Category Archives: Pointless Nostalgia

Baseball, Pointless Nostalgia

Shea It’s Still So

A tweet by mr_met alerted me to this post over at the No Mas Scorecard–which I should have alerted myself to much sooner, as I’m a big fan of No Mas, their t-shirts, and their general outlook on The Sporting World. No matter; I shall endeavor to make up for lost time.

No Mas, Paul Lukas (Uniwatch guru), and The Reverend Vince Anderson have teamed to campaign the Mets to rename their new ballpark after their old one. Or, more importantly, to name it after the man without whom the Mets wouldn’t exist: Bill Shea.

I am totally on board with this movement. For one thing, it would remove the association with corporate cockfucks Citibank, which will continue to dog the team until they change the ballpark’s name. For another, it acknowledges that yes, the Mets do indeed have some history they should be proud of and celebrate.

I have very few complaints about CitiField as a place to watch a ballgame–and as noted elswhere, I think a lot of the criticism of the place is nitpicky and way out of line–but the Wilpons’ lack of acknowledgment of this history within it really bugs me. Supposedly, they’re working on some sort of Mets Museum, but quite tellingly, they didn’t make any formal announcements about it until fan outcry about the lack of Mets material in the stadium.

callitshea.jpgI get the impression that, in the absence of such an outcry, management would be totally happy with the current memorabilia-free state, which is a real shame. Go to any new ballpark, and it has some kind of feature on either the team, or the town, or both. The Nationals have been in DC all of 5 seasons and their new stadium has such a display. If they can do it, the Mets sure as hell can.

The Calling It Shea Project’s platform is a little murky, but part of it involves the sale of the t-shirt pictured here. Ten percent of the proceeds go to Food Bank NYC. Your dough could go to far worse places, so if you think Shea should be celebrated for his efforts in perpetuity, express it in t-shirt form.

Pointless Nostalgia, The Funny

Remember These Guys!: Kids in the Hall

I just read Nathan Rabin’s Year of Flops retrospective on Brain Candy, the 1996 Kids in the Hall film. Reading it brought back a whole slew of memories of a movie I used to quote on a nigh-daily basis. I actually saw the movie in the theatres, making me one of several dozen people to do so. It’s not a perfect flick by any means, but I think Rabin draws an apt comparison between it and far-reaching Monty Python features like The Life of Brian.

Rabin’s article also reminded me that there was a period in which I watched Kids in the Hall constantly. When I was in high school, CBS showed a late night hour-long block of KITH on Fridays (two episodes stitched together with extremely weird bumpers). CBS knew their audience: late Friday nights were perfect for the comedy dorks like yours truly who were right in the KITH wheelhouse, and unlikely to be doing anything else with their weekend.

I first heard about Kids in the Hall from a high school friend, back when the show first aired in the States on HBO. I didn’t have cable, so he paid me back for years of reciting Monty Python by singing the “These Are the Daves I Know” and imitating The Head Crusher Guy.

The first time I got to actually see the show was during a trip across the border. My two younger brothers were on traveling soccer teams and playing in some weekend tournament in Montreal. One of my goals for this trip was to try and see Kids in the Hall, since I’d heard so much about it (I vaguely remember reading of its hilarity in several music magazines I read) and I realized this would be my only real chance to see it, unless my mom finally caved and got cable (which she wouldn’t until I was away at college; cable was the last luxury to fall in our house, left over from the days when we was Dirt Poor).

Needless to say, it was love at first sight. It was a direct descendant of Monty Python, with all its non-sequiturs, envelope-pushing, and cross dressing. They did sketches that would be virtually impossible in America (for instance, suggesting that gay people actually exist while also not making them the butt of every joke), in accents I could understand. Plus, KITH was being made right then, not 30 years earlier, so I didn’t need to ask my dad to explain jokes about Edward Heath and decimalization.

When KITH wound up on CBS, I taped it religiously and watched it after school pretty much every day. I remember it being The Hotness among dork circles in the early 90s. A college friend of mine told me he even dressed up as the Head Crusher guy for Halloween one year (complete with folding chair), despite the fact that not a single candy dispenser knew who he was. I laughed, but only because it was exactly the weird/obsessive kind of thing that I would have done.

So my question is, How come nobody talks about them anymore? Granted, it’s hard to talk about something that doesn’t exist. But you will still hear lotsa love extended to other 90s comedy pioneers like The Simpsons, Mr. Show, or even the ultimate Dork-Fest, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (I say that as a fellow dork). But references to these shows are far more likely to elicit knowing chuckles than, say, The Chicken Lady, even among Dork Circles.

Somehow Kids in the Hall slipped under the cult radar, even for me. By all rights, I should own all of the shows, which trickled out on DVD a few years ago. And yet I don’t. Shame on me!

As punishment, I shall watch this video of what might be my favorite sketch from the show. This bit is a lot funnier if you had a daddy who drank. Or is it sadder? I get those two confused a lot.

Baseball, Pointless Nostalgia

The Fantasy Wisdom of Yesteryear

rotisserieleague.jpgFirst off, kudos to those who joined Scratchbomb’s official fantasy baseball league, The League of Calamitous Intent, and drafted with us this past weekend. I thank you for choosing The League of Calamitous Intent as the instrument of your demise.

Round this time of year, I always read two books: the newest edition of Baseball Prospectus, and the 1994 edition of The Official Rule Book and Draft-Day Guide for Rotisserie League Baseball.

I was not into fantasy baseball in 1994. Back then, it was still referred to as “rotisserie baseball” and it seemed to be fading as a pop culture relic of the 80s, like Family Ties and the omnipresent threat of nuclear holocaust. Even at its height, rotisserie baseball was a niche hobby amongst dedicated nerds, sort of a slightly more athletic Dungeons and Dragons. But it’s virtually indistinguishable with the brand of fantasy baseball that went mainstream with the rise of the intertubes in the late 90s.

I found this book at my in-laws’ house, which is weird because they’re not really into baseball. But I don’t look gift horses like these in the mouth. It’s an awesome time capsule of the waning days of the first fantasy baseball explosion. It also has a bittersweet tone if you remember that the 1994 baseball season didn’t end with a World Series, but with a strike.

This book is clearly a spiritual godfather to Baseball Prospectus.  it doesn’t have any predictive stats like PECOTA, merely hunches as to what various players will do and what you should pay for them in keeper leagues. But its pithy descriptions of players will ring familiar to any BP reader.

The Guide gives praise where praise is due, of course, but its most entertaining assessment are its bitchiest.

WALT WEISS: Eureka! He played a full season without spending a minute on the DL! Alert the media!

SAMMY SOSA: Ninety percent of Sosa’s production came in spectacular but brief bursts followed by long, yawning chasms of nothing. His outfield play can charitably be described as inconsistent. He is constitutionally incapable of hitting  cutoff man. And his teammates consider him a selfish, mindless player. Hey, nobody’s perfect.

MARK WHITEN: He had a big season one night last September.

KEVIN McREYNOLDS: Someone wake him up and tell him his career is over.

HAROLD BAINES: Your grandmother has nimbler knees, but as long as he can stand, the man will be able to hit

PAUL O’NEILL: Watch him enough and you realize sitting him against the tough left-handers makes sense. O’Neill gives new meaning to the word intensity. When he runs into a bad streak, the look on his face causes small children in the stands to burst into tears.

FRANK TANANA: About one of every four outings, this master craftsman gives a clinic on pitching. The other three, watch out.

But some of their funniest assessments are extremely brief dismissals:

DAN PASQUA: Pass.

KEVIN MAAS: No Maas.

JOE HESHKETH: Smeshketh

And there are also some prescient reviews of up-and-coming prospects:

CHIPPER JONES: Long regarded as the best minor league prospect in baseball….The early line has him sticking with the big team this spring, playing a little backup infield, then moving over to third if Pendleton continues to show signs of slowing down. Another scenario has Jones pushing Blauser  over to second. Still another has the Chipster going straight to Cooperstown without bothering to play major league ball.

MANNY RAMIREZ: Not a bad major league debut in his hometown, was it? Kid from New York shows up in a Cleveland uniform to play in Yankee Stadium for the first time, packs the stands with friends from the old neighborhood, and proceeds to hit two home runs and a double and drive in five runs. That’s the way we want to break in. At the plate, he resembles Juan Gonzalez, with his front-leg kick and solid 190-pound frame. His numbers also remind us of Gonzalez. We’re pretty excited.

CARLOS DELGADO: Not just a powerful bat, but a powerful left-handed bat. The only thing holding him back is his defense, and he’s learning.

JIM THOME: The old Indians never would have let this guy languish long enough to lead the International League in batting average and RBI. Come to think of it, the Indians didn’t leave him down in 1992. Now AL pitchers will be suffering from (dare we say it?) Thomaine.