Cup of Coffee

August 28, 2019: Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Final

39 Comments

Unfortunately, the Loons fell 2-1 to the Atlanta United in last night's USOC final. Not that many of you would have been able to see it as it was tucked away on the 4ltr's premium channel. Way to encourage engagement in U.S. soccer, you guys.

39 thoughts on “August 28, 2019: Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Final”

  2. I wanted to spend some more words on the Twins home run pace and why I update the standings every single day.

    I've always been fascinated with statistics which is what drew me to baseball in the first place when I was seven years old. By the time I was 8 I had memorized the batting averages and home run totals of every player on the Twins from the 87 season and would annoy my family with this random trivia. I continue to be obsessed with baseball numbers and history and get annoyed when I'm listening to a prominent sports authority and they don't get it right. For example, I heard one of them say the 1995 Indians had a 100 wins which was impressive because of the shorter season but they couldn't remember how many losses they had. That shouldn't matter whatsoever, but 100-44 will forever be etched in my memory and I'm not a Cleveland fan.

    This HR history chase for the Twins has taken over me completely. I very desperately want them not just to crush the record, but to be ahead of the Yankees. And part of me wants this as much as a World Series. Part of that is beating the Yankees at something, but it's more than that. For the past 20 years, I've admired the 1997 Mariners page hundreds of time. Numbers like 56 and 40 and 31 and 28 are in my brain. And what I want--assuming the ball gets deadened a bit this offseason--is for the Twins to have this record and hold it for another 20 years. I want baseball geeks to just stare at the Twins 2019 b-ref page in awe. I want little kids to annoy their parents with telling them how many homers Cruz and Kepler hit that year.

    If the Twins hit 310 homers but the Yankees hit 311, it will likely take a World Series for me to not be annoyed perpetually about 2019.

    1. I'm with you -- I've followed a lot of poor Twins teams, and sometimes the only thing to get me through the season was watching Hrbek's ROY challenge, or Landreaux's batting streak, or some other esoteric stat or individual performance that was worth hanging on to. This year's team is having a great run AND it has a lot of individual (and team) performances to watch.

      That said, some of B-R's FB posts are getting really annoying ("Ted is the fourth fastest LH hitter to 30 HR by age 23 in history") especially when it ends up comparing apples to oranges, like #s before All-Star break.

      I want the Twins to dominate the bandbox Yanks.

      1. Yes. I'd much prefer the Twins end up with at least 15 more homers than the Yanks at season's end. But I'll take even one. And of course a 3-0 sweep in the ALDS.

    2. I am with you on this HR quest. Even on nights when I'm not able to really follow the games (which has been most of them lately), I've checking in on the HR totals both during and after the games. I think I've visited the wikipedia HR records page every night for the past 2 weeks (something about the particular page is really fun for me...). I think your description of how much you want this for the Twins is spot on. I have this dread about the Yankees catching up, and each day that they don't my dread starts to ease just the slightest bit. Which is actually a really nice feeling.

      Anyway, I appreciate you, and everyone else contributing, keeping us updated and engaged!

  3. Sounds like the Royals are on the selling block. The new owner might actually care about the team too. Not sure how I feel about that...

      1. True. The Royals also have the worst winning percentage in baseball over that span. I'd love to see the Twins in the World Series again, but over that twenty year period I'll take the Twins' record over that of the Royals.

        1. I just had this conversation with someone. Would you like the Royals 30 + years of irrelevancy punctuated by 3 years of being good, including a World Series win and a World Series loss, or would you rather at least have a shot every so often but no World Series payoff? Tough call.

          3. I am definitely on the side of preferring being competitive and fun to watch over championship or bust. It's too hard for teams to win it all, so why stress about it, ya know?

  5. As I'll be out of town for a while, I'm just claiming Kepler is going to get hot, and he'll be my pick every day through the weekend.

    1. I enjoy all the different alternative methods how people are submitting their HR predictions and a little schadenfreude considering the effort in gathering it all in

    2. That worked for me back in July , I will need a similar approach in a week as I'm going off the grid Sept 6-12.

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