Farewell to April

We bid adieu to the month of April tonight. It was an eventful month for us, beginning, first and foremost, with the Easter Vigil ceremony at St. John Neumann.

We followed that up with a trip to Augusta for the Masters and Edisto Island, SC for some beach time.

The Grandstander also endured raging controversies - and allegations of being too "old school" - involving Joe West, baseball uniforms, and bad behaviour by a certain NFL now-tarnished icon. Oh, and how about those Pirates who are now currently riding a three game winning streak, one that will probably not grow to four with Charlie Morton and his 16.00+ ERA on the bump tonight?

The Grandstander takes full credit for the recent hot hitting of Jeff Clement. My pointing out his lousy batting average two weeks ago was obviously the kick in the ass that he needed to start hitting. Same for Ryan Doumit. He has been doing a Johnny Bench impersonation ever since I ripped him on Wednesday morning.

Who knew that The Grandstander had such power?

Let's see what the Merry Month of May will bring.

Kudos to Ryan Doumit

After ripping Ryan Doumit two days ago for his non-block of the plate in Tuesday's game, I must give him his due today. Following his grand slam which won the game last night, he ties today's game with a HR in the ninth and, more impressively, blocks the plate and puts the tag on Jim Edmunds to preserve the tie game. which then led to a Pirates win in the 14th.

Great comeback for the Pirates and Ryan Doumit!

A Gem from Neal Huntington

Following on the good performances being turned in by pitcher Brad Lincoln in Indy, GM Neal insists that Lincoln will not be rushed to Pittsburgh, despite the lackluster (and I'm being kind here) performance by the Bucco starters. Here is what GM Neal said in the PG this morning:

"Bringing a guy up to the majors because he's better than what you have right now is absolutely the worst thing you can do."

Huh?

To be fair, GM Neal goes on to say that baseball is littered with the dead bodies of failed prospects who were rushed to the majors too soon. That may well be true, but why do we have to watch this lousy team pitch Ernest T. Bass and Brian Burres when the "future ace" of the staff is wowing them in Triple-A.

And how about Ryan Doumit's failure to block the plate - and, in fact, backing away from the plate - on that play at home early in the game last night. He deserves a ride on the bench for what is at best a dumb play and at worst a gutless one.

Good thing for the Pirates that I bought my 10 game plan before the season began. I'd be hard pressed to shell out dough for this bunch at this point.

A Movie Weekend

Lousy weather this past weekend caused it to be a Movie Weekend for The Grandstander and Mrs. Grandstander.

Earlier in the month, I set a task for myself of watching all three Godfather movies and that task was completed on Saturday night when we watched "The Godfather - Part III." This movie usually takes a critical pounding, due mainly to the fact that it is compared to its two previous incarnations, and let's face it, what wouldn't suffer in comparison to "The Godfather" and "The Godfather - Part II"? However, if you look at this movie on its own, it's not a bad one. The acting certainly isn't up to the standards of the first two, thanks in large part to Sofia Coppola's awful performance as Michael's daughter, and I think that Al Pacino resorted to scenery chewing in large part, rather than the nuanced acting performances he delivered in the first two movies.

Still, a pretty good movie.

For Loyal Reader Big Poppy, a few items of note:

"Lucy Mancini" appears once again as the mother of Vincent (Andy Garcia), the illegitimate son of Sonny Corleone. As noted in earlier blog posts, Lucy was a major character in the novel, but a throwaway in the first movie (she did not bear a son to Santino in the novel). She did not appear in Part II. An actress named Jeannie Linero played her in both the original and in Part III.

Also, appearing in Part III was Calo, one of Micheal's bodyguards while he was in exile in Sicily. Calo remains loyal to Micheal by killing the treacherous Don Luchesi (not sure if he was related to Frank) in Part III. The same actor, Franco Citti, played Calo in the two movies.

Finally, the wheelchair bound Don Tomasino in Sicily appears in Part III. This character was in all three films, and he was played by a different actor in each of the three movies.

I hope that these facts can be of use to Big Poppy at the next meeting of the Philadelphia Commission at Dante & Luigi's.

Thanks to http://www.imdb.com/ for being the source of this research!

We also rented and watched "Crazy Heart" to see Jeff Bridges Oscar winning performance, as well as the Amelia Earhart biopic with Hilary Swank. We liked both movies. I even went to iTunes to download the Crazy Heart soundtrack.

Finally, we went to the theater to see the Disney documentary, "Oceans," which we also enjoyed.

Whew! Think we are movied out for the time being.

Wrapping Up the Steelers Draft - 2010

You know, I am a football fan, and I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable one at that, but I have to tell you that before this weekend, I had never heard of any of the guys that the Steelers drafted this weekend. Not one of them. I would venture to say that I am not alone in this regard.

I did no research to make the following statements, but I am betting that my ballpark figures won't be too far from wrong. I will venture to say that of the 10 guys the Steelers drafted that roughly half of them will never make a significant contribution to the Steelers. If three or four of them become solid starters within three years, this will have been considered a successful draft, and if one of them becomes a Pro Bowl caliber player, then it will be a wildly successful draft. The same is probably true for any NFL team.

I guess that my point is that no event demands such saturated media coverage and hype in such an inverse proportion to its actual worth.

Don't get me wrong, I hope that Maurkice Pouncey and the rest of the class of '10 are holding Lombardi Trophies aloft in the near future, but can we see how that actually, you know, play football in the NFL before we roll out the hype machine?

One cliche that always comes to light during the NFL draft is that a team drafts a guy in the second round and the team says "we couldn't believe he was still there; we had him projected as a mid-to-low first round pick." Well, this year the Steelers trumped that. Jonathan Dwyer, a RB from Georgia Tech taken in the SIXTH ROUND was said to be projected as a first or high second round pick. Wow. How could 32 teams be so wrong as to let this guy fall to the sixth round???

Witnessing History

There is an old saying that every time you go to a baseball game, you might see something that's never happened before. Such was the case today as we watched the Pirates lose 20-0 to the Brewers. It was the WORST LOSS IN THE 124 YEAR HISTORY OF THE FRANCHISE!!!!

Worse than the historic blowout, which comes on the tail of 8-1 and 8-0 losses to the Brewers in the series, was the fact that the Pirates, on April 22 in the 15th game of the season, had the look of a team that is 35 games out of first place in the third week of September - just playing out the string.

They now face a 10 game road trip, and if they end up 2-8 or 3-7 on this trip, they'll never recover, and the ever dwindling fan base will be in as ugly a mind set as I've ever known.

The good news is that none of the players, as far as we know, are attempting to seduce any underage college girls during their off hours.

More on "To Win and Die in Dixie"

Following up on my reading recommendation of a few weeks ago, the link below will allow you to hear an interview with author Steve Eubanks.

http://1690wmlb.com/steve-eubanks-to-win-and-die-in-dixie/