.

          1. sounds like Ebola. You should get an MRI to see if your internal organs are still there, ubes.

            1. Hmmm....I have been feeling a bit on the skinny side. Perhaps I'll try calling around to get a referral, it's tough to know if your stomach is really still there.

          2. a couple days ago, I actually noticed a significant increase in my sewer bill from that month

            Dang near made me do a spit take there, Ubes.

        1. I believe "flu-like symptoms" == hungover. Usually I think flu means flu, especially for night games. (This may not hold for Miguel Cabrera.)

    1. No Delmon either. Sick and sore. No Capps after pitching three straight days either. Kubel in LF, Luke Hughes at 1st. So, the Twins will probably win by eight runs tonight, right?

        1. As much as I like talking about politics (well, political philosophy, not the jockeying for position that passes for politics right now), I'm glad there was support for keeping it off this site.

    1. 2 things:

      1) Amusing - but I agree, too political; and
      2) Is she for real? (To avoid the prohibited, probably best to simply answer Y or N).

  11. They are kidding me, right? (Note: if the owner of the clip is providing an embed code, I'm figuring that they don't care if I embed.)

    1. I worked across the street from that spot for three years. wish they would have asked me about Jeter...

  12. Could I get a pinch hitter for the game log tonight? Please. Thanks

  13. 'Melo goes for 42 points on 14/30 shooting and Boston wins 96-93. KG with the shot to give the Celtics the 94-93 lead. Would love to see them sweep.

  14. Yeesh, I was gonna come in tonight all triumphant because my team totally won our bowling league championship tonight. But then I saw the Twins decided to skip tonight's game, which was a buzz kill.

  15. so the NFL schedule was released today and ESPN spent an hour 'breaking it down'. It makes no sense because they base strength of schedule on last years record but since there is so much turnover in the NFL last years record means nothing.

    Also, its not guaranteed they are going to play those games because of the lockout (although I think they will reach an agreement)

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