Watching that clip, it's hard not to think about the scene from The Natural in which Roy Hobbs's home run smashes the lights at the New York Knights' Stadium to win the pennant in a one-game playoff against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
But while it's tempting to compare the two, it's important to remember that Hobbs is a hero. Here are 11 reasons why Stanton is nothing like him, and never will be.
It's time for Readers' Revenge, the weekly feature in which we turn Grantland over to YOU, the unpredictable reader. This week's topic was Your Most Cowardly Moment. After a slow beginning, the e-mails poured in later in the week, and this ended up being one of my favorite batches.
Below are the top seven e-mails, along with the Seth from Conway special. You can check out past installments in the box below. We're off next Monday for the holiday, but the topic for two weeks from now is The Strangest Place You've Ever Woken Up(and the story of how you got there). Send your very best to tobaccordblues@gmail.com for a chance to make the cut. Stories can involve you or someone you know, and anonymity is allowed. Those with a high degree of hilarity and humiliation always do well. Enjoy!
On Saturday afternoon, I'll Have Another will try to follow up his Kentucky Derby win by out-dueling Bodemeister (the odds-on favorite) and the rest of the field in the Preakness Stakes. If he can do it, he'll be the 12th horse in three decades to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown. Of the first 11, none have gone on to win the Belmont.
Question: Under what circumstances would you ever use the names Babe Ruth and Jose Hernandez in the same sentence?
Answer: BABIP.
For a statistical novice like myself, Batting Average on Balls in Play is one of the most confusing stats around.
Measuring the stat isn't the confusing part. For every ball a batter puts in fair play that doesn't go over the fence and isn't a sacrifice bunt, how often does he get a hit? Historically, league average has hovered around .300. Teams' increased emphasis on defense in recent years has knocked that figure slightly lower; it's .291 this season.
Interpreting the stat, especially from a batter's perspective (and in this post, I'm not considering the pitching side of things, which is influenced by team defense and other factors), is where things get rocky.
The Scene: Tuesday evening, ninth inning, classic Jays vs. Rays derby in the historic Rogers Centre. So much animosity. So much history. Greatest rivalry in sports. One out, Rays leading 4-3, and Jays third baseman Brett Lawrie is at the dish with a 3-1 count. A situation every kid dreams about, provided the kid has almost no ambition.
The possibility got me thinking about previous New York–L.A. clashes. It turns out that in 336 combined years of American championships (big four sports only), the two biggest cities in the country have met just seven times. That was it. New York is 4-3. Hooray!
That limited history set my mind to wandering, and after an hour spent looking at lists of NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL champions, along with some furious notepad scribbling, I discovered the greatest sports trivia question of all time. It has to do with cities and championships, but after the time put into the research and the ensuing thrill of discovery, I'm going to be totally heartless and make you read a bit more.
First, a fantastic trivia question that will live forever in the shadow of the one that comes later:
It's time for Readers' Revenge, the weekly feature in which we turn Grantland over to YOU, the unpredictable reader. This week's topic was Your Biggest Workplace Embarrassment. I received tons of great e-mails as always, so please don't take it personally if yours didn't make the cut. To give you an idea of how terrible I am at this, I rejected a story this week about a 76ers employee who got pantsed at center court by a mascot.
Below are the top eight e-mails. You can check out past installments in the box below. The topic for next week is Your Most Cowardly Moment. Send your very best to tobaccordblues@gmail.com by Sunday for a chance to make the cut. Stories can involve you or someone you know, and anonymity is allowed. Those with a high degree of hilarity and humiliation always do well. Enjoy!
The rain kept coming in the Bronx, never severe but never quite letting up. The first-place Rays had been playing from behind since Raul Ibanez's home run in the fourth, and in section 212 of Yankee Stadium, two rows into the coveted dry area out in right field, I wondered if this would be the night.
Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in baseball history, tore his ACL on Thursday while shagging batting practice flies in Kansas City. After 608 career saves, a staggering 0.70 postseason ERA, and anything else you'd ever want in the witches' brew of a Hall of Famer, the 42-year-old's career was in jeopardy. He pulled a MacArthur and vowed to return, but now there are complications. And even if he does return, his words — mostly of the I can't go out like this variety — carry a prideful aura. He wants to prove a point, and he wants to have his farewell tour.
Which is great and completely deserved, but it probably means the Rivera Era is done.
My favorite comedy podcast, Uhh Yeah Dude, sometimes features a game called "Weed, Horse, Mind's Eye." One co-host lists three names. One is a kind of marijuana, one is the name of a race horse, and one is a figment of his imagination. Another co-host has to guess which is which.
This game, inspired by that podcast, is called "Baseball Nickname, Serial Killer, or Fakery." It works the same way. There will be sets of three, each with one of the three categories. The link to each will give you the answer. Don't click if it if you don't want to know. Good luck:
You guys like the little joke in the post title? That's some subtle work, my friends. That's like a violinist playing a note only dogs can hear, and everyone's like, "Why isn't this violinist playing music?" until suddenly wild dogs are knocking them over left and right. It's been known to happen. That's where I'm at.
*Leans back in chair casually, falls backward.*
All right, let's get serious. You'll often hear folks chatter about the best time of year for sports. But they're mostly vague and unscientific, and I say it's time to get serious. If we really want to find that hidden annual peak, we have to home in on the individual months. For the purposes of the ensuing study, I will consider the following: professional baseball, basketball, hockey, football, soccer, golf, tennis, special events in each, and college football and basketball. I'm not getting into the Olympics, because they're sort of all over the place depending on the venue.
Here now, for your consideration, are the top 12 sports months of the year. I invite you to peacefully agree with me in the comments.
It's time for Readers' Revenge, the weekly feature in which we turn Grantland over to YOU, the unpredictable reader. This week's topic was Your Best Prank. One thing you should know about Reader's Revenge is that I love reading the e-mails, and narrowing them down is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. That includes the time I had to choose which relative I loved the most as the beneficiary of my insurance policy (in the end, me). When I've narrowed down my list, I always feel like I've screwed up, so anyone who sent me an awesome story, don't take it personally if you didn't make the cut. It's my fault.
Below are the top nine e-mails, and you can check out past installments in the box below. The topic for next week will be Worst Moment With the In-Laws/Significant Other's Family. Send your very best to tobaccordblues@gmail.com by Sunday for a chance to make the cut. Stories can involve you or someone you know, and anonymity is allowed. Those with a high degree of hilarity and humiliation always do well.
Rafael Nadal, Mallorcan tennis warrior, cemented his status as the king of clay over the past month with 21 straight victories on his favorite surface. On Sunday, he won his seventh Barcelona Open and attained one of those goofy arcane milestones that manages to tell a story of longevity and dominance; he's now the only player in the Open Era to win two different tournaments seven times.
A week ago, he won his eighth-straight Monte Carlo Masters title, and he did it in noteworthy fashion, by beating Novak Djokovic. Over the past two years, Djokovic has emerged as the best player in the world, and he's been the bane of Nadal's existence. In fact, Rafa's victory at Monte Carlo was his first over Djokovic in eight tries dating back to 2010. (Overall, Nadal owns a 17-14 advantage.)
As of now, there are three distinct phases to Nadal's career:
Today, April 26, is the anniversary of what was nearly the most singular confluence of luck and skill in MLB history.
On this date in 2005, the Yankees faced Bartolo Colon and the Angels at what is now the "old" Yankee Stadium. In the first inning, Alex Rodriguez came up with Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui on base. He blasted a three-run home run to left center. In the third, he came up again with Gary Sheffield on base. This time, his home run was a two-run shot. It only took one inning before he found himself facing Colon again with the bases loaded. The grand slam that followed gave A-Rod three home runs in three at-bats and chased Colon from the game. He hit a single in the sixth, and came up for one last chance in the bottom of the eighth. The bases were empty. Jake Woods threw his 0-1 pitch, and A-Rod lined a ball deep into center field. There's no video of the moment, because nobody quite knew the history at stake, but we know it went deep, and we know Jeff DaVanon was close to the wall when he made the catch.
And though nobody knew it at the time, that warning track shot was the closest anyone has come in major league history to hitting for the home run cycle — a solo, two-run, three-run, and grand slam home run in the same game.
Pete Rose is the all-time MLB hits leader, with 4,256 to his name over a long and storied career. He's one of only two players to have surpassed the 4,000-hit mark — Ty Cobb is the other — and he played for 24 seasons.
Derek Jeter is the 37-year-old Yankees captain who reached the 3,000-hit plateau last season and appears, for the time being, to be sustaining a strong pace well into the twilight of his career. So far in his 18th season, Jeter is red-hot, batting .416 with lots of singles. He's a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, and right now Vatican bookmakers have him at 3-1 odds for achieving sainthood.
On the face of it, the idea of Jeter catching Rose seems absurd. How can a 37-year-old have 1,000 hits left in him? Rose had several advantages Jeter does not, starting with the fact that he managed himself in his last three seasons with the Reds, padding his career stats with 194 hits while his batting average fell all the way to .219. It's hard to imagine a results-oriented club like the Yankees tolerating that sort of decline with Jeter, and it's even harder to imagine Jeter signing with a different, bottom-of-the-barrel club just to pursue the record.
In the past, I have tried diligently to avoid the recruiting aspect of college basketball. I was fine with hearing the the odd bit of news — Harrison Barnes Skyping his way onto North Carolina, for instance — but I didn't want to become one of the obsessives who tracked the changing emotional tides of a bunch of teenagers as they basked in the momentary suspense and adulation they drew like blood from rival fan bases.
And let's face facts — a number of these young men, perhaps even a majority, are equal parts stupid and egotistical. I don't even mean that as a slight; I was surely egotistical and stupid in high school too, the difference being that I didn't have anything to be egotistical about — except for that time senior year when I single-handedly annihilated our rivals in Quiz Bowl. But now, as an educated young American who reads important papers like the New York Times (before all that subscription talk — anything interesting happen in Libya since 2009?), I knew I would feel pathetic dipping anything more than a toe into the eddies of the recruiting world.
