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2012 Home Run Derby

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Why do I keep putting up with Berman, year after year, to watch repetitive batting practice? I think it has something to do with being able to see baseball's best watching on the sidelines, being kids.

Jose Bautista
Mark Trumbo
Carlos Beltran
Robinson Cano
Andrew McCutchen
Carlos Gonzalez
Prince Fielder
Matt Kemp

I will be furiously and shamelessly cheering for CarGo with my first-ever bottle of Sumpin' Sumpin' in hand. I hope you guys steered me right.

129 thoughts on “2012 Home Run Derby”

  1. No derby for me. I just now closed the door to the moving truck minus one ladder, a trash can full of cleaning supplies, a decent bike and plus a wicked headache, sore back, and an air mattress to sleep on.

    I'm enjoying a torpedo.

  2. Oooooh, Zac Brown Band! Did the booker think this was NASCAR?

    Actually, this isn't half bad. It's certainly better than American Idol winner #24601 singing a pop trifle.

      1. I quote that number here and at the Casa de Leche all the time. I think this is the first time a non-actor knew what I was referencing.

  3. For inquiring minds: the Kauffman faithful are loudly pro-Beltran and anti-Cano. Funny. I can't find a good reason (beside the one, but c'mon) to dislike Cano, and Beltran left the team. Well, whatever.

    Also, hj(?) thanks for the Sumpin' Sumpin' suggestion. Quaffable indeed.

              1. They've got to be thankful: look at the haul they got for him! John Buck, Mark Teahen, and Mike Wood!
                An All-Star Catcher!

                That's the same reason A.J. Pierzynski and Chuck Knoblauch are still so beloved in MN.

      1. That I knew. I just had no idea how good this particular brew was (and, admittedly, had nearly forgotten that "Sumpin' Sumpin'" was one of theirs). I'd only had a couple of their offerings.

        1. I love the smell of it. Incidentally I made it back to the homeland last weekend and discovered this.

    3. Royals fans hate the Yankees. More than the active dislike almost every fan feels for the Bombers.

      From Kings of Kauffman:

      Once upon a time the Royals had a rivalry, and it was real and passionate and consuming beyond anything I can remember in sports. Alongside the utter hatred the Chiefs and Raiders shared 40 years ago, and possibly the revulsion Cornhuskers felt for the Sooners in times past, the adversarial loathing shared by the Royals and Yankees is one of my favorite sports memories.

      ...

      Waaaaay back in the olden days, in 1976, the Royals won 90 games which was good for the second best record in the league next to the Yankees’ 97 victories. The Royals won the season series with the Yankees 7 games to 5. The Royals and Yankees played each other in the American League Championship Series, going blow for blow, and splitting the first four hard fought games. After four games, the Royals had proved they belonged in the championship series.

      In game five of the 1976 ALCS, the score was tied 6-6 going into the bottom of the 9th inning. As you can imagine, it was a nail biter and my blood pressure is going up just thinking about that night. With Mark Littell on the mound for the Royals and 56,000 hysterically screaming arrogant Yankee fans pounding their feat in the iconic house that Ruth built, Chris Chambliss launched a shot into the right center field bleachers abruptly ending the Royals season and their first real championship run. Next to the day the Royals traded Bret Saberhagen, no sports event has been more personally devastating to me.

      Then one year later in 1977 the Royals fielded arguably their best team ever and concluded the season with 102 wins to the Yankees 100. The American Leagues’ two best teams (Yes, it’s true – the Royals were one of the American Leagues’ two best teams for several years) met in the ALCS, once again going down to the wire in dreaded Yankee Stadium before the Yankees won again in five games.

      Do you have any idea who played each other for the pennant in 1978? Déjà vu, the Yankees and Royals. This time, the Yankees dispatched George Brett and crew after 4 games with a close fought 2-1 victory in the final game.

      After an “off year” in 1979 which saw the Royals finish just 3 games out of first place, would you be surprised to learn who met again for the ALCS in 1980? By this time, the Yankees thought they had the Royals number. They were certain the Royals were jinxed and unable to overcome the greatest franchise in the history of baseball. The Royals were just one more hurdle on the Yankees’ road to the World Series again, right? Wrong.

      Let’s skip the details and get right to the good stuff. The Royals won game one, and game two, and all they needed to sweep the hated Yankees was one more tiny little victory in the big white house in the Bronx. In the 7th inning of game three, George Brett faced Goose Gossage, one of the most feared relief pitchers in the history of the game. With the Royals losing 2-1 and Willie Wilson and U.L. Washington on base, Brett saw just one pitch from Gossage. That was all he needed to crush a 3-run homer and send the Royals to their first World Series.

      The Yankees and their fans were left gasping for breath after this game. You could have heard a pin drop throughout New York. How could that unsung team from the Midwest have spanked the Yankees in their own house? Yankee fans believe they have a birthright to go to the World Series every year. In 1980, after meeting in the ALCS in four out of five consecutive years, our Royals brought them back down to earth with a thud. They hated us, we hated them, we wanted to beat each other so badly we could taste it – it was one of the most awesome feelings a true sports fan can experience.

      And yes, Royals fans still hang on to that 30+ year old rivalry. It's a very interesting breed of baseball fan in KC.

      2. Goose Gossage was in the game in the seventh inning. I wonder when the last time is a team used its closer in the seventh inning.

    2. Annnd he finished as I posted. That's what I get for watching with the sound muted.

        1. I think Fielder is my least favorite guy out there, but I don't have an active dislike for him, so it's a nice roster of guys to watch.

          I am cheering against Berman, though.

          1. Until this year I really liked Prince, but I'm not keen on a Tiger winning. My dislike of Cabrera really spreads far and wide, and affects my feelings for his teammates.

            1. I started to really dislike Fielder last year when I was at Miller Park for a Twins game and the people in attendance booed Mauer because of his big contract and cheered Fielder despite the obvious fact that he was leaving after the season for money.

              Also, I can always root against Hamilton.

                1. Heh, I just noticed. I saw his mug on the 4ltr this morning in a pic for a derby article and just assumed. Still hope he loses anyway.

                  1. After his interview, I really can't think of a good reason to cheer against him. Cheer another guy, sure, but he's no bad guy...just more of a whatever guy who's made a crap-ton of bad decisions.

                    1. I generally don't root against pro athletes based on their actual
                      self (Cabrera excepted) since I've really never actually met them. I base it on how they are treated by the media for the most part.

                    2. I've mostly stopped cheering against people for any reason, with the significant exceptions of known wifebeaters and worse. I barely even care about LeBron anymore, tin-eared dumbfuck though he be.

                    3. I spose we all got our ways of making sports more interesting. I like to have villians around, so deciding to root against certain players is fun. The Twins have to eventually topple someone evil.

                    4. I think this is a recent development with me. Something about getting older is making me stop believing in villains, even in sports. I can still work up the vitriol if the Twins get to a playoff series, though. Trust me.

  10. Kruk: "Do you have any bad feelings toward Justin Morneau because he won and nobody knows it? Except us, because we were told?"

    Piss off, Kruk.

      1. Agreed. The hero worship by Berman et al was nauseating, but Hamilton didn't come off like he had a big head about it. Or the 4-HR game. Or all the other crap that was thrown at him.

    2. Yeah, the little bit of that interview I'm catching on my spotty feed is making me dislike Kruk even more than I already did.

    2. I have this bad habit of backing the guys who fall in the first round. It's probably related to the fact that I cheer for Minnesota sports teams.

  12. It was nice of ESPN to highlight an up and coming player in Andrew McCutcheon. And by highlight, I mean having a cordial conversation with HR Derby winner Josh Hamilton

    2. Someone said the other day that ESPN mentioned that "nobody knew about Joe Nathan when he was a Twin." He once had a 1-2-3 inning at the all-star game while Fox's boneheaded broadcast not only had an interview with Eric Gagne, who was relevant for two f*&^ing years, but also decided to show us a closeup of Gagne's face rather than the action on the field. No wonder ESPN doesn't know who Nathan is. If the best relief pitcher in the world at the time is in a small market, the network will focus on a lesser reliever from a bigger market.

      1. Yep, me. It was just ESPN though, since the players and writers knew about Nathan. They did vote him into now five All-Star games.

      2. Someone said the other day that ESPN mentioned that "nobody knew about Joe Nathan when he was a Twin."

        it was FOX broadcaster Mitch Williams who said that

    2. Blackburn should turn it into a positive. The HR derby would be a great way for him to have a big league job.

  18. Jeebus, the do the Yankees have to slow down frickin everything baseball related?

  23. George Brett: "On this stage...you'd have a little poopies in your pants, right?"

    A Berman-led broadcast shouldn't be able to get even dumber, but here we are.

  24. Hey guys! I ate a ton of cereal (cinnamon life!) and hotdogs and drank a large rootbeer and then went for my first run in 2 weeks without stretching beforehand. I think I'm almost caught up with the pain of the ESPN HR Derby broadcast...

  25. Berman: "Will anyone hit .400 again?"

    Brett: "I don't think so. It's so specialized now. Starters go maybe five innings. Then you bring in someone for the sixth. Then you bring in someone for the seventh. Setup guy comes in for the eighth. The closer comes in for the ninth, and he's making 10 or 15 million dollars."

    Who the hell asked him about how much money closers were making? Once again, I really wish he was drunk.

    2. Except the average starter goes 5.9 innings. Hey, but that ain't going to stop me from making strained, barely applicable insults about how the game was better and people cared about the All-Star game in my day!

      1. Or maybe he's upset that the stupid closer makes as much in a year as he did in his career.

      2. Yeah, it bugs me that old-timers always round down significantly when they talk about today's players. The announcers are always either too gutless or clueless to correct them.

        1. I'm thinking both. Also, I'm guessing Brett was just as clueless. Nothing bugs me more than "back in my day" shit.

  26. If i ran this broadcast, i think i'd only show the camera anhle from behind home plate. Dingers look cooler that way.

    2. I read this LTE in the voice I use for dadboner. I substituted beefers for dingers, fyi.

      2. I use Marc Maron's voice for DadBoner. At first glance, the icons for @DadBoner and the WTFPod look fairly similar*.

        *I just went back and checked, I don't know what I was thinking. This resemblance did not hold up to a second look. Oh well, too late to change now.

  27. It's pretty hilarious that Cano was booed relentlessly for his choices, and now his choices are the only three players left.

  28. Goodnight folks. I'll see you when cox cable gets around to hooking up my over priced interwebs.

  31. I'm not watching continuously because I don't have. Able, but I just brought it back up in time to see some inane Twitter comment and threw up a little. That might have killed my desire to watch anymore.

  32. I think Bautista should have a Twins pitcher throw instead. He didn't need to be so patient then.

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