Over But Low 4 – Is that an Andy?

Music by @lathandplaster
Parent Podcast found here: http://worldseriesdreaming.com/category/podcast/
Direct download: Here

• Best division in baseball
• SPOILERS, it’s the AL East
• Blue Jays are comin’ on back
• So is Jose Reyes
• Dodgers, also surging
• Yasiel Puig appreciation
• Youth revolution in baseball
• BREAK
• Late night food habits
• We love late night Mexican…food. Mexican food
• WHITE HOT WHITE SOX TALK
• They are selling
• Everyone except for Paul Konerko and Chris Sale
• They should try to trade those two guys tho
• Expected returns
• Chris Davis is on that deer antler shit
• BAI GUIZE

Over But Low 3

Music by @lathandplaster
Parent Podcast found here: http://worldseriesdreaming.com/2013/06/23/dreamcast-20-2-i-have-started-the-recording-process/

• “Hour long talk about eating food out of helmets”
• Chris Davis is destroying the world
• Baltimore Orioles talk? Baltimore Orioles talk
• Top candidates to come back to earth
• Clay Buchholz? Yeah that won’t last
• Carlos Gomez? Nah son
• Chicago shortstops suck this year
• White Sox salvage a game in Houston
• 2005 Memories
• La leyenda de Paul Konerko
• Once again, #WEIRDFOOD
• BAI GUIZE

Over But Low II

Music by @lathandplaster
Parent Podcast found here: worldseriesdreaming.com/2013/06/12/dr…cast-chc-cha/

That big ass Dodgers-Diamondbacks fight
Yasiel Puig eats fastballs for dinner
Who ya got in basebrawls?
Does anything good happen for the White Sox when they play Toronto?
White Sox draft talks
What is the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten out of a helmet?
BAI EVERYONE

Yellow memories

The first time I saw the green fields at Hermosillo stadium is when the longing began. the camera from centerfield panned down from the upper bowl crowd down to the playing field and the visual was a backlit playing field full of yellow sun flare, evoking memories of a time long past.

Here I am, in a frozen city looking out at a gorgeous summer scene, my dreams incarnate on a 44″ screen.

Tantalizing, yet ultimately frustrating. We in the northern hemisphere aren’t there yet. Yellow dreams won’t become a reality for a few months.

Yet…

Out there
Beyond the gray frozen pavement
Far away from the winter winds that cut to the bone
Past the hibernating earth that is invisible to the eye
Beyond the bounds of this frozen city and her black and gray landscape that is entrenched in a fight Against the bitter February cold
Beyond all that
There is an idea forming.

Currently this idea is on the outer limits of the visible horizon
It resides in a landscape that we can only see in our memories and in our hearts
We squint to remember it currently, but it is there
It is tangible to our senses, and we will become acquainted with it once again.

Within our memories and our hearts, within the very soul is where this idea, this belief, this concept, this essence, lives.

It is out there, currently being honed on foreign soil, and soon the very fiber of this entity will be sown over the red encrusted earth of Arizona’s landscape.
The seed will also be spread over Florida’s soil and this idea, this belief, this thing
will grow.

The idea will become more concrete over time
Winter’s death will give way to the rebirth of spring
Gray will become green
For the young a dream will begin, continue, or be put on hold.
For the old, dreams will be extended or become extinguished.

For me

It’s another year of falling in love.

Weekend Roundup

The Blackhawks are off to the best start in franchise history – Nick Leddy scored an OT goal to push the Blackhawks to 6-0-0 with the 10-0-0 Maple Leafs firmly in sight. 

Bulls lose to the Wizards – The Bulls front court got eaten up in an ugly loss to the Wizards, who are suddenly hot after an atrocious start. They were of course Wall-less for the first half of the season, but the Wiz have managed to beat the Heat, the Bulls, and the Thunder. 

Oh, and everyone is still waiting for Derrick Rose.

Paul Konerko shaved his goatee – Please note that all beards are to be flown at half mast until the start of the season in remembrance of PK’s tremendous goatee. He looks so wrong without one.

I just can’t.

Dave Sappelt made some unfortunate comments on twitter – They’ve been deleted, but here’s the recap.

The Pro Bowl was on? – Some stuff happened and here’s a happy fun time article about it.

Go forth and attack the day:

RIP Stan

Bless old baseball players.

A Trip Through A Kid’s Card Collection

By: Matthew Kohl
Email: virtualsportsman@gmail.com
Twitter: @virtuallymatt

The baseball off-season can be fraught with peril for some. Especially if you don’t care for many,
or any, of the winter sports. Baseball fans who aren’t content to follow the free agent game or the trade rumors have a few options to scratch the baseball itch. For example, I like to take a trip through my childhood baseball card collection. My card binder is one of very few things I have left from my youth and it’s the oldest thing I own that I purchased with my own money. It’s interesting to see who I thought was worth putting in the book versus who got clipped into the bike spokes since I only collected cards from players and teams I liked. I didn’t care if they were stars, though many were, and I didn’t care if they played for a rival team. Sometimes a card would get promoted from the box to the binder and sometimes they would get demoted, a practice which accounts for entire pages with only a single card on them in some instances. I don’t change it these days even though the order of cards and grouping of players is ramshackle at best and absolutely maddening when I’m looking for something specific.

Whenever I go through the book, I’m reminded of cards I had that would be worth having today or in the future had I kept them. I didn’t care enough about the players at the time to do so. Allusions of monetary gain be damned as I firmly stand by those edicts that decided what or whom was worth keeping, mysterious as they were. Mariano Rivera’s 1992 Bowman rookie card may disagree with me tossing it aside, but what kid keeps a baseball card featuring some twit standing in khakis and a polo shirt in his collection? Besides, he played for the evil empire. Sometimes though, I get confused as to why I kept something in the book.

WHO THE HELL?

“Who in the hell is Mariano Duncan?” That’s usually the first question I ask myself whenever I peruse the book. He’s on the first page. He was a 2B/SS and career .267 hitter who is currently the hitting coach for the Chicago Cubs AA affiliate Tennessee Smokies by the way. I learned that from Wikipedia just today! Even though his career may have been a bit underwhelming, I don’t dare take the card out. For one reason or another an eight year old me thought it belonged in the book and I don’t doubt that reason was a good one. Its placement on the bottom right corner leads me to believe it’s one of the first nine cards I ever put in there. It’s possible it could even be from my very first pack of cards.

I probably kept him because he had good fundamentals.

Another player who I have several cards from that also has a Cubs connection is Pat Listach, though I know why I kept his cards. He was second place to only Kenny Lofton in stolen bases and won Rookie of the Year honors in 1992. All but one of the cards I have from him are from that season. Coincidentally, he didn’t do much else the rest of his playing career. He’s currently the Cubs third base coach and was voted Pacific Coast League Manager of the Year in 2008 for leading the Iowa Cubs to the postseason. So he has that.

These are great looking cards though.

THE WEIRDNESS

There are also some strange phenomena that permeate my card binder. One of which I call the “Doc Strawberry Page.” It’s weird that two players who got famous in two different decades that both practically ruined their respective careers through drug use ended up grouped together. I knew about the drug problems they had even as a kid. Maybe I thought if I kept them together, but segregated from the other cards, the other players couldn’t do drugs with them. I really loved Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden. I was disappointed to see their careers go downhill for such stupid reasons when they both had such great natural talent. I never really gave up on either of them though. That’s probably why I’m so unforgiving of players today.

Another bit of weirdness is what I like to call the Eric Karros Quartet. I’ve grown to dislike him even more as an adult due to his lackluster commentary but I absolutely hated Karros as a kid. Why I kept any of his crap let alone four of the same card is completely unexplainable. In hindsight though, he looks a lot like my cousin Gary. Maybe I thought he was just moonlighting as a police officer.

Fuck you Eric!

I don’t have a name for this one but probably the strangest thing that appears in my collection is the random presence of a Damon Berryhill card every other page or so. It begins on the tenth page mysteriously adjacent to Mike Scioscia. Then he appears again on the very next sheet next to Gary Gaeti, another player whose inclusion I have no explanation for. This continues on for another 15 pages until the second to last one where a wall dedicated to Ryne Sandberg ends the curse. I don’t really think I liked him as a player and I can’t imagine I would have liked anything about him other than the fact that he was a catcher, but even that’s a sketchy theory. I didn’t even really care for the Cubs too much until later in 1998 or 1999 so it’s weird that I would have so many of his cards let alone put them in my binder. I can’t figure out why they’re so scattered either. Unless somebody else can come up with a reason, I’ll just have to leave this mystery to future generations.

A selection of Berryhills. Maybe I liked his name?

THE HEROES

One of the heroes of my youth.

Still, there are some cards that really do deserve to be in my collection. In fact, one of my favorite pages in the book is the Bo Jackson page. I loved everything about Bo Jackson when I was young. I loved him so much I even picked up a Raiders hat when I had no connection whatsoever with football. In fact, Bo Jackson was the reason I began watching football. If it wasn’t for Bo, I would have entirely missed the final years of Joe Montana’s amazing career (another player I idolized as a child) and the best days of Steve Young’s. I was excited as all hell when he came to the White Sox, and now that I really think about it, he was the reason I started paying any attention at all to my local sports teams. Well, he and Mark Grace, who I was never lucky enough to get a card of…

…but whatever.

Of the stranger memories regarding Bo Jackson was the cartoon with him, Wayne Gretzky, and Michael Jordan. It was called Pro Stars and it was ridiculous.

And Then There Was 1(4)

An animated look at who was left from the 2005 White Sox World Series Roster.
Better version:

Fun with Charts and Stuff

Here is a quick and dirty look of the overall WAR contributions per team.

Here is a total breakdown of where each team’s main WAR contributions came from.

This images illustrates how the 10 playoff teams used the draft to gain contributions from their roster. What obfuscates this chart a little bit is the Yankees column, which misleads since they technically let Derek Jeter walk before resigning him, technically making him a free agent. The Nationals obviously got big contributions from their two elite draftees. The Cardinals and Braves stacked systems are also on display here.

Here is WAR contributions that came via the trade. The A’s and Tigers lead this category, the Tigers are buoyed by Miggy’s MVP year. The Yankees column is again, thinner than it should be since they technically let A-Rod walk before resigning him.

And here is the Free Agent WAR contribution chart. The Yankees obviously dominate this chart, but it clouds how they build their team a bit. A Rod was acquired via trade, Derek Jeter, who is listed as a Free Agent acquisition, was drafted.

Amateur Free Agents run the gamut. The Yankees biggest Amateur Free Agent contributor is Robinson Cano. This is, coupled with the draft, is a way teams acquire cheap talent.

The Other chart shows contributions via the Rule 5, Waiver claims, etc, etc. These other avenues pay off less, as you can see, but sometimes you can find talent there. It happens less often, however.

Here’s a preview of what I’ve been working on for 2 months. The initial finds will be up at WSD.

A Few Notes On Nate Schierholtz

[youtube http://youtu.be/L5KG9h8S13Y]

Cubs sign Nate Schierholtz to a one year deal – He’s guaranteed 2.25mm with 500k in performance bonuses. Last year Schierholtz posted a .728 OPS with a triple slash line of .257/.321/.407. He lacks plate discipline and he has minimal pop, but the main reason the Cubs went after him was his defense. The Cubs have average pitching right now, one way to cover up average pitching is to surround it with above average defense. The Cubs won’t miss many bats, but if they combine their defensive shifting philosophy with good defenders the Cubs can pump some decent value out of so-so starters. In the end that’s what really matters, getting a good return via the trade.

Schierholtz is a league average player, and he’s likely to either be dealt at the deadline or gone after this year. Don’t look for him to provide pop or be a great offensive player. He’s here to help the pitching staff.

Center Field Options – David DeJesus is likely to be pushed to center as a result of this move which sets up an interesting possible rotation in the OF. The Cubs have said that Brett Jackson will start the year at AAA, which is the right move. There are rumors swirling that Jackson has changed his swing which he hopes will cut into his K rate. If the Cubs are unable to move Soriano prior to Opening Day it is possible that both Dave Sappelt and Tony Campana see burn at CF with Soriano, DeJesus, and Schierholtz all rotating off days and positions. Soriano is a player that will need rest as he transitions into the final stages of his career.

Needless to say, this is the best opportunity Brett Jackson is going to have at becoming a Major League regular.