Tuesday August 12, 2003
DISCUSSION QUESTION OF THE WEEK
A Small Slice of Pie
I used to be an athlete. I used to be in decent shape. I was a three sport varsity high school athlete and started in all three sports (football, basketball, and baseball) for two to four years. I even played a little bit of college baseball. But, once I quit playing ball, it would be fair to say that I’m not quite in the same shape as I used to be. OK, not even very close. The following story tells you a little about the current situation of my physical condition.
On Sunday, I played in a softball tournament. One of the guys who played on our team had his three young daughters with him. The three year old kind of took a liking to me, and we hung out. At one point, she came over to me and patted my stomach. In a cute, little three year old voice, she said, “Is that your tummy?”
Sure, I wanted to say, “No, it’s not mine, I’m just borrowing it for awhile to protect my much smaller stomach.”, but I can’t lie to a three-year old! So, I said, “Yup, sure is.”
She looked at me for a couple seconds then said, “Are you having a baby?”
Ouch!! That hurt! I went home and didn’t eat the rest of the day! OK, that’s not true!! I’ve got Snack Packs! I could really use some pie though… Hey, speaking of Pie…
American Wedding -
Saturday afternoon, my sister and I went to the movie, American Wedding. It is the third and final installment of the American Pie series. All I can say is that I spent the whole time in the theater laughing. A few times, I think I was the only one laughing. One line comedy, situational comedy, comedy where knowledge of the previous movies was necessary are all involved. To summarize, Crude Humor may put it mildly! But, that’s what is expected from these movies. It was just such a great movie.
To me, it was just really unfortunate that more than half of the cast mates from the other two American Pie movies chose not to participate in this one.
Not in American Wedding:
Chris Klein (Oz)
Mena Suvari (Heather)
Tara Reid (Vicky)
Shannon Elizabeth (Nadia)
Natasha Lyonne (Jessica)
Chris Owen (The Shermanator)
Still in American Wedding:
Jason Biggs (Jim)
Alysson Hannigan (Michelle)
Thomas Ian Nicholas (Kevin) -
check out his appearance in last week’s Top Baseball Movies
Eddie Kaye Thomas (Paul Finch)
Seann William Scott (Steve Stifler)
Eugene Levy (Jim’s Dad)
New in American Wedding:
January Jones (Cadence)
Nikki Sheiler Ziering (an inspiration role as a police officer!)
American Wedding is a really great, funny movie even without the full cast returning, and I don’t know if the movie would have been better with them, but it just seems strange that they wouldn’t have made it to Jim’s wedding?! I would think Miramax could have spent a little money and had the other cast members come in for one day, just to appear in the wedding scenes. Maybe Chris Moore doesn’t have as much pull with the Miramax people as Project Greenlight makes it appear!.
I don’t want to get into too much detail on the specifics of the movie. But on a 5 star scale, I would give it a solid 4 out of 5 stars. As I said before, I found myself laughing out loud so many times. Scott’s Steve Stifler character may have been a bit over-the-edge at first, but by the end, you realize just how important that is to the movie. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt!! Hey, he’s a Minnesota native, so of course I will! I would say that American Wedding, more than the other two American Pie movies, has a great story to it as well.
I would encourage everyone to watch it if you’re looking for a laugh… well, not anyone under the age of 18 though!!!!
TWINS (and other baseball) THOUGHTS
Yesterday, I showed the batting splits for Luis Rivas, and they told a pretty clear story:
“So basically, if the Twins are playing at home, and there is a right-handed pitcher for the opponent, expect Rivas to hit well!!!”
Last night, the Indians started righty Jake Westbrook in the Dome against the Twins, so by the above sentence, we would have to assume that Luis Rivas should have played a role in the game, right? So, what did he do?
Well, Rivas was just 1-4, but the one hit was a 2 run homer to stretch the Twins lead to 3-0. So, that’s pretty good!
The match-up for tonight’s game is Rick Reed for the Twins against the Indians Billy Traber. Traber is currently 6-6 with a 4.33 ERA. In his last start, he went 6 1/3 innings, giving up just one earned run against the Twins. But, Traber is left-handed, so I make no predictions on Rivas’ performance tonight!
How good was Kyle Lohse last night? He got ahead in the count, stayed aggressive and was really quite dominant. He went 8 innings, and after 2 straight hits to start the 9th, Lohse was relieved by LaTroy Hawkins, who finished the win and picked up his first save in almost two years.
Here we go again! Michael Restovich was playing very well out in right field, but now Dustan Mohr has started the last two games there, and Resto is on the bench. This is a recurring theme with the Twins under Ron Gardenhire. Another hitting prospect gets called up and given a shot to be the every day right fielder for about 10 days or so. Then, Gardy decides to play Dustan Mohr, who hits well off the bench, so he stays in right for the next couple weeks. By the time Mohr starts hitting like, well, Dustan Mohr, and gets sent back to the bench, the rookie is out of confidence and hasn’t had consistent at bats for a few weeks, struggles and gets sent down. Am I the only one frustrated by this?
The Royals did something last night that the Twins have been unable to do for the past two seasons, beat the New York Yankees. The Royals won 12-9. Former Twin Paul Abbott started for the Royals, while David Wells threw for the Yankees. So, the Royals maintained a 2 ½ game lead on the Twins.
The White Sox lost late last night to the Anaheim Angels, 10-8, to fall 1 ½ games behind the Royals.
Did you see the fight on Sunday between the Devil Rays and the Royals? Reliever Jesus Colome threw a ball behind Aaron Guiel, who took exception to it and walked toward Colome. The benches cleared and both were ejected. Were the ejections warranted? Maybe, by today's standards, they probably were.
Why was Colome throwing at Guiel? Well, the night before, Guiel went hard into second base to take out the second baseman and stop a double play. Hard baseball is great. The slide that Guiel made at 2B Saturday night was absolutely horrid, and in my opinion, absolutely warranted him being thrown at on Sunday. He didn't even start his slide into second, until he was at the bag. He slid late, he slid high, and it was blatantly cheap. I know that Tony Pena teaches his players to play hard and do things the right way. In his mind, even he has to understand how terrible Guiel's slide was and that he deserved to be drilled the next day. As I've written in a previous posting, there is a way to hit batters (LINK), and the hitters shouldn't take exception to it. Colome almost hit Guiel in the butt, maybe lower. I'm 100% behind Colome doing that!
Did you happen to catch the Red Sox/A’s match-up late last night? Pedro Martinez vs. Tim Hudson. Well, Tim Hudson won that battle and the A’s got some runs against Martinez to take a lead and maintained it. Martinez threw 105 pitches in just 5 innings. He gave up 2 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks, striking out 7 A’s. Hudson was the big story though. He was absolutely dominant, giving up just 2 singles in a complete game shutout of the slugging Red Sox lineup. He struck out 7 while walking just 1.
How desperate is Pat Riley to bring in a player to the Miami Heat? After losing out on Elton Brand, apparently, he has now offered Lamar Odom a $66 million offer sheet? OK, in LA, Odom was an under-achieving, pot smoking, injury-plagued enigma as a Clipper. What kind of trouble can he get into in Miami? With his ability, he could do well under Riley. I just don’t see it.
Minnesota and the hockey community lost a legend yesterday when 66 year old Herb Brooks died in a car accident. He was, of course, the coach of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" US Hockey team. I'm not real knowledgeable in hockey so I won't go further into him as a man or a coach. I'm guessing Sid Hartman will have plenty to say today, so check his stuff out.
I just find it incredibly ironic that at 6:00 on HBO, they aired "Miracle on Ice", a documentary on that 1980 Olympic Gold Medal team. I figured maybe HBO altered their schedule to show that, but then I looked in my HBO schedule and it was scheduled for today. As Alanis Morisette sang "Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?"
DISCUSSION QUESTION OF THE WEEK
This week’s question has just one part. Again, here are the rules:
1.) Take a look at the below question and think about how you would answer it.
2.) Send me an e-mail letting me know how you would answer the question.
3.) Check back every day, and if you have further ideas, e-mail me again!
4.) For sure, check back on Friday and see what other responses I received.
Without further ado, this week’s Question of the Week:
If you ran a baseball team, and had all of the players ever to have played the game at your disposal (in their primes, not at the current age or living status), what lineup would you put on the field?