Late Show - Remembering Bob Uecker

Bob Uecker has passed away and the Late Show has done its usual thing of releasing a video for them.

This one begins with Norm MacDonald telling a Bob Uecker story. I have no idea what is bleeped.

Tom Selleck at Bat (1991)

 

Presented without comment.

Late Night - Conan Plays Old Timey Baseball

This feels obligatory - I think everyone's already seen this and seen it a million times - but for the sake of covering all bases (ha) here's Conan playing old timey baseball...

E:60 - May 1, 2011

The major problem with ESPN's "30 for 30" movies is deciding which one watch. It seems like they're all amazing. Whether you have a passion for the subject or know nothing about it, the documentaries are so well done that they turn out equally as interesting.

Now there's a weekly show called "E:60" which is not really related but I'd call it a spin-off. They recently did an episode called "May 1, 2011".

It's rare that I'll witness a live event on TV, and rarer still that there's a historic event worth watching, but I was watching this one.

Harry Kalas and 9/11

Phour Aces

This blog is hardly sports-related but I'm a good cop and I don't play by the rules.

Earlier, Cliff Lee re-signed with the Phillies, giving them a pitching staff that, if not unparalleled in history, is at least rarely seen in history.

Now the race is on to find a nickname for the group now that the former "H2O" moniker (Halladay, Hamels, Oswalt) is outdated.

"R2C2" (Roy, Roy, Cole, Cliff) seems to be the early favorite though we are early on in the voting (only 5% of districts reporting, this one is a hot potato on a jumping stove during an earthquake). I like "Four Aces". Of course, it will be tweaked to "The Phour Aces", that's a rule.

Click here to view the photoshop/slogan fun (the real point of this post).

My favorite is "The Four Horsemen"

Though I feel if that were actually to take off, by law it must be tweaked to "The Phour Horsemen". That's a rule.

I find myself intellectually able to recognize the amazingness of the situation but still emotionally unexcited. Somehow in the city that is specifically designed to be pessimistic about our sports teams, I may be the most pessimistic. I thought last year was their year and the season is so long with so many ups and downs, I was so excited for the beginning of the playoffs and the team just faded away. Then they're one year older and they lose Jayson Werth and I just feel emotionally spent. I just don't want to expect a Championship until the final game is over. I'm looking at a baseball "Dream Team" and not excited. Maybe this is my superpower. Maybe I should wear a cape and a big "thumbs down" picture on my chest. Maybe I'm just in a mood.

Cheer Up, Phillies Phans

Well, given how devastated we Philies fans are, I figured I'd make a post to help get us through the darkness. But before I do that, let's dwell on the negative first.

Our team lost to a team who has a fat guy playing third base.

OUR TEAM LOST TO A TEAM WHO FIELDS A FAT GUY AT THIRD BASE. Look at this guy:

We lost to that guy. No team should ever lose an athletic competition when the other team has a fat guy. Would you lose a 100 yard dash to Rerun from "What's Happening!!"? No, you wouldn't. You might lose a dancing competition, but not a sprint. So painful. And I didn't even mention that their best pitcher is a 14-year-old homeless girl. FACT. Ugh.

So onwards and upwards, I s'pose.

First, as bad as this loss is, and as pathetic I am for investing so much emotion into a sports team, we can all take much comfort in the fact that our patheticness (a word?) isn't even close to the level that this guy achieves:

Secondly, this passed season, lest we forget, was the season of the little Phillies-fan-who-throws-the-foul-ball-back viral video. But less well known is the segment in which Daniel Tosh digs deeper and allows them to redeem themselves.

Tosh.0	Weds 10:30pm / 9:30c
Web Redemption - Phillies Fan
www.comedycentral.com
Tosh.0 Videos Daniel Tosh Web Redemption

That's gotta put anybody in a better mood.

And finally. Cheer up, NBC, ya just gotta. Because even as we speak, the NBC casting department is still hard at work to find the new Seinfeld:

Wait, was that my point? Ah anyways, I still feel pretty crappy. GOOOOORRRRRNUTTTS!

Spring and Harry Kalas

"Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play." - Sonnet 98

By calendar, the first day of Spring happens on between March 19th and March 23rd ever year. And yet for me the exact day of Spring has no set appointment. Spring begins on a Saturday afternoon when it's 70 degrees out and sunny. It's warm but not hot and it's the first day you open the windows and let the occasional breeze sift through the house. The best thing on tv is baseball. But not just baseball, pre-season baseball. If one were to take everything boring about the game of baseball and then subtract from that all the excitement, would you would be left with would be pre-season baseball. Calling the game is Harry Kalas. His rich baritone and the humming white noise of the non-crowd suggest that it might feel good to rest your eyes for a bit... Slipping back into consciousness again after an indeterminate amount of time, it's the 6th inning... Harry Kalas: "Walked 'im..." and Dave Hollins strolls lazily to first base. Nothing to see here, eyes closed once again...

And so it was... the exact moment when Spring had begun for the year, every year. And every year, every single detail - aside from Dave Hollins - could be counted on and looked back upon in each of the specific instances from last year, to being a teenager in high school to being 8 years old watching with my dad.

When Harry Kalas passed away last year, people said his voice was the soundtrack to their Summer. These weren't just kind words, they were the literal truth. When people said, "It won't be Summer without Harry" it was just an expression, it is the exact predicament I find myself in. How do I feel that Spring is here?

"Well," I figured, "if I could find a clip on the internet of sufficient mundanity and length, I could watch it as self-therapy and link it for others." But, alas, to the best of my internet searching skills, no such clip exists. There are tons of Harry Kalas tributes, there's Harry calling Mike Schmidt's 500th homerun, there's Harry making the calling 2008 World Series call, etc. Those are not just good, they're great but they're the essence of Fall, not Spring. I need a clip of Harry making calls when nothing is on the line and nothing significant happens. I need the sound of sweet monotony, when everything is completely ordinary in every way, when Harry's voice is the aural equivalent of a hammock with a sinky middle and a glass of lemonade on the ground.

Here's hoping that sometime before next year someone uploads old Phillies game footage which is completely ordinary in every way. Until then it won't be the same. We may spend 99% of our lives avoiding the dull, avoiding the monotonous, alleviating boredom, and yet here I am wishing it back - at least in this small measure. I think it's because it offers some comforting illusions that become increasingly rare as one gets older. Hearing Harry Kalas call baseball on lazy, sunny Saturday afternoons, life isn't hard, life is easy. Things don't change, things basically stay the same. Life isn't short, life is long. Time doesn't move fast, time moves slow... if at all.

FAIR BALL HOME RUN, DICKIE THON!

Best
Phillies
Game
Ever and best
Ending
Ever

You might think that my acronym-making is terrible at this point. I've been watching baseball and I'd say I'm actually about average.

Last night's game was amazing. If you didn't see it, you didn't see it, I'm not going to try to describe it. I had an interesting experience... I don't have cable so I watched it over the internet except the sound wasn't working so I was basically watching the game on 'mute'. A strange way to watch a walk-off double (and post-game interviews for that matter). But I did and it was incredible.