Category Archives: Sports

Baseball

MLB Playoffs YouTubery: Twins

To celebrate the advent this year’s MLB playoffs, which I am looking forward to with rapt anticipation (no, really), I’d like to do a few posts featuring YouTube finds representing each team that’s made their way to October. Next, the Twins.

The Twins are my favorite non-Mets team. They’re a smart organization from top to bottom that knows how to field a competitive team every year, despite being in the middle of the financial pack. I like them even more now that they’re playing ball outdoors, leaving the garbage bag-lined Metrodome behind, and also because they’re giving JI- JIM THOME one last shot at winning a World Series. If the Mets, with all their money, had half the Twins’ brains, they’d be dangerous.

But even smart organizations do embarrassing things every now and then, like the Twins did back in 1991. That year, they won a fantastic seven-game World Series against the Braves, but still found some time during this storybook season to make a “music video,” an unfortunate trend among pro teams of the era. It’s not any better or worse than its contemporaries, but it has a definite Last Years of the First Bush Presidency air to it. The notes on this video’s YouTube page label it as a “funky” music video. I respectfully disagree.

Other than baseball itself, the Twins are quite good at local commercials. Here’s one for their move into brand new Target Field. Can’t think of too many teams who’d make their outfielders wade through a box of styrofoam peanuts, or would simulate violently throwing a rival team’s fan into the back of a moving van. That was a simulation, right?

Another move-related ad handles the Twin’s mascot, TC Bear, and his difficult transition from indoor to outdoor living.

One other awesome thing about the Twins: Bert Blyleven, ex-pitcher and current broadcaster. I have an NBC baseball preview video from 1988, which is jam packed with Mr. Blyleven saying awesome things, which I can sadly not share with you without endangering my own YouTube account (because obviously NBC and/or MLB are hammering out the DVD deal for this highly valuable footage as we speak).

In its place, please enjoy Bert screwing up royally live on the air, prior to a Twins-Yankees game.

Most baseball fights are pretty pathetic affairs. Not this one. Archival news footage shows a brawl between the Twins and Orioles from 1980, in which Rick Dempsey barrels hard into John Castino. Some words are exchanged, and then the Twins treat Mr. Dempsey to a big ol’ blanket party.

Baseball

MLB Playoffs YouTubery: Phillies

To celebrate the advent this year’s MLB playoffs, which I am looking forward to with rapt anticipation (no, really), I’d like to do a few posts featuring YouTube finds representing each team that’s made their way to October. Next, the Phillies.

To this day, when I think of the Phillies, the first person I think of is Mike Schmidt. After all, he was one of the greatest third basemen to ever play the game, and also owner of the best 80s baseball mustache this side of Keith Hernandez. Schmitty was the quintessential Reagan-era slugger. So naturally, he made a commercial for Chevy where he tries to beat the shit out of trucks with his bat.

But Mike Schmidt also cared about you. Yes, you. That’s why he did this PSA against cocaine, aka “The Big Lie”. This commercial is so harshly, angular-ly lit, I think David Fincher was involved.

Remember computers? I sure do! This ad promotes an odd Veterans Stadium promo from 1986: a computer simulation of the 1977 Phillies vs. the 1983 Phillies, sponsored by IBM. Apparently, the simulation results were aired between halves of a Phillies-Pirates doubleheader. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was something dreamed up by Philly Boy Roy as an opener to an evening of Laser Allin.

Also from 1986: this compilation of Phillies promos that look like they were directed by Tim and Eric and edited with a machete. I keep waiting for Dr. Steve Brule make an appearance.

But let’s leave a wistful note, shall we? Here’s a rare, beautiful find: color home movie footage of the first game of the 1950 World Series between the Phillies and the Yankees at Shibe Park, taken by the drummer of the band that played before the game. It’s an exquisite time capsule. You see the “Whiz Kids” playing toss, fans getting psyched for the game, and, eventually, the Yankees beginning their assault, en route to a four-game sweep.

Baseball

MLB Playoffs YouTubery: Yankees

To celebrate the advent this year’s MLB playoffs, which I am looking forward to with rapt anticipation (no, really), I’d like to do a few posts featuring YouTube finds representing each team that’s made their way to October. First up, the Yankees.

When I was a kid, Phil Rizzuto was still the voice of the Bronx Bombers, and it was awesome. It’s too bad there’s a whole generation of fans who only know Michael Kay and John Sterling, because Scooter was a delight. Sure, he was goofy as hell and would occasionally seem to get tired of actually calling the game. (I remember once Jackie Mason joined him in the booth–seriously–and they spent two innings talking about their favorite delis.) And his lengthy digressions and inattentiveness drove poor Bill White, his broadcasting partner, up the wall.

For all of that, Rizzuto’s goofiness was natural and endearing, not the studied, monstrous eccentricity of Sterling. Plus, he wasn’t one-tenth the homer that Sterling is. I can’t imagine him doing something so undignified as Sterling’s unbearable THUUUUUUUUUUUH YANKEES WIN!

Of course, I can’t show you any footage of Scooter actually calling a game, because that would bring MLBAM’s fiery wrath upon me. So I’ll have to settle for another touchstone of my youth: Phil Rizzuto’s commercials for The Money Store. As a child watching these commercials, I was quite confused; why would you buy money? If you needed money, you wouldn’t be able to buy money, would you? If Phil was just as confused, he didn’t show it (hardly).

Sadly, Phil was replaced in these commercials by pretty boy Jim Palmer, right around the same time he was unceremoniously removed from the Yankees broadcast booth. The world is a cruel place.

If you were watching Phil circa 1987, you might have seen a promo like this for Yankees baseball on WPIX, the local channel that carried their games for approximately 937 years. You also would have seen a terrifying teaser for the evening news like the one that opens this video, which is fairly typical of New York news during this era (with anchor Donna Hanover, aka The Future Mrs. Giuliani).

Or you might have seen these promo ads, also from 1987. I have no memory of these at all, but they’re pretty slick for the era. Also, Rickey Henderson walks down a Yankee Stadium tunnel with some kind of wild jungle cat because of course he did.

If we take the Wayback Machine even further, we find Phil Rizzuto the mystery guest on an episode of What’s My Line circa 1970. Soupy Sales seems to be a big fan. Amazingly, Phil points to the recent worst-to-first story of the Mets as a reason why the Yankees could do well in the coming season. (Spoiler: They actually won 93 games that year, but finished well back of the steamrolling Baltimore Orioles.)