“42″ Movie Review
So two things happened for me this past Monday, April, 18th. The first was I pulled an all-nighter going Sunday into Monday because I had to give an informative speech about Oriole Park at Camden Yards amongst a couple other assignments. I then planned to take a nap after I got done with classes, but I wanted to eat lunch and prepare for the baseball game I would attend late that night. Then, of course, I would actually go on to actually attend the game. After that, though, I made plans to go see “42″ with Sean for Jackie Robinson Day. I initially called him right after the game, but he didn’t respond. Once I was at the Metrodome, I got a phone call back and Sean told me to get off the bus. He then picked me up and within fifteen minutes, we got pulled over for speeding over a bridge. It was now Sean’s second ticket since bringing his car up after spring break; more than he had gotten ever in Illinois. So he wasn’t happy to say the least, but I found it interesting that we were ticketed for going 42 miles per hour in a 30 mile per hour zone on our way to “42″. Eventually, though, we did make it to the movie just as the trailers wrapped up to watch “42″ on the most fitting day we could think of:
Let me start with I really did like this movie as a movie. Obviously this movie brings with it the baseball element that I am partial to, but I tried for the sake of this review to distance myself as much as I could from the baseball part of it and tried to just look at it for the movie itself and as one would look at the adaptation of a book. Except in this case the book would be real life and how the events actually played out.
I really don’t have any clue how to order this, so I’ll be going all over the place and just touching on things from the movie as they pop into my mind. Bear with me if it seems like I jump from one thing to another. Actually, you know what; I’ll just bullet/number it so you know when a new idea begins/ends:
- I really like how Chadwick Boseman portrayed Jackie Robinson really well. He didn’t try to go to big with the character. He also did a good job of preserving the humanity of Robinson. The Jackie Robinson that Boseman was a hero not in his own mind, but in those of others, which is more real than putting Robinson on an absolute pedestal like the temptation might be for a movie like this.
- While I liked how Harrison Ford played Branch Rickey and he didn’t do a bad job of it, I feel as though he caricaturized him too much in playing him. There was a lot of scrunching his face and talking with his mouth half-closed. It’s hard to explain, but you’ll see it if you watch the movie.
- They recreated Ebbets Field beautifully, however they did it:
At times I could tell that it was a minor league stadium or wherever that they were filming the scenes, but for the most part, I could have believed that the movie was taking place at Ebbets Field.
- Alan Tudyk did a great job of playing what I think was the closest thing the movie had to a singular antagonist. I say this because this movie really didn’t have a single antagonist. There were really many people in the movie who merely were the antagonist for that portion of the movie until a new antagonist took his place. If it’s possible, I’d say that the concepts of racism and close-mindedness as a whole were the antagonists of the film. Anyway, Tudyk did such a good job of making you hate him as a racist that he stood out from all of the other characters. And then, something I found interesting, is that in the aftermath of the game in which his character, Ben Chapman, verbally abused Robinson, instead of further pushing the caricature of the raging racist when Chapman talks to the press about the things he was saying, he actually sounded calm and reasonable. By his body language and tone of voice, he seems like someone you could agree with. It’s only after you think about what he was actually saying to the press that you realize he is still completely racist. Then, something I found interesting was they had a scene where Chapman was being reprimanded for his actions by his boss (I forgot if it was the general manager or owner) and is being told that he will have to make amends with Robinson for PR purposes. It humanized him in a way that made you *almost* made you sympathize with him. This is again, why there was no true antagonist.
- The movie was overly-dramatic at times. The moment that sticks out in my mind is that the movie plays the music you would normally play during the climax of the movie–like, say, when Roy Hobbs hit his home run and rounded the bases in slow-motion as the lights burst from the baseball hitting them–while Jackie Robinson took a shower. I get that it’s a big deal that he was taking a shower with his teammates, but it’s still a shower; there’s no need to make it *so* dramatic.
- I don’t know if I like or dislike it, but they didn’t go far at all into Robinson’s playing career. I’m not sure how long exactly, but I think they only went about 2-3 years into it.
- The movie didn’t use any of the quotes either Robinson or Rickey have been known for. I like this because it veers the movie away from being seen as a baseball-lovers movie. What the movie did a good job of was emphasizing the fact that it was a human story told through the means of sports and not just a sports story that happened to have human elements.
Anyway, I think that’s all I’ve got for the moment, but I really did enjoy the movie, so if you have the chance, go see it. Even if you’re not a baseball fan, I would definitely recommend it. And as a baseball fan, it served as a reminder of what exactly happened. It’s easy to glaze over the history of the game and think “Oh, Jackie Robinson Day. I know that Robinson broke the color barrier and all. Whatever.” But this movie reminds us what exactly that means and why his number is the only number retired in all of the major leagues and why he also has a day dedicated to him. So super short summary: It’s a good movie; go see it.
Angels-Twins Roster
Again, I’m making a roster for every match-up of teams that I see this season, or more than likely, until my Photoshop free trial expires, so first, here is the roster I made for Jackie Robinson day. I can’t imagine why you would actually want to use it, but I just thought I should include it:
And here is the legitimate roster with numbers and everything:
So if you want, just crop the Angels portion or the Twins portion to use with whichever team they’re matching up with. So there’s that. I’m going to keep writing Friday’s entry, but I have to leave to go to another game in less than half-an hour.
Mets-Twins Roster
I completely forgot that I was doing this, but for the two games I attended with the Mets and Twins, I made a roster, so as I promised earlier, here is that roster if you want to use either team’s roster in the future:
Besides that, I’m almost 1,500 words into the entry of the first game as of writing this, but right now I have to head out to the Twins-Angels game.
Tigers/ Twins Roster
I realized in getting ready for Opening Day that I make a lot of rosters. Other ballhawks I know make a lot of rosters. That’s a lot of the same rosters being made. In other words, that’s a lot of lost productivity, as us students of economics like to call lost productivity. In other words, people doing stuff that they otherwise could have easily avoided.
So what’s the solution to this? What I’ll try to do from now on whenever I create a roster is I’ll put it up here for you guys to use in your ball-snagging pursuits, or for whatever else you may need. I’ll keep on doing this until my free trial of Photoshop expires in like two weeks, anyway. Basically, I’m doing the work so you can be lazy. Anyway, here is the first roster for the game I will be attending today between the Tigers and the Twins:
Hopefully this can help you somewhere down the line. Just remember that rosters can change, so just check that the two teams are up-to -date for whichever game you end up planning to use this for. Hopefully I’ll have the entry of the game up for you guys in a couple of days.
MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 2013- Day 2
A quick update before I get started (because no one reads them when I put them at the end of entries):
I did a couple of videos on my YouTube page in the time since the last entry, if you want to check them out. They haven’t been embedding well as of late, so I’ll first try to embed them and link them if the embed doesn’t work once I publish the entry. Anyway, the first video is one I did for a public speaking class entitled: “How to do a last-minute speech.” And yes, it is what it sounds like:
The second is me saluting the fact that Opening Day is almost here while taking a subtle jab at Spring Training games:
If you liked those and would like to find out about them not weeks after they were uploaded, feel free to subscribe to the channel. I don’t have a regular posting schedule (we all know how well that has worked out for the blog these past few months), but I do plan on uploading videos and making them public there before they ever get on a published blog entry. For example, I may or may not have uploaded the video later on in this entry publicly before I published this entry
Apparently one day of sports analytics wasn’t enough, so I came back for some more in a second day:
And I got to begin it with this beautiful panel of people:
That would be the “Staying on the Field: Injury Analytics” panel. It was compromised of the following panelists:
Stephania Bell (moderator):
Senior Writer, ESPN.
Stan Conte:
Vice President of Medical Services (whatever that means), Los Angeles Dodgers.
Peter Wehlig:
Director of Center for Molecular Medicine and Orthopaedics, Düsseldorf, Germany. You may recognize him better as the surgeon who performed the blood-spinning operation (I think that’s right.) on Kobe Bryant and a couple athletes.
John Brenkus:
Founder, BASE Productions. Or perhaps known better as the host of Sports Science (is that one word like Sportscenter?) on ESPN.
This was really interesting once it got started, but there were technical difficulties with the Stan Conte’s slides–which while we’re listing off things I didn’t like about the panel, slides don’t integrate well into almost any panel. Probably the one thing I will always take with me from the panel was Conte’s story about Mike Matheny and what eventually convinced him to retire. If you don’t know the gist of the story, Matheny retired due to excess concussions from taking foul tips to the head. Apparently what happened was Matheny was talking to whoever the Cardinals back-up catcher was at the time and telling him that he blacked-out for a second every time a ball hits his mask, which he described as being perfectly normal. It was upon the back-up catcher telling him that it wasn’t perfectly normal that he black out every time a ball hit his mask that Matheny reconsidered that, shall we say, “sanity,” of him continuing his career any longer.
After that it was back up the Grand Ballroom for Monday Morning Quarterback. This was one of the more entertaining and by far the most engaging panel. It was compromised of the following panelists:
Tony Reali (moderator):
Host, Around The Horn (ESPN).
Herm Edwards:
Former Head Coach and NFL Analyst, ESPN.
Thomas Dimirtoff:
General Manager, Atlanta Falcons.
Jack Del Rio:
Defensive Coordinator, Denver Broncos.
Brian Burke (no not that one):
Founder, Advanced NFL Stats.
Like I said, this was the most interactive and fun of the panels. What it was is we watched videos of different scenarios of plays (mostly involving the people on the panel) and then the audience voted on what they though the coach should do on that particular play. We then got to see what the statistics dictated the coach should have done. It was a fun time.
Then I went ahead and filmed a mini-tour of the conference grounds. So here that is:
After that I went ahead to the Stying Relevant: Social Media Analytics panel. That was these people:
Gary Belsky (moderator):
Columnist, Time.com.
Jayne Bussman-Wise:
Digital Director, Brooklyn Nets & Barclays Center.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
CEO, VaynerMedia, who for both better and worse completely dominated the speaking time by the panelists.
Omid Ashtari:
Head of Sports and Entertainment, Twitter.
Chad Finocchio:
Co-Founder, Bleacher Report.
This was interesting insofar as how it may pertain to this blog and social media outlets thereof. I may change my New Year’s goals because of it eventually. Like I mentioned, Vaynerchuk completely took over the panel, which was not necessarily a bad thing, because he had knowledge of the subject some good things to say, but also it was a brilliant overall panel and not just him, so I would have liked to hear a lot less of him and a lot more of the other panelists.
Then, for my final panel of the conference, I headed over to Hall of Fame Analytics, which was these people:
Chad Millman:
Editor in Cheif, ESPN the Magazine.
Buster Olney:
Senior Writer/Baseball Analyst, ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com.
Peter King:
Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated.
Dean Oliver:
Director of Production Analytics, ESPN Stats & Information.
And sadly, although he was initially slated to be a part of it, John Thorn could not make it to the panel. Thorn, if you did not know, is a fellow MLBlogger. Besides this, the panel was really great. While he may not have been viewed the same way to other people in the audience, Buster Olney stole the show in this panel for me. I’ve disagreed with many of the positions Olney has taken when it comes to Hall of Fame voting in the past, but I realize that this was the case in many scenarios because he was confined by the schmushed time slots ESPN has given him. It was in this panel where he got to fully explain his point and develop his argument that it became clear he was the baseball writer of decades and I was the jerk at home who thought he was an idiot who I knew more about baseball than. I mean he didn’t convince me that Jack Morris belongs in the Hall over Bert Blyleven (though he did argue that) but he did get me on his side of the fence on a couple other points and helped me beter see his perspective on a couple others.
After that it was off to the closing ceremonies and the Alpha Awards for exceptional performances in the field of sports analytics. Whatever that means. I actually don’t have my program with me since I left it in New York, so I can’t tell you what any of the awards were, so I’ll just end this entry with a series of pictures and you can create your own storyline to accompany them.
And thus, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference came to a close. I hope you guys enjoyed that entry. Thank you for reading. And considering I am going to Opening Day in less than 24 hours, be on the lookout for the entry from that game. While I will miss the free time I have during the offseason, I’ll say it’s about time baseball got here.
MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 2013- Day 1
Hey. Sorry this entry is up a little late, but you know, National Procrastination Week was the week right after the conference, so I put off celebrating until the week of the 11th to start celebrating… and so, here we are. Here goes the entry of a truly great experience:
Another year, another year having a blast at MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. If you didn’t read my last entry (which may be privatized by the time you read this entry) the difference in this year was that I got to attend the conference this year for free thanks to the conference’s organizers for taking pictures that they ended up using last year.
Anyway, the conference began the same way it did the previous year with opening remarks in the main (ball)room with the main four people responsible for the conference taking about the conference itself:
Left to right that is:
1. David Schmittlein- The dean of the MIT Sloan school (of management).
2. Daryl Morey- The GM of the Houston Rockets who graduated from Sloan in 2000 and is the co-chair for the conference.
3. Jessica Gelman- The other co-chair of the conference who is the Vice President of Customer Marketing and Strategy for the Kraft Sports Group (the group that owns the New England Patriots).
4. Jordy DeFelice- One of the two conference’s student co-leads.
5. Jonathan Katz- The other of the two conference’s student co-leads. The conference is a completely student-run operation, so these two are the leaders of that team of I believe around 50 student organizers.
The opening remarks consisted of many things from Jaws music to unloading trucks. But mostly bad jokes that people had to laugh at because they were so bad. You know those ones, right?
Unfortunately I was late for being early, and combined with this being the event people showed up the earliest for the whole conference, this was probably my worst seat for the whole conference. What I forgot is that not many people leave for other rooms during the first time block of the day, so it ended up also being my seat for the Revenge of the Nerds panel that took place immediately after the opening remarks in the ballroom.
That panel consisted of these following people. I will first write the name of the person and then the picture of that person afterwards. I felt the need to clarify that because I often get confused by that myself.
Michael Lewis (moderator):
This should be a familiar to most people reading this blog. He is a best-selling author most notably in the sports world for Moneyball and The Blind Side.
Paraag Marthe:
The COO of the San Francisco 49ers.
Daryl Morey:
(Previously mentioned)
Nate Silver:
Founder of Fivethirtyeight.com. He is probably most famous for correctly predicting the outcome of all 50 states in this past year’s presidential election, raising him–briefly–to an almost Chuck Norris-esque internet adoration.
Mark Cuban:
Owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
It was a really interesting panel on a variety of levels. I don’t remember exactly what I was mesmerized by, but I’ll be sure to put the video of the panel when it goes up on YouTube like last year. In addition, with my focus on taking pictures this year, I think I’ll be re-watching a lot more panels than I did last year.
I should also add that, like I mentioned on the Twitter machine during the conference itself:
Nate Silver is being an awesome person by staying to talk to people until the organizers kick him off the stage for the next panel. #SSAC13
— Mateo Fischer (@observebaseball) March 1, 2013
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Nate Silver was the awesomest of the panelists on Revenge of the Nerds by staying to talk with people almost until the next panel began twenty minutes later. Here is photographic evidence of this:
I think my legs would hurt at that point.
The next panel required no movement on my part as it was also in the ballroom. I however did move to be at a better picture-taking angle since a lot more people left between these two panels than between the opening remarks and Revenge of the Nerds. What was the panel? It’s Not You, It’s Me: Break-Ups in Sports. Here are the panelists:
Jackie MacMullan(moderator):
I definitely took several pictures of her, but I was at a bad angle for taking pictures of the moderator’s chair, so I guess I kept erasing the bad pictures of her and never realized that I never actually got one to put on file. A shame. Anyway, she now works for ESPN, most notably appearing frequently as a panelist on their show Around The Horn. She made her fame, however, in her twenty years at the Boston Globe. She has also published several books such as When the Game Was Ours–which spoke of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson’s rivalry. She also co-authored Shaquille O’Neal’s autobiography.
Steve Pagliuca:
Co-Owner of the Boston Celtics.
Brian Burke:
Senior Advisor to the Toronto Maple Leafs, who was on this panel because he recently got fired from his position as President and General Manager of the team.
Stan Van Gundy:
Former head coach of the Orlando Magic.
Bill Polian:
NFL Analyst on ESPN, who was on the panel because he was the former General Manager of the Indianapolis Colts.
John Buccigross:
Host for Sportscenter on ESPN.
This panel added to a great start for me this conference. It truly was another great one. Bill Polian had some great words of wisdom while Stan Van Gundy was entertain but at the same time informative of his whole situation with the Magic and Dwight Howard, where contrary to expectation, he gave Dwight Howard respect for having played with the most pain he has ever seen a player play with.
In addition to that, it was interesting hearing Brian Burke essentially trash the statistical evaluation of players. I even overheard a “And that’s why you got fired” from the crowd. I wish I had been at the front of the crowd so Burke might have heard that. (Burke, for the record, is on the Honorary Executive Board for the conference–as is Bill Polian. It’s more than likely because his daughter is on the Alumni Executive Board. She even introduced this panel:
Sorry, Katie. That’s the only picture I got of you.)
Then came time for boxed lunches. As last year, there was only one vegetarian option, so I went with the grilled vegetable wrap. It would have been great, but it’s just not my thing. Whatever. It was a good lunch, so I’m not going to complain.
For the next time block–That’s how the conference worked. There were a maximum of five events going on for each hour-long time block with twenty-minute breaks in between them–there really wasn’t one event that I really wanted to attend, but I wanted to take in as much as I could so I went to Big Data Analytics in the Wide World of Sports. The speaker for it was Will Cairins, a senior data scientist at HP. So here is Mr. Cairins along with a couple of slides from his presentation, which I honestly still have no clue what it was about other than an amazingly big database’s applications to the world of sports:
Mr. Carins from my way-too-close-to-the-stage-seat. (My biggest challenge was getting a picture that wasn’t looking straight up his nose or blocked by the podium in the middle of the stage.)
A second shot of Cairins that wanted to get just to have the cool background he spoke in front of.
A couple of slides from the presentation.
After that I headed off to one of the research paper presentations. It was entitled Live by the Three, Die by the Three? The Price of Risk in the NBA. The presenter of it was Matthew Goldman of UC San Diego:
I guess it was an interesting presentation. (If you want to read the whole paper, click here.) But the most notable part of it for me was that Mr. Goldman, the presenter, was by far the hardest person–with Mr. Cairins from the previous presentation as a close second–to get a good picture of. First of all, he made so many small, ridiculous facial expressions that weren’t detectable to the naked eye but kept showing up on camera. That and he moved back and forth on stage more than anyone else I saw at the conference, so even if he wasn’t making a ridiculous facial expression on camera, the picture would come out blurry. I don’t know exactly how many pictures I deleted of him, but it was closer to the number of all other presenters/panelists combined than you might otherwise think.
Sadly, though, I had to seem like the biggest douchebag in the room as I had to leave extra early from my front-row seat to get a front-row seat for the Baseball Analytics panel in the Grand Ballroom. That panel consisted of the following:
Lindsay Czarniak (moderator):
Anchor for Sportscenter on ESPN.
Joe Posnanski:
Senior Writer for NBC Sports.
Jonah Keri:
Staff Writer, Grantland; Author – “The Extra 2%”.
Ben Jediovec:
Vice President of Product Development & Sales, Baseball Info Solutions.
Voros McCraken:
Statistical Analyst/ Writer.
Farhan Zaidi:
Director of Baseball Operations, Oakland Athletics.
All in all, I would say that it was a pretty good panel. Someone who was new to the conference would have loved this panel. I, however–and this is not the panel’s fault–couldn’t stop comparing this year’s panel to last year’s amazing Baseball Analytics panel, so that took away from my enjoyment of it. If you weren’t reading my blog at this time last year, you can click here and scroll about half-way down the page to see last year’s all-star panel.
Next up it was True Performance & the Science of Randomness. This panel consisted of the following panelists:
Daryl Morey (moderator):
Previously mentioned.
Alec Scheiner:
President of the Cleveland Browns.
Nate Silver:
Previously mentioned.
Jeff Ma:
CEO, tenXer, who you may best recognize as the person who the movie “21″ was based off of, and who not surprisingly revealed that he can no longer play blackjack.
Benjamin Alamar:
Professor, Menlo College, whose connection to sports is through him being a consultant/researcher in the field of sports analytics as well as authoring a book on the subject.
Phil Birnbaum:
Editor, By the Numbers.
This was a very interesting panel to listen to. The brilliance that emanated from its panelists can be seen in the fact that it took half the panel simply to understand the terms they were using to describe the process of deciphering true performance from inherent randomness that occupies any performance and measurement thereof. Oh, and the panel had approximately 1,245 references to Nate Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise. It was initially just thrown out there as a moving reference, but it quickly became the running jokes of the panel to see how many times they could mention the book in the span of the panel and that the rest of the panel would thus forward receive royalties on any book sales for the number of times the book was mentioned during the panel. (No, it wasn’t actually 1,245 times, but it almost seemed like it.)
Next up was, in that same room, the Ticketing Analytics panel. (I really suspect they tried to make as many panels follow the Analytics format as possible, because–at least this was the case in the panels I attended–way more followed it this year than last year.) The panel was comprised of the following panelists:
Shira Springer (moderator):
Special projects reporter, Boston Globe Sports. Oddly enough, she was the only moderator who sat in the middle of the panel. In I believe EVERY other panel I attended, the moderator sat to the far right seat of the panel. I don’t know if this was done unintentionally or to strategically segment the group, but for whatever reason she was in the middle. She was also one of the least active moderators on any of the panels, but I think that was more of a testament to the panel and the direction the panelists took it rather than on her job as moderator.
David Kaval:
President, San Jose Earthquakes.
Bill Chapin:
Senior Vice President of Business Operations, Kansas City Cheifs.
Chris Granger:
Executive Vice President – Team Marketing & Business Operations, NBA. Or at least that is his title in the biography on the website. I recall him speaking extensively about his work with the Indiana Pacers, so I want to say he was in a high-up position with the team.
Danielle Maged:
Global Head of Business Development and Partnerships, Stubhub.
Cole Gahagan:
Sr. Vice President, Development & Strategy, NBA/NHL & Arenas – Ticketmaster.
This panel was mostly an entertaining debate between Granger and Kaval as to what the repercussions/benefits of dynamic pricing are with Kaval taking the more fan-friendly perspective and Granger taking the more business-y approach. In my opinion, this comes from the differences between their two leagues, with Kaval having to rely more on the fan experience and Granger having an unconditional fan base (to a certain extent). What I mean by that is that someone is way more likely to “just go” to an NBA game than an MLS game. The other interesting part of the panel was hearing Chapin talk about the Cheifs have implemented paperless ticketing for their season ticket holders through the use of a season ticket holder card. As a dedicated sports attendee myself it both excited and frightened me.
The final panel of the day was the Business of Sports panel. That was the following panelists:
Jessica Gelman (moderator):
Previously mentioned. (I think. Right? Right.)
John Walsh:
Executive Vice President, ESPN.
Jennifer Storms:
Senior Vice President of Global Sports Marketing, PepsiCo.
George Postolos:
President & CEO, Houston Astros.
Kathy Carter:
President, Soccer United Marketing.
Phil de Picciotto:
Founder and President, Octagon.
I can’t really remember much at all from this panel. I think it was one of those I-could-have-enjoyed-this-so-much-more-had-it-been-earlier-in-the-day situations. Anyway, that was my very full day at the conference after which I exited through the lobby from whence I came earlier in the day. (The convention center is three floors. The lobby is on the lowest of them and the conference itself took place on the two upper levels.):
Anyway, that was my day, so check back for the account of the second day. I plan on having a video tour of the entire conference grounds, but even so I hope it doesn’t take me half a month to get that out. (Or even over a week for that matter.) I plan on writing less in that entry, though. This entry was 2500+ words, just for reference. Then I plan on doing whatever it may be that I do on this blog next week. After that regular season baseball comes back to Minnesota–hopefully with some snow to accompany it. That obviously means I will shut down “offseason” mode and get into writing about the games I attend.
Complimentary Tickets!
Some of you may remember that I went to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Yes? No? Here are the links to my entries from Day 1 and Day 2, respectively. You may notice or remember that I took a ton of pictures with my “professional” camera. It turned out that the organizers of the conference found out about the pictures through my entries and ended up using a bunch of them. Most notably (as far as I can tell) for thumbnails for the videos of the different panels.
As a result of me giving them all the pictures I had, the chair of last year’s conference decided to give me a free ticket to this year’s conference. I even got my own specialty promo code (which is awesome):
Even though my business cards won’t get to me in time for the conference, it will be a great to experience all that is the conference once again.
I do have another near-tragic moment this week. This day in fact. You may remember that my good camera had water damage from my tour of Target Field in the snow (a bittersweet idea selection in retrospect). I thought it wouldn’t be repaired in time, but it turns out the camera will be ready in time for the conference. So it will be a lot less awkward than me showing up without a camera given that the complimentary tickets were given on account of me taking pictures last year and taking pictures for this year’s conference as well.
If you want to go ahead and read the two entries from last year, go ahead. That will be more or less what I write this year. I’ll try my hardest to get them out the day after the day that the event took place, but I will be going to the conference itself, so it may not be that feasible for this to happen considering how long I would have to make the entries as long as I would like. With events like this I keep an especially large emphasis on the quality of the entry, even if that means getting it out a little later than I would like. With baseball games I go to a ton of them, so I can’t really take a week to get each entry out because I would never catch up. I also don’t know how closely I will be working with the event organizers in terms of my pictures or whether that will require me to spend any extra time at the conference itself as opposed to writing/organizing my entries after the conference’s events end.
Anyway, I leave for Boston Thursday morning (which should be fun in terms of homework since I’m going to be missing two days of class: yet another reason I’m not sure I can get entries out the day after the days which I am writing about.) and get there I believe around 7:00 EST. The conference’s Opening Remarks begin at 8:30 AM on Friday and the conferences closing ceremonies, ending with the Alpha Awards, end at 6:00 PM on Saturday. I then head back to St. Paul on Sunday at 10:15, landing at 3:00. If for whatever reason you’re there, come say hi, but look forward to some entries about the conference and possibly videos.
MLB Fan Cave Endorsements
With the voting amongst MLB Fan Cave top-52 closing within the next two days, it’s time for me to official make my push for a couple of the candidates. I personally went through only most, but not all of the videos, so I can’t aptly judge the best of the best, but there are a couple candidates I would like you to vote for (or, if you’ve already voted for them, vote another 50 times for).
First of all, if you didn’t know, some resident MLBloggers made the top-52 list. Both of which come from the blog “Three Up, Three Down.” Here is a screenshot of their entry along with the link to the entry right here:
That entry has everything that I could say about their campaign. Translation: I’m rushing to get this entry out and their videos are pretty much all you need to capture their essence enough to vote for them. So what are you waiting for? See the videos and vote for them. I’ll wait for you. I don’t normally do this, but I made it so that link opens up in a new window/tab, so you can go, vote for them, and this entry will still be up for you to read about the other contestant I’m endorsing.
The other person is actually a person I learned about exclusively on Twitter. So, here is Tom Bentley’s application video:
Go ahead and give him some love by clicking this link right hiagh! Sorry I haven’t been as active in writing as I would like to be/pseudo-promised in the last entry, but school has taken control of me. I do however, have one of two videos done for the next entry. After that I’ll be going back to the ever-popular poll for entry ideas.
So again, give them as much love as you can in 40-ish hours by just stuffing the MLB Fan Cave ballot-box this last day of voting.
Martin Luther King Day Tribute Video
Hello. Welcome to Martin Luther King Day. Or I guess it’s possible that you’re reading this after then. Anyway, with it being Martin Luther King Day and the third ever World Baseball Classic around the corner, I thought it’d be fun to put together a tribute to the great minority figures in baseball throughout the years. Now I realize that Jackie Robinson paved the wave long before Dr. King, but I think we can all see how it would have been much more difficult for the magnitude of the influx of non-white players would have been without his push for civil rights. I thought it especially important in today’s game with the minimization of–well, everyone–but especially blacks in youth baseball and thus professional baseball, because it is that much easier to forget how rich a history it is. So anyway, here I give you, boys and girls, my tribute to…aw, I’m too lazy to look it up, so just read the title of the video:
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2xIgRmoM7Y
Here’s your chance to vote for the next entry (even though the Friday entry won’t be any of these):
Here are the already-exhausted ideas:
1. Ballhawk Interviews- 33 votes
2. Stadium Profiles- 26 votes
3. Ballhawk Profiles- 33 votes
4. Dissect (a) Baseball(s)- 26 votes
5. Tour Target Field when there’s snow on the ground- 26 votes
6. Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records- 28 votes
7. New Observing Baseball Icon- 17 votes
8. MLBlogs I Recommend- 33 votes
9. Observing Baseball Trivia- 32 votes
10. My Favorite MLB Players- 28 votes
11. Characters of Observing Baseball- 29 votes
12. Gate Opening Times of MLB Stadiums- 30 votes
Proofread; not proof-watched.
243,922 Words Written so far..
Favorite MLB Players
Just to have it on the record who my favorite MLB players are and were as of January, 12, 2013. That, and maybe for you guys to get a better idea of me as a baseball fan:
Vote for who you think the next entry should be about:
And of course, if you haven’t already, vote for what you think the next entry should be after that:
Exhausted entry ideas:
1. Ballhawk Interviews- 33 votes
2. Stadium Profiles- 26 votes
3. Ballhawk Profiles- 33 votes
4. Dissect (a) Baseball(s)- 26 votes
5. Tour Target Field when there’s snow on the ground- 26 votes
6. Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records- 28 votes
7. New Observing Baseball Icon- 17 votes
8. MLBlogs I Recommend- 33 votes
9. Observing Baseball Trivia- 32 votes
10. My Favorite MLB Players- 28 votes
11. Characters of Observing Baseball- 29
Not Proofread/watched.
239,315 Words Written so far…
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