The Man in Blak

Haven't we been over this before? I watched a Phillies/Reds game live last year where Adam Dunn beat us with two home runs. The reasons pitchers give Junior good pitches is because they don't want to walk him ahead of Dunn. I wouldn't have intentionally walked Griffey to start the at-bat, but I would have given him a free pass after the wild pitch moved both runners into scoring position and opened up first base with a 3-2 count. Even with Dunn being a complete monster, it opens up the additional possibilities for a double play or (at the very least) a double play ball. Of course, it also opens up the possibility of Isringhausen walking in a run after that, which is much more likely than I'm comfortable with. That being said, Izzy has thrown a ton of pitches over the last week, and it was kind of silly to bring him in to the game, save situation be damned. Tyler Johnson and/or Adam Wainwright probably could have given the team a comparable or better chance to hold the lead and finish off the game.

Why, I bet these people aren't even really PMing him.

The first set of ellipses raised my expectations but, obviously, I should have known better.

Nirvana: 1. In Utero 2. Unplugged in New York 3. From The Muddy Banks of the Wishkah 4. Nevermind 5. Bleach 6. Incesticide Tom Waits: 1. Swordfishtrombones 2. Rain Dogs 3. Bone Machine 4. Mule Variations 5. Frank's Wild Years 6. Small Change 7. Alice 8. Blood Money 9. Closing Time 10. Heartattack and Vine Nine Inch Nails: 1. The Downward Spiral 2. With Teeth 3. Further Down The Spiral 4. Broken 5. Pretty Hate Machine 6. Disc 2 ("Quiet") from And All That Could Have Been 7. The Fragile 8. Things Falling Apart

Is it just me, or is the "murder-suicide" quickly becoming the next big thing in domestic abuse? In other far less serious baseball news, apparently Yankees third base coach Larry Bowa was seen yelling at Corey Patterson during yesterday's game for stealing second and third while the Orioles enjoyed a six run lead. Apparently, Patterson wasn't playing the game "the right way." Cue the violins.

Perhaps Hotbutter Spoontoaster is just "randomizing."

What was even worse about that is that it was on a 2-0 count and Marquis looked like he had no intention of ever throwing a strike again. He probably could have waited a couple of pitches and just walked to second (in fact, he took off on ball 3 of that at-bat). Just a really bad decision. Interesting to see Tyler Johnson working the 8th. He's always had more electric stuff than Flores and his power pitching is more suited to the later innings anyway. Of course, two strikeouts later and we see vintage TLR, as he takes out the relief pitcher that nobody can pick up and brings in Braden Looper for the righty/righty matchup. I will be genuinely surprised if Looper takes this game into the ninth without allowing at least one baserunner.

Because Penny burns up a lot of pitches to retire batters - he was at 112 pitches when they took him out today.

And Mulder hits Pierre with a 54 mph curveball that just seemed to die in midair. Quite possibly the most pathetic HBP I've ever seen, and it loads the bases for Chicago.

Word is that Pujols felt a "pop" in that oblique. That can't be good.

That's the conventional baseball wisdom coming through - Neifi is in the number two slot because he puts the ball in play almost 90% of the time. Putting the ball in play moves the baserunner over, even in the case of an out, assuming that the lead runner gets on.

The Royals finally fire Allard Baird and bring in Dayton Moore, who gets full control of all baseball operations: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/14707979.htm

I hear that the Cubs may have some spare second basemen.

Amazing what a change of scenery and/or coaching staff can do for your game. He's almost right in line with his stat line for 2004, with a little less power, but a little more discipline at the plate. His strikeout rate, though not phenomenal, has definitely improved, while his walks have remained the same. The real staggering improvement is in the steals - though I'm sure he'll level off a little bit, getting 17 steals in 18 attempts is still remarkable. Dusty Baker seemed hellbent on throwing the guy in the leadoff spot and focusing on what he couldn't do, but the Orioles are content to stick him in center field and watch him turn in a decent season in the lower half of the lineup. Oh, and that crash you heard? That was Josh Hancock falling back to earth, serving up five runs (two inherited from Reyes) in the seventh. I'm not sure, but I suspect that bringing in the long reliever from the bullpen into a tight situation wasn't really the best move.

Is that the game where LaTroy hit the baserunner in the head with the throw to first last year?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around a team scoring two runs on a sacrifice fly. That must have been one hell of a bobble.

Say hello to Henry Blanco, starting catcher. Which is just one injury away from "John Mabry, emergency starting catcher."

Um, Nas? I know that they effectively put the feud to rest late last year, but Jay-Z and Nas were feuding for years, prior to that. And I'm not sure I'd consider the Linkin Park collaboration to be smart either, commercial success be damned. The smartest "collaboration" decision he ever made was releasing the tracks for The Black Album, which spawned a pretty impressive run of mashup remix albums. All that being said, Jay-Z does actually fit into the discussion very well, for many of the other reasons you stated above.

Most of the influence comes from The Bends, which has greatly impacted British pop-rock bands like Coldplay and Travis, by their own admission. Muse especially falls under that category, with the lead singer almost shamelessly impersonating Thom Yorke, yelp for falsetto yelp. OK Computer has had an impact on a lot of bands, not only in lyrical content (Grandaddy's career from The Sophtware Slump forward, dozens of other indie bands), but in the splicing of electronica elements of sound to acoustic instrumentation (to which they were not the first, of course, but probably the most notable out of "mainstream artists").

This is true, of course. Eminem was everywhere. But, you didn't address that part. I think maybe "Stan" and "Lose Yourself" will be remembered as good songs, but he's got "what, my name, who, my name is, huh, my name is chicka-chicka Slim Shady" or however it went and "I'll sit next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst and hear them argue about who she gave head to first" in there dragging him down. That's shitty music for middle schoolers. Being a middle schooler at the time "The Real Slim Shady" came out, I would know. I found it hysterical. From a musical standpoint, I don't remember ever being too impressed with his beats, except the two songs I mentioned up there + "The Next Episode," which was also a hit when I was in 8th grade. Evidently, strings are badass. Even though it's got an almost one-hit-wonder quirk about it, "My Name Is" should probably qualify alongside "Stan" and "Lose Yourself" as being very strong singles, songs that you hear on Top 40 stations today. "The Real Slim Shady", "The Way I Am", "Without Me", "Forgot About Dre" (a collab with Dr. Dre, sure, but it still features Eminem prominently throughout) and maybe even "Guilty Conscience" could be considered to be stronger singles on the next tier down. To be frank, I can't attest to the impact of anything he did after The Eminem Show because I haven't bought the albums that followed it or listened to Top 40 radio or watched TRL in the last couple of years. But, just from those examples above, I think you can say that he's put together a strong run of singles, especially when you consider that his best three singles were massive crossover hits. I think that some would argue that The Marshall Mathers LP is one of the best rap albums of that time period; VH1 dedicated their "classic album" show to it, whatever the fuck it's called - take that for what it's worth. If we're talking about adding album sales into the equation, The Slim Shady LP and The Eminem Show both sold very well, going 4x platinum and 8x platinum respectively. Given the rest of the competition during this time period (especially if you consider the length and output of a typical rapper's career), Eminem doesn't have a bad portfolio with albums either. If you were going to put the argument on a rapper whose musical output doesn't quite match up with his cultural impact, Snoop Dogg would probably be a better target, in my opinion.

Well, I agree with the second paragraph. Guns 'n Roses is listed in the very first post in this thread as one of those "defining artists." If so much of Eminem's career parallels Axl Rose's trip to stardom, why would Eminem be dismissed as having any impact? Never mind that Eminem was the first white rapper to obtain and sustain massive crossover success, which he had to accomplish despite the fact that Vanilla Ice had essentially put a moratorium on the very idea of a white guy doing rap. Never mind that he was the focal point behind a commercially and critically successful movie in 8 Mile. You can say that rap is a niche genre that doesn't really have the cultural impact due to percentages of sales and you might have a valid point, but Eminem was miles away from being a typical representative of the genre, and that is precisely why he was so successful. There was a time in the late 90's and early 00's where you couldn't pick up Rolling Stone or some other pop culture magazine without seeing some mention of Eminem. For better or worse, he is probably music's most defining artist of that time period. Kanye West falls into a similar realm as Eminem as well. Not only did he make the front pages with the controversial comments about George Bush during Katrina, but he's a wildly successful artist, both critically and commercially. He's got almost twenty grammy nominations after two albums, an absurd amount of singles that have charted, and a renowned reputation as a hip-hop producer to boot. Given that he's only been around a couple of years, I don't know if you can lump him in as a defining artist just yet, but as far as I'm concerned, he's on his way. And yeah, Radiohead. The Pink Floyd comparison/implication that Inc made early on in the thread was spot on.

One of the defining artists of our generation.

Today was actually Carpenter's scheduled turn in the rotation, but he had skipped his scheduled bullpen work earlier in the week, due to some back ailment, and was scratched from the start. So, today, the Cardinals are starting Johnny Wholestaff. Thompson was a starter in the minors, but he's been utilized so heavily as a one or two inning reliever that they can't really stretch him out on a whim. He had also touched about 40 pitches in two innings, so he wasn't really dominating anyway. My guess is that the Giants will get a steady diet of Josh Hancock and Brian Falkenborg coming up for the next four or five innings.

Jason Marquis makes for a better Brooks Kieschnick than Brooks Kieschnick ever did.

For no other reason, here's a quotation from one of my favorite Neifi Perez articles: