1975 World Series Game 4 - Red Sox 5, Reds 4 (boxcore and play account)
-The Cincinnati crowd audibly groans when starter Fred Norman gets behind 2-0 to the first batter of the game. Man, tough crowd.
-The announcers throughout the series have been talking about the possibility of Rico Petrocelli retiring after the Series. He’d retire after the following season.
-Announcers do a promo for the reunion of Simon & Garfunkle on Saturday Night Live that week.
-The video qualit
Not much of note in the N.L. this week accept the arrival of You Know Who for the first time this year.
#10 Chase Utley, Phillies
.317/.382/.531, 71 RC, .294 EQA, 40.5 VORP, 17 Win Shares
#9 Barry Bonds, Giants
.255/.477/.509, 63 RC, .333 EQA, 27.8 VORP, 17 Win Shares
#8 Nick Johnson, Nationals
.302/.429/.535, 73 RC, .321 EQA, 39.0 VORP, 17 Win Shares
#7 Alfonso Soriano, Nationals
.288/.361/.594, 83 RC, .305 EQA, 40.3 VORP, 20 Win Shares
#6 Miguel Cabrera, Marlin
The Detroit Tigers have been one of the more proud franchises in baseball history. That was until Mike Ilitch bought the team after the 1992 season. Before their ownership the Tigers had never endured more than four consecutive losing seasons. This year’s Tigers are just 17 wins away from ending 12 years of futility and are very likely to reach the postseason for the first time since 1987. But Ilitch's first year as owner was the Tigers last succesful one.
In the Tigers last winning season
This is one that I’ve been putting off as it seemed too obvious for an entry. No one in there right mind thinks in 1991 that Terry Pendleton was a better player than Barry Bonds except apparently the 12 baseball writers who voted for Pendleton over Bonds. Now Pendleton winning wasn’t on the level of Andre Dawson winning in 1987 and actually after reviewing it there certainly have been several worse choices for MVP in the past.
There’s an easy answer as to why Pendleton won the MVP and that
This year in college football there will be something called the BCS Championship Game or as I like to think of it, Fiesta Bowl II. It will match up the #1 and #2 teams in the BCS rankings and it will take place in the new Arizona Cardinals stadium which will be the new site of the Fiesta Bowl. It’s not a bowl game but it’ll be played at a bowl site the week after a bowl game was just played in it. It was the NCAA’s lame compromise they came up with for those who want to keep the bowl tradition
1975 World Series – Reds 6, Red Sox 5 10 Innings (boxscore and play account)
-Like Game 2 this game is incomplete on the disk. With one out in the bottom of the 7th a screen comes up acknowledging that a portion of the game is missing from the archives. Now when the action returns I have no idea what part of the game until a couple minutes later when the announcers mention that it’s the top of the 9th. It would have been nice for them to add a graphic telling you what part of the game they
First half awards, except Manager of the Year which I could careless about. The smart managers are usually smart every year and the dumb managers are usually dumb every year. The award itself is striclty based preseason predictions and who exceeds them.
National League
Starting with the MVP of course in my view it is still Albert Pujols' award to lose but in the view of the baseball writer's it appers to be David Wright's award to lose. If the Mets continue to blow away the rest of the
My 1987 A.L. MVP Redo helped me find my next “Where’d They Go?” subject as there was one team that year that had three players in my top 10, that being the Boston Red Sox. Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, and Dwight Evans all had great years and having three players of that caliber playing for the defending A.L. Champs you’d think that'd lead to a successful year. They finished 78-84. What happened?
Obviously three stars can not lead a team of 25 to a championship. After you got past those three
I've been trying for a while to figure out some sort reoccurring entry for what's become my favorite sport to watch on television in the last several years and that's college football. But I haven't been able to come up with anything to this point so I figured I'd post some memories and some useless facts which is what this blog was created for.
As I've said before my "sports life" began in 1986 but it wasn't until 1991 that I took a true interest in college football. Really two things stuc
I've finished watching Game 2 of all three series so here are some of my notes.
1975 World Series Game 2 - Reds 3, Red Sox 2 (boxscore and play account)
-This game is incomplete on the disk. Apparantly the top of the 2nd is missing from the film archives. Thankfully it was just a 1-2-3 inning for the Reds.
-OBP gets it's first notice I think in all three of the series here although it's referred to as "on base average" as they have a graphic when Joe Morgan is up mentioning tha
Okay I've redone all the 80's MVPs but this was one that I kind of have been wanting to do an entry for. The main reason is because 1987 was the year that my favorite player of all-time Mark McGwire burst on to the scene by completely obliterating the rookie homerun record with 49 homeruns. It's really one of those records that it's hard to imagine it ever being broken as Mike Piazza's 35 in 1993 is the most by a rookie since. In the Summer of '87 everyone was going out of their way to buy up as
Here's a look back at the first two years of my contest. Also for the first time full BCS rankings from 2005, pre bowls. The post bowl rankings for 2005 will be used for the Preseason Top 10 for 2006 but I won't be posting those until the sign ups are done. Also at the end is the all-time records list.
2004 Standings (regular season)
Pac-8
1. UCLA (6-1, 8-5)
2. Boise State (5-2, 7-6)
3. Hawaii (4-3, 7-6)
4. Stanford (3-4, 8-5)
4. Washington State (3-4, 7-6)
4. Oregon (3-
Quickie this time around.
N.L.
10. Jose Reyes, Mets
9. Bobby Abreu, Phillies
8. Nick Johnson, Nationals
7. Bronson Arroyo, Reds
6. Brandon Webb, Diamondbacks
5. Lance Berkman, Astros
4. Miguel Cabrera, Marlins
3. Carlos Beltran, Mets
2. David Wright, Mets
1. Albert Pujols, Cardinals
A.L.
10. Derek Jeter, Yankees
9. Paul Konerko, White Sox
8. Manny Ramirez, Red Sox
7. Jason Giambi, Yankees
6. Joe Mauer, Twins
5. Johan Santana, Twins
4. Curtis Gran
I've finished watching Game 1 from each DVD so as I mentioned before I'm taking little notes while watching each game. Of course as i read some of my notes I'm not even sure what I intended on bringing up. Of course I won't go over every detail of the game as there is no point.
Interesting to note that for all three of these World Series that the winner of Game 1 was the team that ended up losing the series. Backs up Al's entry on playoff odds on how Game 1 is the least important game.
For the next Where’d They Go? I had already decided on doing a Mets team and ironically enough I received a request from TSM Mets’ fan strummer to do one for the 1997 Mets. The one I had chosen was the overpaid, sexual assaulting, firecracker throwing 1992 Mets. But I’m a giver so instead I will be doing the 1997 Mets.
The Mets had gone through six years of losing featuring many bad contracts, bad trades, and bad management. Basically the Mets the from 1991 to 1996 were the New York Knicks
I had almost forgotten that the NBA Draft was only a week away. I used look forward to the draft before ESPN took over coverage of it from TNT. Now in the early days of my blog (waaaaaaaaay back four and a half months ago) I did an entry on the 1989 NBA Draft, ranking the players drafted using the basketball version of win shares. I decided that would be a better way to do a Draftback entry for the NBA rather than the usual listing of the first round making stupid comments.
I picked the 19
***OMG SPOILERS***
As I've mentioned I have purchased the 1975, 1979, and 1986 World Series box sets released by MLB this year. I decided to start by watching the bonus disks on the 1986 set before viewing the World Series games. The DVD sleeves are very cool as they have little facts on the cover of them and then on the back they have the boxscore to the game on that disk, then on the inside they have a completely play-by-play account of the game. There's two bonus disks on the 1986 set, o
Woo hoo, my three World Series box sets showed up today. I’ll try to figure out some sort of entry to do on the sets beyond a simple review. Probably will start by watching the bonus disk on the 1986 set that has Game 6 of the NLCS.
Hey remember how overrated Carlos Beltran was and how he was overpaid? What happened to that talk? He’s arguably the best healthy player in baseball right now. To no surprise Pujols is still on top even on the DL but Beltran is making a serious push for the top
I think every sports fan has certain athletes they dislike or even on some level hate. Sometimes there are some justifiable reason to dislike the athlete and other times it is just irrational hate. For me that athlete is Roger Clemens. I can't stand the fat fuck. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as Clemens has many memorable failures against my Oakland A's over the years. Clemens was 0-7 head-to-head vs. Dave Stewart when Stewart pitched for the A's. Hell you'd think I'd like the guy but I
Resident TSM Astros fan vivalaultra inspired me by his excitement over me mentioning Glenn Davis in the new TWiB thread and bringing up him being traded to the Orioles. During the '90/'91 offseason the Astros traded their slugging first baseman for three prospects named Curt Schilling, Steve Finley, and Pete Harnisch. Davis played three injury filled years in Baltimore while Schilling and Finley are still active players. Quite the coup by the Astros but Schilling and Finley's best years would co
Joe Carter and Cory Snyder of the Clevleand Indians graced the cover of Sports Illustrated's 1987 Baseball Preview issue. It declared the Indians as the best team in the American League. The ’87 Indians would lose 101 games. How could this happen? No one is picking a team who was terrible the year before to win a pennant and indeed the year before the Indians were the surprise team of baseball. There have plenty of looks at the infamous ’87 Indians so I figured I’d look at the ’86 team that led
Ugh, I had almost finished the entire entry and my dumbass clicks the back button by accident. Click forward, nothing there. So fuck it I'm not typing all that out again so here's the quick version of the Top 10 for each league and maybe I'll edit in some numbers later.
Pujols still has a huge lead although it could be gone if he misses the full six weeks like many think he will.
Edit: Okay I've put the numbers in now.
National League
10. Jason Bay, Pirates
.305/.427/.614, 49
The draft is tommorrow so I've decided just to do a quick list of the top players of each draft from the 1980's per Win Shares with a couple of other things thrown in. Now when putting this together I was quickly skimming over the list of players who played in the Majors from each draft so it's entirely possible I might have missed a key player or two so feel free to point out any omissions. For each year I only take in account players who signed.
1980
Top Pick Overall: Darryl Straw
For the first time in 35 years the NBA Finals will feature two franchises who have never reached the Finals before. So like I did for the Clippers after their historic playoff series win, here are the Top 10 individual seasons for both franchises according to the basketball version of Win Shares.
I guess it shouldn't be surprising that the best individual season for both franchises are from this past season. The Mavericks list is dominated by one player who may end up holding the 10 best s
Next up is 1984 and I selected this particular year as it features easily the worst #1 pick of the 1980's. The Mets had the #1 pick and they wanted to draft Mark McGwire but could not agree on a contract so they settled for this...
1. Mets - Shawn Abner, Outfield, High School
Abner never put on a real Mets uniform as he was traded to San Diego after the 1986 season in the Kevin Mitchell/Kevin McReynolds deal. .227/.269/.323 line in 392 ML games with only 13 career Win Shares.
2. M
