Monthly Archives: June 2013

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–June 29

Wilbert Robinson (1863)
Harry Frazee (1880)
Bobby Veach (1888)
Ollie Carnegie (1899)
Ken Blackman (1911)
Dizzy Trout (1915)
Cal Drummond (1917)
Bob Shaw (1933)
Katsuya Nomura (1935)
Harmon Killebrew (1936)
Larry Stahl (1941)
John Boccabella (1941)
Bruce Kimm (1951)
Rick Honeycutt (1954)
Pedro Guerrero (1956)
John Wehner (1967)
Trey Hodges (1978)
Dusty Hughes (1982)

Harry Frazee was the owner of the Red Sox from 1916-1923 and is best remembered for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

Ollie Carnegie is the all-time home run king of the International League with 258.  He started his minor league career at age 32.

Ken Blackman was a minor league player, college coach, minor league executive, and major league scout.

Cal Drummond was an American League umpire from 1960-1969.

Katsuya Nomura hit 657 home runs in Japan during his twenty-five-year career.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–June 29 →

WGOM

Beat The Streak – 57 Hitters Edition

23 Comments

I thought I'd keep this here instead of clogging the CoC or game log. Here's the leaderboard:

If you'd like to help me keep everything updated, which I can assure you will be very much appreciated, the link is here. Simply go to the "HitQuery" sheet at the bottom and change the "N" to a "Y" when someone on the list gets a hit. The spreadsheet will take care of the rest and the above scoreboard will auto-update.

2013 Twins Game Recaps

Game 75 Recap: From the Livejournal of Cole DeVries

1 Comment

June 28, 2013

Mood: Tired 😐

Music: Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

I had a dream last night that I was pitching for the Twins at Target Field. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was a huge crowd cheering for the first pitch and I was up on the mound and the batter was standing in the box and the umpire was shouting “Play Ball” and the ball was in my glove and then the ball was in my hand my hand and then… I just couldn’t throw the ball. I knew I had to throw the ball, and I wanted to throw the ball, and I was staring at the ball in my hand thinking “I need to throw you” but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t throw a pitch. Everybody was waiting for me to start the game and the crowd was getting impatient, and I could hear them muttering “Why can’t he throw the ball, what’s wrong with him” and I was getting more and more frustrated. Then I saw Coach Gardenhire start to walk out of the dugout towards me and I knew I had to throw a pitch right then, throw it Now! Okay, just throw it Now! Come on! What’s wrong with you just throw it now! But it was too late, Coach Gardenhire was coming and I couldn’t do a thing. And then I woke up.

Continue reading Game 75 Recap: From the Livejournal of Cole DeVries →

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–June 28

Ken Williams (1890)
Haruyasu Nakajima (1910)
A. Ray Smith (1915)
Oscar Rodriguez (1931)
Fred Gladding (1936)
Ron Luciano (1937)
Fred Talbot (1941)
Al Downing (1941)
Don Baylor (1949)
Chris Speier (1950)
Joe Sambito (1952)
Clay Christiansen (1958)
John Elway (1960)
Jay Schroeder (1961)
Mark Grace (1964)
Ron Mahay (1971)
Corey Koskie (1973)
Richard Hidalgo (1975)
Brandon Phillips (1981)

Haruyasu Nakajima is in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

A. Ray Smith owned minor league baseball teams from 1961-1986.

Oscar Rodriguez is in the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ron Luciano was an American League umpire from 1969-1979.

NFL quarterbacks John Elway and Jay Schroeder each played minor league baseball.  Elway hit .318 in 151 at-bats as an outfielder for Class A Oneonta in 1982.  Schroeder was primarily an outfielder for four years in the Toronto system, never getting higher than Class A.  He hit .213 with 36 homers in 1,304 minor league at-bats.

Mark Grace was drafted by Minnesota in the fifteenth round of the January draft in 1984, but did not sign.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–June 28 →

Friday Music Day

Friday Music Day: June 28, 2013

33 Comments

I made some music comments this week. To summarize:
Daft Punk album: Joy-Destroying
Scout Niblett's cover of "No Scrubs": Opinion contaminated by Daft Punk
Yeezus: Palate-Cleansing
Scout Niblett's cover of "Uptown Top Ranking": Great.
Miley Cyrus single: awful, but I can get past it.

More thoughts:
Scout Niblett's got some greatness in her, and some stretches on her albums that absolutely get lost and have nowhere to go. (Oddly reminds me of Regina Spektor, who she sounds nothing like.) So far, I've mostly needed a hook to get into her songs, like if it's a cover (two listed above, plus a take on Palace [Will Oldham]'s "Trudy Dies"), or a Will Oldham duet ("Kiss")

Yeezus: I don't really think this entirely works, especially lyrically. (Not only is there little coherence within the album, but single tracks are all over the place, except for anger. Which makes it feel more genuine.) I'm glad there's someone with big pop success who's willing to take big artistic risks like these. I betcha Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot) and Kevin Martin ("The Bug", "Techno Animal") are kicking themselves for not getting involved with this album. The beat for "Black Skinhead" is pretty fantastic; it's got the swing from "Gold Digger", the drums from "Love Lockdown". And if Miss Cyrus is singing (autotuning) "We like to party / dancin' with Miley" in her single, then Mr. West could be singing (autotuning) "When we tried our first Miley / and came out of our body". I could listen to this album a lot.

You can download Aaron Dilloway's Siena for free. Or just listen. I believe this is what the kids are calling "Noise". It'll probably be on a best-of-the-year list for me in about six months.

Some random tracks I listened to that appeal a lot to me:
Mikal Cronin "Shout it out"
Disclosure "When a Fire Starts to Burn" (Hadn't looked at the video before, ignore it.)

And two old songs that are great, just because:
Mylo "Need You Tonite" (feat. a Judie Tzuke sample)
Camp Lo "Luchini AKA This Is It"