Thursday, August 20, 2009

Come And Sit Down, I Made You Some Delicious Link Stew

After a stretch of 16 games during which the Yankees wen 13-3, we've come to another off night. As Matt pointed out this morning, summer is fading fast and the season is somehow already 3/4 over. But we've still got two and a half weeks 'til Labor Day and are sitting on the precipice of a series with the Red Sox that could leave the Yanks anywhere between 3.5 and 10.5 games up in the division with 38 to play.

The Sawx are in action tonight as Jon Lester faces Brett Cecil at the Rogers Centre, but unless you are within broadcast area of NESN or TSN, or subscribe to MLB.tv, you are out of luck.

If you are in the Hartford area and happen to like shitty music, you might run into some of the Yankees at the Creed concert at The Meadows Comcast Center New England Dodge Music Center The Meadows (once again).

If you elect to stay home, you can catch Mark Teixeira on the Late Night Show with David Letterman giving an outdoor batting demonstration. (h/t to PeteAbe on both of those)

A little while back we looked at Derek Jeter's defensive renaissance and surmised that of all the possible reasons he was a better fielder this year, his improved defensive positioning was likely the most important. Yesterday, Sweeny Murti of WFAN talked to first base coach Mick Kelleher and got some sound bytes concerning the adjustments he made to not only the Captain, but Cano as well. It's certainly worth a read/listen.

River Ave Blues points us to an E:60 segment on the Yankees' ambidextrous pitcher Pat Venditte (he has one glove that fits both hands, in case you were wondering). The Yanks drafted him in the 20th round of the '08 draft and he's yet to reach a level of minor league baseball he hasn't dominated. Even if it's just a Rudy-style moment, how great would it be if he got to the Big Leagues at some point?

David Robertson has the highest strikeout per 9 IP ratio of any reliever in the big leagues at 13.2. Marc Carig takes a look at how he's been pulling it off. I like Robertson, but he's been used almost exclusively in low leverage innings until recently, so we'll have to see if he's the next Edwar Ramirez, who saw his strikeout ratios fall as the league adjusted to him, or someone who can contribute in the long run.


Football:

In light of the fact that one of the 10 trending topics on Twitter two days ago was "F-A-R-V-E", Joe Posnanski jokingly hypothesizes that perhaps Brett is really just on a quest to get people to spell his name right.

Plaxico Burress is going to jail for two years. I'm not sure if it's an "American tragedy", but it sucked to be a Giants fan when it happened. This is from the beginning of April, but it will do for now as well.

NYC:

As someone who used to live a block away from Central Park, I find this to be pretty sad. I'm not going to cry about it like the one lady in the article, though.

Here's an interactive graph of every homicide in the City by location since 2003. Over 6 years 3,488 doesn't really seem like that many, does it?

Other:

I'm not a MMA fan by any stretch, but I'm kind of fascinated by Fedor Emelianenko. At Slate, Tim Marchman talks about how his absence from the UFC might be the one thing that keeps the sport out of the big time. Money quote: "UFC may be to mixed martial arts what MLB is to baseball—but Albert Pujols doesn't play in Japan". If you've got some time on your hands, here's the first part of an interesting documentary on him. It'd be a lot better if Jay Glazer wasn't so annoying and the phrase "Baddest Man on the Planet" wasn't said 150 times, though.


5 comments:

  1. Does Matsui still step up to the batter's box to the heavenly sound of "With Arms Wide Open"?

    Question 2: Does Scott Stapp still think Johnny Damon is Jesus?

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  2. I enjoyed that dig at the Meadows.... my company does promotions at the venue, and the name has changed so many times in the past 5.5 years that I don't know what the fuck to call it when I call my employees about working concerts there. I feel like the brand equity that comes from the naming rights has to be damaged by the constant changes.....

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  3. There should be a dot over MSG for when Isiah Thomas murdered the Knicks.

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  4. Bren - I believe Scott Stapp still thinks that he's Jesus.

    AA - Yeah, I don't get why they wouldn't try to get a long term commitment on the naming rights. Although I still call it the Meadows just like I still call the one in Mansfield the Great Woods.

    BWS - Agreed. Or one at 74th and Columbus for all the brain cells that were brutally slayed there.

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  5. Re: The Meadows, this place was my venue of choice for many years.

    To my knowledge, it wasn't until about 5 years ago that it became the Dodge. Dodge had to drop the naming rights deal because apparently the auto industry is having some sort of financial problems. I hadn't heard about that, but it sounds feasible I guess.

    I knew Comcast bought the naming rights, but I was unaware they are now calling it the Meadows again. To my knowledge the Comcast deal started this year. One of my hockey teammates works for Comcast and has been adamant that it be called the Comcast center.

    It'll always be the Meadows to me.

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