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At the Intersection of Sports and Culture

Photo Credit for Header: Alex Foucre-Stimes

Shadowboxing with Kevin Gregg and David Ortiz

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VMS reader Jimmy M. sends us this pic from last night’s Red Sox/Orioles game at Fenway Park. Full stadium on hand, as expected, to see Boston bludgeon the O’s by a final score of 10-3. But all anybody is talking about today is the “fight” between Red Sox DH David Ortiz and Baltimore pitcher Kevin Gregg. As Jimmy points out, the 8th inning provided and interesting series of events to have to explain to his 8 year old son Tommy. To be fair, what transpired between Gregg and Papi was a little a little confusing to even the most seasoned of baseball eyes.

As far as I can tell, the Baltimore Orioles are upset because they are playing like horse manure, having fallen a total of 16 games behind the steamrolling Sox. Papi has been walking his way down to first base since his days as David Arias so I’m not so sure why Gregg was so compelled to scold Ortiz on this particular occasion. On the other hand, Ortiz has no business overreacting to being pitched inside. That’s where you go to get him out. Everyone knows this yet nobody executes this strategy properly – see New York Yankees.

In the end, the only way Baltimore exacts any sort of revenge against Ortiz is to win the next two games vs the Red Sox before heading into the break. Even still, they would remain well behind Boston in the standings with very little cause for optimism over the remainder of the 2011 MLB season.

 

Miller Park in Milwaukee: Home of the Friendliest Parking Lot Bar in America

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Our dispatches from the field courtesy of intrepid VMS adventurer Steve continue with a close examination of a parking lot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That’s right. The very first thing he mentioned about his trip to Miller Park was that there is a fully functioning bar and sausage haus in the parking lot. Leave it to the fine folks of Wisconsin to do it right. If you’re not going to build a ballpark directly downtown, where it can be surrounding by existing bars and restaurants, then you might as create the sort of infrastructure that encourages tailgating in the parking lot.

And why can’t all of baseball be more like football in this regard? Football fans, what with their cast iron smokers and brick oven pizzas, have created an entire culture around the pregame tailgate. Does this not happen before MLB baseball games because, unlike football where they play only once a week, baseball teams average 3-4 home games over a similar stretch? Probably also has something to do with people coming to ballgames directly from work. Unfortunately, with the national unemployment rate rising to the near cataclysmic level of 9.2%, perhaps some fans are going to have a bit more time to explore leisurely activities.

Getting back to Steve, here are a few highlights from inside Miller Park.

– Brewers fans are unfailingly generous people. After Steve’s girlfriend “accidentally” dumped a beer on his lap a Brewers fan was quick to offer a few baby wipes to help contain the spill. After hearing about this incident I will now pack baby wipes before attending my next baseball game.

– Bratwurst winning the sausage race. My only question, how does the Bratwurst not win the sausage race every single time? It’s the closest thing Milwaukee has to an indigenous encased meat.

– Bernie Brewer = consimate professional mascot. If Milwaukee really wanted to expand their revenue stream they should auction off turns down Bernie’s slide after every Brewer homerun.

 

Wednesday Worries: Wolfsburg Edition

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I’m worried that…..

someone over at Bushwood Country Club paid for Carl Spackler to travel down to Windermere, Florida and delicately slice Tiger Woods’ left achilles. I can totally empathize with Tiger having to back out of next week’s British Open at Royal St. George’s due to various leg injuries. I once tried to play a round of golf with a big blister on my pinky toe and ended up having to hop on the back of my playing partners cart for the entirety of the back nine. Not to intimate that a silly little blister can cause anywhere near the same amount of pain as a torn knee ligament, or whatever Tiger is bothered by, but rather to acknowledge that you need two healthy wheels to play any kind of competitive golf, let alone major championship golf.

this isn’t the first time Thomas Levet has injured himself jumping into a body of water. I agree wholeheartedly with Colin Montgomerie that this jumping into the water after winning a golf tournament thing will eventually lead to someone impaling themselves on a hidden spike.

some people out there really have the capacity to care about this Roger Clemens perjury trial. Personally, all I care about is whether or not the Rocket is still “frosting his tips” like Evan Longoria.

I should be paying more attention to the Women’s World Cup in Germany.

when Albert Pujols returns to the Cardinals lineup this week, a whole month earlier than previously expected, the non displaced fracture in his forearm will manifest itself into a displaced fracture and we will all experience a scene right out of the Naked Gun. Also, if Pujols is pain free and productive I think he should have to produce some sort of birth certificate proving that he is in fact not a Terminator sent back in time by Skynet.

with South Korea now set to host the 2018 Winter Olympics we are going to live through seven embarrassing years of American sportswriters misspelling and mispronouncing “Pyeongchang”. Maybe NBC will hire former President George W. Bush to cover the biathlon.

view from Wolfsburg courtesy of @sonalikarnick

 

 

 

Plodding Through the Previews: Horrible Bosses

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Some folks boast a photographic memory while others claim to count cards. Me, I have a strange telekinetic ability to predict the plot of a movie based solely on the coming attraction. I will channel these talents every week in an effort to breakdown the latest summer blockbuster. With a little luck, and patience, I’ll also connect the movie to a current sports story however, this final pursuit may result in complete and abject failure.

Horrible Bosses

We try to make it so that the highest grossing film of the coming weekend is the preview dissected on our Tuesday Plodding Through the Previews post. Today was an exception however because I just could not lower myself to a critical analysis of the sure to be summer sensation Zookeeper starring Kevin James. Instead, we’re going to take a closer look at Horrible Bosses, which on the surface, looks like a preview much more in line with my delicate sensibilities.

A second by second breakdown of the preview

:5 – I wonder if Kevin Spacey is pleased with his post American Beauty career arc? After a string of successful gigs – Usual Suspects, Se7en, American Beauty – it feels like he has drifted off into relative obscurity while working on several pet projects  like Beyond the Sea. Maybe Spacey’s role in Horrible Bosses will catapult him into a new genre of comedic roles a la Robert De Niro in Meet the Parents.

:22 – With Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis, we could have ourselves one of the most bankable starting rotations since the days of Palmer, McNally, Dobson, and Cuellar with the Baltimore Orioles.

:38 – When are we going to start giving Colin Farrell some credit for being a pretty good actor? In Bruges was awesome and it just feels like the guy takes a ton of crap for being a good looking guy with great hair and an awesome Irish accent.

1:11 – Hey look, a Jennifer Aniston movie that just might not suck.

1:26 – Jamie Foxx playing a “murder consultant”. He really has come a long way since winning the Academy Award for Ray.

1:35 – More people should be watching “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on FX. Charlie Day, not Jason Sudeikis, is poised to be the breakout star of this film. My only hope is that he doesn’t commit career suicide by signing on to be the comedic sidekick in the next Brett Ratner good cop/bad cop movie. Where’s Seann William Scott when you need him?

1:58 – Gotta applaud the effort.

2:23 – Tater Salad and Bunk playing cops. I hope this is set to be a spinoff next summer.

The Plod (where I guess the plot of the movie based solely on the preview)

Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis all want to kill their horrible bosses – Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell respectively. Because they’re all “nice guys” who wouldn’t know the first thing about murder, they hire a “murder consultant” to help them explore their villainous options. Of course, all kinds of hijinx ensue as the 3 best friends fail over and over again to execute any sort of successful murder. Along the way, Sudeikis falls for Aniston and the two become romantically involved while Kevin Spacey turns out to be not such a bad guy after all, just a little misunderstood and lonely. Not only does he give Jason Bateman that much desired promotion but the two spark a lifelong friendship built on trust and respect. The only “boss” I worry about actually losing is Colin Farrell. I could see some sort of accident befalling him, completely unrelated to anything the 3 friends conspired to do.

Connection to a Current Sports Story

Is there a worse boss in professional sports than Frank McCourt, the soon to be deposed owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers? Here’s hoping that MLB gets in there and cleans up this embarrassing mess as quickly as possible. The Dodgers remain one of the flagship teams in MLB and need to end up in the hands of an owner who knows and understands how to successfully operate a professional sports franchise. But the question is, will Bud Selig allow Mark Cuban to ever own a MLB team? Hopefully the Dallas Mavericks successful title run in 2011 shows people that Cuban is interested in winning above all else and wouldn’t alter the integrity of the game. His energy and passion would be a great boost to the Dodger clubhouse and all of Chavez Ravine.

view from Chavez Ravine courtesy of @darrenmartin2

Monday Morning Musings: 4th of July Edition

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There is not a straightforward way to reach the quiet hamlet of Cooperstown, NY, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Google maps will send you past every dairy farm in upstate New York. I think at one point we even passed the Bubble Boy’s house.

It might not be the easiest place to find, but Cooperstown is certainly the perfect spot to spend a Friday afternoon in early July.  We didn’t go through the actual Hall of Fame museum, choosing instead to walk around and snap a few photos of Doubleday Field, a place where I was fortunate enough to play a couple of baseball games back when I was in high school. It had been quite a while since I last visited Cooperstown and in that time I had totally forgotten how short the right field porch is. Only 312 feet down the line is a very tempting distance for a left handed hitter.

It was also nice to see that Doubleday Field is used regularly as the homefield of the Cooperstown Hawkeyes, a New York Collegiate Baseball League summer team. Fields as historic as Doubleday need to be kept busy, otherwise they become overgrown relics of yesteryear.

A Quick Trip Around the Bases

1B – Call it what you like. Grade 1. Mild strain. Day to Day. But however you choose to diagnose Jose Reyes’ latest hamstring injury, one thing’s for sure, the timing of this latest setback couldn’t come at a worse moment for the Mets or Reyes. Everyone involved is saying that the All Star shortstop could be back in the starting lineup as early as Tuesday in Los Angeles but for a player like Reyes, who has a long history of hamstring issues, the Mets will most likely be airing on the side of caution. This injury does once again raise questions regarding whether Jose Reyes is durable enough to command the type of long term contract he had positioned himself for after his historic first half to the 2011 season.

2B – So who is at the top of the 2011 All-Star Game “snub list”? CC Sabathia? Victor Martinez? Andrew McCutchen? How about  White Sox 1B Paul Konerko? Many consider Konerko a top 3 MVP candidate and he has certainly more than made up for Adam Dunn’s  historic first half incompetence.

3B – Recently, the most subtle move up the standings has been the ascension of the Angels out in the AL West.  Anaheim has won 8 of 10 games and moved into a tie for first place with reigning American League champions the Texas Rangers. Here on the East Coast we don’t hear a lot about the Halos but should probably start paying more attention to players like Jered Weaver, he of the 1.92 ERA.

HR – Derek Jeter played 6 innings of pain free baseball for AA Trenton and is now scheduled to return to the Yankee lineup Monday vs the Indians in Cleveland. Upon hearing this news, thousands of Yankee fans packed up their SUV’s and headed out west on I-80 hoping to reach Progressive Field in time for Jeter’s 3000 hit. Do you think manager Joe Girardi holds Jeter out of the lineup if he inches a little closer to 3000 just so he can reach the milestone at home in Yankee Stadium next weekend? Stay tuned.