I was added to a large FB group of old friends from over 20 years ago. Everyone is posting old pictures and everything, and I'm not sure if the whole enterprise is amusing or horrifying.
15 thoughts on “August 8, 2018: Memory Lane”
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The best baseball is fun baseball.
My roommate in 2006 was a Mariners game, so I spent a lot of late nights watching their games with him. Adrian Beltre is always the best.
Minor league team loses no-hitter, and nearly a perfect game, because of Manfred Rule.
Former San Antonio Spurs coach and General Manager Bob Bass has been hospitalized following a stroke.
HPR pulled out the X-Box (MK1, a hand-me-down) yesterday and challenged me to a game of ESPN MLB 2005 (name may not be right) with John Miller and Joe Morgan.
He picked the Twins, so I picked the Yankees. Johann vs Big Unit. I had never before played this game.
We had to call the game a 2-2 tie after 6 innings because it got too late.
The Twins struck first with a leadoff homer from Shannon Stewart, but that was it for a while. The Twins got a few hits in the 6th to score another. I wish I could remember how or who. Lew Ford was involved.
But Johnson was dominant, with at least 14 strikeouts through 6. It was 8 K through 3 innings. Which was good, because I did not know how to throw the ball to a base. (All field outs were fly balls.)
Behind the plate, my Yankees were good at getting hits but not at stringing them together. Or rather, they weren't good at taking more than one base. I could not figure out how to do more than station-to-station running. A would-be double past Ford with runners at first and second and I scored 0 and had the bases loaded. 12 hits through 5 innings with no runs scored.
Knowing it was the last inning, I got aggressive with my batters in the bottom of the 6th and it paid off. Hit-hit-hit-forceout at home. Jon Miller mentioned that Johann was winded (I took a lot more pitches than HPR) but neither of us knew how to switch pitchers.
Then I got more hits and finally scored. Matsui got the first RBI. The last out, preserving the tie was a strikeout by Bernie Williams.
It was fun looking at the old players and hearing Miller and Morgan again. Digital Morgan sounds so much like real Morgan did, even when he used the same cliche for two pitches in a row.
I looked up how to run after the game was over. It probably won't be as fun again unless HPR and I both get good.
I was glad that game still worked well. Some of the XBox games are not in good condition.
I got one of those SNES classics and tried to play Ken Griffey Jr baseball against the computer. I lost 22-0, and I was the Mariners. It would be a much better game if I was playing someone my skill level.
Similar to my first game recently. I wasn't shut out but I think it was 28-2 or so. By my fourth game I was nearly competitive.
Playing my 12-year-old is someone about my skill level, as long as I don't know how to run.
Maybe I should pick the Devil Rays or Royals.
I should search through my box of random videogame stuff to see if some old PS2 memory cards are in there. I had one heck of a Twins season in High Heat (2002 or 2003, I think) that might be heading into the playoffs or is around game 150. Jacque Jones made a run at .400, for some reason I was locked in with him at the plate.
High Heat really got weird with the years assigned to the games, if I'm remembering right. But I played the hell out of that game in the couple months between moving to Minnesota and getting a full-time job and played every game of that season.
Can't imagine doing that today, I have a short season going in Super Mega Baseball 2 and probably won't see the end of it unless my son gets into it.
I'm proud of National's Erick Fedde for not letting it freak him out.
Unlike Logan Morrison
Hey, Daneeka, do you have family in Grand Rapids? I drove by a [eponymous last name] business (Auto Glass?) today on the way back down to the Cities from visiting my folks.
Or is that name Fin(?) for "Smith"?
It is a relatively common Finnish name. Lots of them in the Iron Range and the UP of Michigan. I don't think my arm of the family is in Grand Rapids.
I've worked with an appraiser with DG's last name who lives in Cloquet.
I've advocated for May to get a shot as a starter but an opener isn't quite what I had in mind.
I didn't note the text of the Cup until just now... it's completely worth commenting on. I've been added to a "graduating class of XX from school" group, and every time a picture is posted I just have to laugh, because I clearly was doing very different things in high school than many of the people in this group.