It’s super, all right
I love the Superbowl.The game itself, whatever — although we got an exciting one last night, for sure, and 18-1 looks pretty good on Tapehead Belichick — but every year, it means that the NFL season is over.Which means that the MLB season is about to begin.Just a couple weeks until pitchers and catchers report, eeee!(Although the off season seemed much shorter this winter, possibly because we were getting some sort of steroids-report-related headline on a near-daily basis.)
In other happy baseball-y news, I got a notification today that the Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference accepted my paper, so anyone in the Nashville area should come out for the day — last Friday in March — and hear me talk about bad scenes in good baseball movies.Orestes Destrade is the luncheon speaker; it’s a fun day for baseball nerds.
Other reading: can’t wait for the Bill James Gold Mine book to arrive; and here’s Jayson Stark on the Hall of Fame ballot.The piece is a few weeks old, so we know how things ended, and I don’t agree with everything he says (I know Expos fans loooooove to complain about how stateside fans never paid attention to their stars, but believe me, Jay, we knew who Tim Raines was), but he’s spot-on re: Dale Murphy.Nobody talks about that guy anymore, but if you rooted for a team in the NL back in the day, you feared that guy.He played for a pretty bad team — east of the Mississippi, only the Pirates looked more hapless back in the mid-eighties — but he put up good numbers every year, even surrounded by AAAA teammates and hitting in a pitchers’ park (at least, it looked like one on TV).
I haven’t crunched the numbers, so I don’t know how Murphy stacks up on the stats; it’s just interesting to me that this guy who I HATED to see walking up to the plate 25 years ago isn’t accorded the same reverence as, say, Mattingly.
I admit, I ignored most of the steroids stuff. But this off season did feel shorter than last year’s, I think, thanks to actual fun trades. Granted, I’m a Tigers fan so I’m utterly biased, but you know, CABRERA! And just when I was getting sick of all the Santana whatevers, the Mets manage to scoop him up! (Again, probably biased since as a Tigers fan, it was nice seeing Santana out of the AL Central.)
Hee, bad scenes in good baseball movies. Any timeframe when it might be online?
Congrats on the paper, Sars! Ah, how I wish I could be there.
Oh, no, not another Bill James book. I just spent about $200 over the holidays on baseball books. [sigh] Oh well.
Dale Murphy’s a HoFer. Borderline, maybe, at least by HoF Standards/Monitor and according to his career comps, but I think he’s more “in” than “out.” He won two MVP awards in a row and finished in the top ten the next two years. And he was insane in all four of those years. At peak, his best comp is Reggie Jackson. I don’t know — maybe the writers don’t like his batting average. Silly writers.
Atlanta-Fulton was a hitter’s park. IIRC, they called it “the Launching Pad.”
I agreeeeee! Yay to the end of football season. I totally view the Super Bowl as “almost baseball season” as well.
And congrats on the paper indeed.
Apropos of nothing at all, in the early nineties I worked at a bookstore and sold Dale Murphy a Trollope novel. He is HUGE. He pulled a giant wad of cash out of his pocket with his giant paws and handed me a benny. I giggled. Or something. He is still my best celebrity sighting.
Congratulations on the article Sars. Any fun plans for Nashville?
Oh Sars, I just had a total “sqeee” moment when you brought up “The Murph”. My very first baseball idol! And you know my parents were psyched that I adored a clean-living, milk-drinking guy with eight kids, rather than New Kids on the Block, or whatever. So naturally I’m biased, and think he totally belongs in the Hall.
And that conference sounds awesome!
I was going to come to your last N’vegas appearance that was cancelled for illness, so I hope to make this one. Is it in Nashville, or at MTSU again?
I’ll have to check that out. I love any reference to Dale Murphy. Not because I was all up on stats back then, but because I spent all my summer’s with my grandfather, and he lived for the Braves, and while I can’t tell you anything regarding world affairs, politics, anything relevant to world culture in the 80’s, I can still name at least 8 players for the Braves during that era, and Murphy was my favorite. Yes, it’s silly. But that is what nostalgia is for.
It’s at MTSU, but for the non-Tennesseans in the crowd, Nashville is an easier reference.
I had such a childhood flashback when you mentioned Dale Murphy. I live not too far from Atlanta and when I was little my Dad loved to take us to see the Braves. This was back in the early/late 80’s when they pretty much sucked. I remember the only player he ever talked about was “The Murph”. Even from way up in the cheap seats, he always looked like a giant to me. I’m having such fun remembering all the times we went to see the Braves play, back when they wore the most God awful uniforms ever, and the stadium was pratically empty. We’d start off the game up in the nosebleed section, and eventually my Dad would con an usher into letting us move down until we were sitting right on the field.
That conference at MTSU sounds interesting; I have a cousin at school there so I might just have to make the trip up to hear you.
Chiming in on the Murph love. Living in Atlanta in the early 80’s was good for very little other than free tickets to Braves games if you got straight As in the DeKalb County School District. I vividly remember going to the old Atlanta/Fulton County Stadium with the rainbow seats to watch the Braves play the Astros, back when the Astros had those horrible brown and orange striped uniforms. The national anthem would always end, “And the home of the Braves.” And Dale Murphy and Bruce Benedict were the only guys we paid attention to, if I remember correctly. Those were the days.
Congrats on the paper and speech, Sars!
I love baseball, but I love football, too, (and basketball and Nascar; I’m not very discriminating when it comes to sports), so I love this time of year as well. And I heard this morning that the Rangers (the local team here) staff is already packing up equipment to go to Arizona for camp. I despise the Rangers, but any news like that gets me excited.
I have to say though, as a Jersey girl and a Yankees/Jets fan living in Boston, this past Super Bowl was exquisite. The last two minutes of the game? Made my month at least.
Congratulations!!
I’m not the world’s biggest baseball fan (in our house, “end of NFL season” means “almost March Madness”), but I LOOOOOVE me some baseball movies. I wish I could be there for your talk!
Hooray for spring training! I’m on a plane in six weeks to Scottsdale…there are six fresh inches of snow on the ground here, and Arizona sounds awfully nice indeed. And, as for the shortness of the off season: Here in Denver, it was much, much shorter than usual.
It’s at MTSU, but for the non-Tennesseans in the crowd, Nashville is an easier reference.
Yeah, we used to get that a lot at the Springsteen/U2/Pearl Jam shows: “THANKYEW NASHVILLE!” And the students would go “?!?!?!?!?!?” Hee.
We’ll be the ones in the back row, calling “HEY BATTA BATTA SA-WING BATTA” at the appropriate cues, Sars. Good on ya!
(By the way, my mom may come and talk about The Murph with ya. She wanted to adopt that boy back then.)
@Leigh in CO – Hee!
Woo hoo! Spring Training! I printed up my spring tix a couple of days ago for my Tigers (hi, K!) vs. the Indians on March 1st, and I’m jazzed like crazy already, even if it is an 8-hour round trip from Miami to Lakeland.
Wish I could be there to hear your talk in Tennessee. My favorite baseball movie is The Natural (I grew up in Western New York, where 90% of the movie was shot, so it’s got some hometown meaning for me. In fact, I know the guy who played the carnival barker in the scene where The Whammer was in the batting cage thing), and as much as I love it, there’s a few scenes in it that I can imagine being part of your speech. Like, Roy and Memo on the beach, the Roy and Memo montage, and well, pretty much any time Kim Basinger is onscreen. Eh, I’ll still take the rest of it.
Murph was pretty much the only thing that kept the Braves from being absolutely pointless in between the end of the Aaron/Niekro era and the beginning of the Let’s See How Many Times We Can Win The Division Without Accomplishing Anything Else era. I mean, I remember Andres Thomas, Zane Smith, and Pete Smith, but no one else should have to.
(@Courtney: Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce.)
Fun fact: my little brother — who now, in fact, lives in Nashville, though I think he’s going to be in the ATL the last weekend of March — and one of Murphy’s many, many babies were both born the same night at Piedmont Hospital.
Although I’m not sure I should be all that psyched for this year. No Andruw… ? And just because Tom Glavine is my future fourth husband doesn’t mean they should have re-signed him.
Man. Dale Murphy. That brings back some memories. I saw him hit a home run at my first major league game ever (at home, against the Pirates) when I was 11 and it was as awesome as you can imagine.
And still the Braves lost.