Baseball, A Podcast, A Musical, and An Absent Friend

Here you go, a blog post smack dab in the middle of March Madness, and the only mention that I will make of the Madness is to say that I made 18 wagers on games over the course of the first two rounds and posted a 10-8 record.  Making money, but barely.

On to other topics.....

World Baseball Classic

While fiddling with the remote control on Saturday night, I happened upon the quarter-final game between the USA and Venezuela.  It was the bottom of the fifth inning, the USA was up 5-2, but was in the process of giving up four runs and falling behind 6-5, and I decided to stick with this game.  (Full disclosure:  my TV provider does not give me the Turner networks so my access to NCAA basketball was limited.)  Two innings later, Venezuela tacked on another run and led 7-5.  The top of the eighth featured a monstrous grand slam home run by Trae Turner, that put the USA up 9-7, the eventual final score, and set off the celebration pictured above.

That led to me watching the semi-final game between the USA and Cuba on Sunday night, won handily by the USA, 14-2, and featuring two more home runs by Trea Turner, who has become the WBC version of Reggie Jackson.  The other semi-final was played last night between Mexico and Japan.  Japan won 6-5 with a bottom of the ninth two run walk off double.  Japan trailed the entire game until that moment, and it was an absolutely terrific game.  This sets up tonight's championship game between the USA and Japan.  Seven o'clock on FS1.   I'll be watching and so should you if you are a baseball fan.  Oh, and if you think that these games are "meaningless", watch the emotions and reactions of the players (see photo above).  It isn't meaningless to them.

It is interesting that these WBC games are being played under the "old" rules.  No pitch clock.  Infield shifts allowed.  I have watched very little spring training baseball, but I have seen enough to know that these rules will create a tremendous improvement in the viewing experience of ball games.  Watching the WBC games, where the pitchers pace around the mound between pitches, and the batters step out of the box between every pitch, only reinforces that observation.

The "Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger" Podcast

Prompted by Ron Cook's column earlier in the week, I downloaded and listened to Episode 23 of the podcast.  It featured an interview between Roethlisberger and his long time head coach, Mike Tomlin.  

I was aware that Big Ben had started a podcast last fall, but I hadn't sampled it until this week.  The Podcast website describes the show thusly:

"After years of sampling unique beers and talking football with friends, we've decided to make it a show! Get ready for uneducated craft beer reviews, over-educated football insight, and a list of special guests that is guaranteed not to disappoint!"

The interview with Tomlin was excellent.  Very informal, very entertaining, and very informative,  as the Coach and the QB had an excellent bull session about coaching, football, and their relationship in general.  When I look AT THE GUESTS THAT BEN HAS HAD ON HIS SHOW since it began, it makes me look forward to some long car rides in the future when I can replay these old shows.

Check it out.

"Six"

We took in the musical "Six" at the Broadway in Pittsburgh series this past weekend, and what a great show it was.  It is the story of the six wives of King Henry VIII.  It is framed as a show during which "the Queens" meet to decide which of them should go down as the "Lead Queen" in the the story of Henry VIII.  Each states their case through song and dance.  The songs range from rock & roll, to semi-rhyming hip hop, to soulful ballads.  The costumes are colorful and funky, and the staging and lighting is positively amazing, a real sensory overload in the best sense.  I would see this show again in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

To Absent Friends - Bud Grant

Bud Grant

1927-2023

Former Minnesota Vikings head coach and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Bud Grant died last week at the age of 95.  After a successful stint as a HC in the Canadian Football League, which followed a successful career as a football player and a pro basketball  player with the Minneapolis Lakers, Grant became the Vikings head coach in 1967, and coached the team for 18 seasons.   During Grant's tenure, the Vikes reached the Super Bowl four times, and while he and his teams never managed to win a Lombardi Trophy, the accomplishment of reaching that game four times is not diminished.  (On a personal note, I am quite happy that Grant was the losing coach in Super Bowl IX, Steelers 16 - Vikings 7.)

Grant was known as a hard-ass coach.  One who never allowed his players to have heaters on the sidelines in the coldest of cold weather games in Minnesota winters.  Famously, at a playoff game in Minnesota a few years back, a 90-something year old Bud Grant was an honorary captain of the Vikings that day, and came out for the coin toss in single digit temperatures wearing only a short sleeve Vikings golf shirt.

And on an off beat note, fans of the Tony Kornheiser Podcast, we Loyal Littles, all know the special place that Grant had on the podcast in his relationship with Nigel and Reginald the monkey when Reginald would pick games for the upcoming Sunday.  

RIP Bud Grant.

World Baseball Classic, Part II

I stayed up on Wednesday night to watch the USA's 8-0 victory over Puerto Rico in the WBC championship game.  I found it and the previous night's semi-final game to be enjoyable and compelling to watch, and I was especially impressed by the joy of the USA players, and in fact of all players in the WBC, throughout the games.  

It seems that we have become accustomed to watching ballplayers treating a major league game with the same degree of ennui as a guy putting in eight hours at, say, an accounting firm, a bank, or a Highmark sales office.  Yes, it is their livelihood, but it is also a game.  It's supposed to  be fun.  The international players all showed how fun it can be, and it seemed that that sense of joy infected the USA players.  Did you hear Christian Yelich say in the post game interview that this tournament was "the most fun he ever had playing baseball"?

One exception of course was a grumpy statement from Ian Kinsler saying how those international players "don't know how the game should be played".   So, along with his WBC gold medal, give Kinsler a sour lemon to suck on in the clubhouse while he reads the Book of Unwritten Rules.  Too bad he couldn't have demonstrated the same sense of joy that Yelich, Adam Jones, Marcus Stroman and others appeared to have throughout the tournament.  

And then, of course, there were these two guys who rejoined their team in Bradenton today.  They look pretty happy don't they?

Jay-Hey and Cutch

Now that the USA has broken through and won one of these in their fourth try, I suspect that the quadrennial World Baseball Classic is here to stay.  I also suspect that guys like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper and others may be less inclined to disdain the WBC when 2021 rolls around.

The World Baseball Classic

Like most Americans, I assume, I have been paying very little attention to the World Baseball Classic.  Up until last night, I had probably not seen more than a half dozen or so innings of the game, but I was aware of a few things.

One of those things was the intensity of the crowds, particularly the fans of the teams from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and the intensity that had stadiums filled and rocking with cheering unlike what we are used to seeing at MLB games here.  Also, from what little I did see, I was taken with the fervor with which the teams are playing, including the highly paid and supposedly entitled MLB players on Team USA.

So it was that I settled in to watch last night's semi-final game between the USA and Japan.  What I saw was a highly skilled and entertaining ballgame, won by the USA, 2-1, a win that puts the USA, for the first time in the brief history of the WBC, into the championship game tonight.

Yeah, I know about the big name Americans who are NOT playing (Kershaw, Trout, Harper among others), but the American team is just stacked with good players....Andrew McCutchen, Adam Jones, Buster Posey, Eric Hosmer, and many others.  When you watch these guys playing, and hear them being interviewed during and after the games, these players are really into it and really loving the experience.  It's pretty cool, actually.

Tonight, it will be the USA vs. Puerto Rico for the WBC Championship.  I will be at the set watching.  If you are a baseball fan, you should be, too.  It promises to be a pretty good and exciting game.

I will leave you with what has no doubt been the signature play of this WBC - Adam Jones robbing his Orioles teammate, Manny Machado, of a home run in the pivotal win-or-go-home game against the Dominican Republic on Saturday.  

Fun With the TV Clicker

Fun with the TV clicker late this afternoon and early evening.

Went back and forth between NBC and watching Tiger Woods put the finishing touches on his WGC Cadillac Championship at Doral in Miami.

This was a wire-to-wire win for Woods.  It was his second win of the season and was his 76th career PGA Tour win, which is now only six behind Sam Snead's all time record of 82.  This is a record that Tiger is sure to bag, probably sometime in 2014 by the looks of how he has been playing so far this year.

The other programming being watched was the USA's 9-4 win over Canada in the World Baseball Classic.  This win advanced the USA out of pool play and into the second round of the WBC.

Nothing like a little jingoism to infuse some life and interest into the WBC.  I believe that the USA will play either Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic in the first round of a single elimination bracket-style tournament.  Single elimination is a tough way to go, and this is especially true in baseball.  Makes it a real crap shoot, but at least there is now some rooting interest in this event.

The other exciting news from this game is that Jameson Taillon was the starting pitcher for Team Canada and pitched four innings, struck out three, and gave up two runs, only one earned.  Those were real big league players he was pitching against for the USA, so that was indeed good news.