Derrick Goold's Blog, page 151
August 30, 2011
The Sabermetrics of Bugs Bunny
Plucked from U.S.S. Mariner's tremendous archives, this is a biting and wonderful (and really, really long!) satire of the over-analytical and minutiae-parsing approach often taken in modern baseball writing. It treats a Bugs Bunny cartoon as if it were a real game, right down to calculating how fast Bugs would have had to pitch a ball from the mound and still be able to catch it behind the plate.
My favorite part:
Now of course Bunny could not always face a...
August 29, 2011
"Daddy, on your trip you should never look into the Ark, because if you do you'll melt."
- Advice my son, Ian, 5, offered me before I left for a road trip to Milwaukee.
In the wake of Irene, New Orleans marks the sixth anniversary of...
In the wake of Irene, New Orleans marks the sixth anniversary of Katrina's arrival. The Daily Feed offers NOLA by the Numbers.
New Orleans, By The Numbers, 6 Years After the Storm
August 27, 2011
The student journalists who defied the Kingfish
Carl Corbin, who died this past week at 96 in New Orleans, was one of the "Reveille Seven," a group of students so-named because they refused to work at LSU's student newspaper, The Reveille, after it had been censored by Huey Long. Corbin was the assistant editor of the paper in 1934 when the paper planned to print a letter critical of the then-U.S. Senator for appointing an LSU football player to a vacant position. The hint of criticism in a ...
August 26, 2011
Jinx. Creepy. Found this was surfing around this evening, and...
Jinx. Creepy. Found this was surfing around this evening, and LIFE's Tumblr feed posted the same pic I did earlier. The pic I've had all these years doesn't have a source, and this one comes complete with a detailed history of when and where and why. Still love that it captures a great players reaction to the most common event in baseball: failure.
life:
Pictured: In this classic sports portrait, one of the greatest ever made of an athlete in decline, Mickey Mantle eloquently flings his...
August 25, 2011
COMIC RELIEF: The cover of the week. IDW's Teenage Mutant...
COMIC RELIEF: The cover of the week. IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 1 (2011), Eastman variant. The attack of the 80's continues. The Smurfs have overrun theaters, followed closely by the encore nobody demanded, "Fright Night." Transformers are blockbusters, G.I. Joe is back on toy store shelves, Doctor Who is hip, "Total Recall" is being remade, "Thundercats" is getting a cartoon reboot, Lady Gaga has her Madonna on … Keep that water away from Gizmo because a "Gremlins" do-over...
Brilliant comics. Their power is revealed by the vile...
Brilliant comics. Their power is revealed by the vile response.
Syrian forces beat then broke the hands of Ali Farzat, Syria's leading political cartoonist.
Via the Guardian:
Ali Ferzat, 60, is one of the Arab world's most famous cultural figures, and his drawings have pushed at the boundaries of freedom of expression in Syria…
…In a recent cartoon he critiqued the regime's offers of reforms, with a picture of an official with rosebuds in his speech bubble – and a turd...
August 23, 2011
Moth. Ball.
I've never been present at a major-league perfect game. I've never written the game story for a no-hitter at the big-league level. But I'm pretty sure what happened to St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday on Monday night at Busch Stadium when a moth plunged directly into his right ear and become lodged there is a far, far rarer thing to cover than any of those humdrum pitching feats. The best part is what Holliday did with the bug after it was fished out of his ear...
August 22, 2011
The Decemberists' "Calamity Song" gets the...
The Decemberists' "Calamity Song" gets the Infinite Jest treatment in a video directed by Michael Schur, a/k/a Ken Tremendous of FJM fame and a co-creator of TV's "Parks and Recreation." Schur is an obsessive fan of David Foster Wallace's weighty book (both in theme and girth, at famously 1,079 pages), according to this story in The New York Times, and to capture the Decemberists' song he drops the band into a scene from the book where students at the Enfield Tennis Academy are playing...
August 16, 2011
Sometimes I wonder if we put to much stock in baseball's...
Sometimes I wonder if we put to much stock in baseball's details. It's a long season. It's played every day. There is a lot of time to talk, speculate, ruminate, wonder and agonize over every moment when there are plenty of moments between action. Does a catcher who puts tape around his fingers — just above the knuckle — really help his pitcher see the calls all that much better than a catcher who doesn't? What about the catcher who occasionally drags his knuckles through the batter's box...
