Hey Chucky! Nice bald spot!
I played ball for an hour and a half yesterday. 4 on 4, same teams, lost like 8 out of 9 games. The other team was way better and they offered to switch it up after awhile, and I said no way. We battled and lost with dignity, and the one game we won was something like 15-2. That felt good. I would rather lose close ones all day than switch teams and win with the stacked squad. That's what separates me from Gary Payton. That and the fact that I still shout "Scrilla!" whenever I score, while he does not.
Exercise felt bad, then good. Now bad again. That's two weekends in a row, body is holding up OK. I would play basketball every day if I could. It's that much fun for me. It's kind of sad that I never got to be really awesome at it. I deserve to be. Oh well, I'm better than some people. If you're one of them, give me a call and we'll go play.
Remember when Nike ads used to be original and cool? They're just going through the motions (click "view the TV spot"). I mean, the production values are there, but it's totally uninspired. And it actually manages to make Steve Nash look like an annoying guy to play with.
OK, you asked for a little bit about Don Mattingly, so here is what I got.
Ten Things I Can Honestly Say About Don Mattingly
1) In their respective primes, he was better than Cal Ripken. His best year was better than Ripken's, and he had more great years than Ripken, even though his body collapsed when he was about 27. However, Ripken stuck it out and had a far better career. And he played a much tougher position. And won 2 MVP's to Mattingly's one. So there ya go. I love Ripken, btw. Just feel that for one at-bat in their peak year, a pitcher would much rather face Ripken than Mattingly. Mattingly seemed to hit the ball hard almost every time up.
2) It actually took me a few years to completely warm up to Mattingly. When he came up for good in 1983, he was an outfielder and he took some PT away from my favorite player, the cosmically doomed Steve Kemp. So I ended up resenting him until like 1985 or 1986, and I never formed a truly jizzmatic bond with him the way BJL and Joe M. did. By the time I forgave him and realized I had to treasure him, he was already on the decline, which still sorta bums me out.
3) No way should dude be in the HOF. Not that I want to start talking about the HOF.
4) He may have looked better playing baseball than anyone who's played over the last 25 years. At least among first basemen. Ken Griffey Jr. in his prime was probably more perfect. But Mattingly definitely looked smooth.
5) He was good buddies with Rickey Henderson, which makes sense because they put a lot of money in each other's pockets over the few years Henderson was in NY.
6) With assistance from Tom Selleck, he made moustaches safe for white people again. For a little while, anyway. In light of this, maybe I need to rethink my stance on Mattingly and the HOF. Is there a moustache HOF? There fucking should be. Get that going.
7) He played third base and second base a couple of times. Not easy for a lefty. For twenty GP's, who was the last lefty thrower to play third in the majors (Mattingly aside)? Hint: I have no idea and you can probably bluff me on this one.
8) He's kinda religious and seemingly less humorous these days (not that those two necessarily go hand in hand), but he seemed like a good wise-cracker in his playing days. Remember this one?
9) I bet he is good at all sports.
10) From 2003-2005 he posted "interviews" on his website (more like people sent in questions and he answered them and some dude typed it up) and they are a source of consistent happiness. Here are two of my favorites:
-Michael wrote:
Mr. Mattingly:
I'm just finishing a book, that will be published this coming May, in which you make a brief appearance. You were the boyhood hero of Scott Hatteberg, now of the Oakland A's, and he is one of the central characters of the book. He modeled his swing after yours, snuck into your Spring training facility to watch you in the cage, drove three hours to watch you play every time you played in Seattle, etc. His first big league at bat came with the Red Sox in Yankee Stadium. He turned a double into a single against David Cone on Sept 8, 1995, just so he could stop at first base and meet you.
That's a longwinded way of getting to the question I'd like to ask you: who did YOU model your approach to hitting upon? My phone number is 510 540 7532 but you can answer here if you get this. Thank you in advance.
Regards
Michael
---
Michael,
I modeled my swing after Rod Carew. I tried to hit the ball to all fields like he did. Good luck with your book.
Don Mattingly
Do you think that was Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame writing in? I would think so. If so, you now have his digits.
And my favorite:
Reggie Wrote:
On the date the Yankees retired your number do you remember hearing a fan yell out "Hey, Chucky! Nice bald spot."? It happened while you were giving your acceptance speech during a pause. You did smile and I was wondering if you had heard it and what you were thinking. It was I that yelled it at a friend who was sitting about 10 rows in front of me.
Don Mattingly Wrote:
Reggie,
I definitely did not hear it. It is hard for me to remember anything about that day. It was such a busy, hectic, and overwhelming day. Sounds like it would have been very funny if I had heard it.
Sincerely,
Don Mattingly
Oh, Reggie. Incidentally, from reading the site I also learn that Mattingly is a not-straight-ticket-voting Republican, that his favorite book is the Bible, and that his favorite movie is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
OK, on to some exciting other biz. Dan K. is blogging again! After an abandoned side project called "Control-X", he has returned to his old website DanKois.com and he has some fine content up there already. Please check it out right now and go back every day.
Seeing that Dan had used the Blogger software to publish his blog to his own site, I decided to try to do the same thing. So I switched to the New Blogger, fucked around for about an hour with some settings that I don't quite understand, and I got it to work! So from now on, you will access this blog at our old site, verbungle.com. Please re-update your bookmarks. The blogspot address should expire in a few days. Unless I screwed something up.
Expect a few errors over the next week or so while we hammer down some loose edges. After that, just expect a good time.
Good football games this weekend. Rex Grossman = worst QB ever to start a Super Bowl? Maybe David Woodley? Tony Eason? Stan Humphries? James Vanderbeek? Just checking to see if you're still paying attention.
I still haven't had a sugar soda in '07. I have had cheesecake, cookies, Doritos, cheese puffs, and one lonesome cheeseburger. PB made a good point about carnivorism the other day which pretty well summarizes my beliefs about eating animals:
Animals are intelligent and have feelings and emotions. We vastly underestimate their capacity for thought and feeling because we like to eat meat.
Yep. You've seen animals run for their lives. They want to fucking live, man. Especially the big ones like cows and pigs -- they ain't dumb. I think that within 600 years all developed nations will be more than 75% vegetarian. Give me a holler then. I remember talking to a guy I know once, let's call him Nuge, and his attitude towards meat was "We are biologically programmed to want to eat animals. It's in our DNA. And these animals, the cows and pigs, are just here on earth for us to live off their meat. Being a vegetarian is completely unnatural."
What a load of horseshit. There are lots of things that we are "biologically programmed" to want to do, like fuck every able-bodied partner in sight. But we don't do it because we have a capacity for reason. We are capable of being more than animals. We can make philosophical judgments of right and wrong, wise and unwise. And because we are more than animals, we should, and eventually will, stop eating them.
I am dreading Monday more than usual this week. An egg and cheese sandwich will get things off to a decent start.
I am getting baptized in a couple of weeks. Any tips?
Exercise felt bad, then good. Now bad again. That's two weekends in a row, body is holding up OK. I would play basketball every day if I could. It's that much fun for me. It's kind of sad that I never got to be really awesome at it. I deserve to be. Oh well, I'm better than some people. If you're one of them, give me a call and we'll go play.
Remember when Nike ads used to be original and cool? They're just going through the motions (click "view the TV spot"). I mean, the production values are there, but it's totally uninspired. And it actually manages to make Steve Nash look like an annoying guy to play with.
OK, you asked for a little bit about Don Mattingly, so here is what I got.
Ten Things I Can Honestly Say About Don Mattingly
1) In their respective primes, he was better than Cal Ripken. His best year was better than Ripken's, and he had more great years than Ripken, even though his body collapsed when he was about 27. However, Ripken stuck it out and had a far better career. And he played a much tougher position. And won 2 MVP's to Mattingly's one. So there ya go. I love Ripken, btw. Just feel that for one at-bat in their peak year, a pitcher would much rather face Ripken than Mattingly. Mattingly seemed to hit the ball hard almost every time up.
2) It actually took me a few years to completely warm up to Mattingly. When he came up for good in 1983, he was an outfielder and he took some PT away from my favorite player, the cosmically doomed Steve Kemp. So I ended up resenting him until like 1985 or 1986, and I never formed a truly jizzmatic bond with him the way BJL and Joe M. did. By the time I forgave him and realized I had to treasure him, he was already on the decline, which still sorta bums me out.
3) No way should dude be in the HOF. Not that I want to start talking about the HOF.
4) He may have looked better playing baseball than anyone who's played over the last 25 years. At least among first basemen. Ken Griffey Jr. in his prime was probably more perfect. But Mattingly definitely looked smooth.
5) He was good buddies with Rickey Henderson, which makes sense because they put a lot of money in each other's pockets over the few years Henderson was in NY.
6) With assistance from Tom Selleck, he made moustaches safe for white people again. For a little while, anyway. In light of this, maybe I need to rethink my stance on Mattingly and the HOF. Is there a moustache HOF? There fucking should be. Get that going.
7) He played third base and second base a couple of times. Not easy for a lefty. For twenty GP's, who was the last lefty thrower to play third in the majors (Mattingly aside)? Hint: I have no idea and you can probably bluff me on this one.
8) He's kinda religious and seemingly less humorous these days (not that those two necessarily go hand in hand), but he seemed like a good wise-cracker in his playing days. Remember this one?
9) I bet he is good at all sports.
10) From 2003-2005 he posted "interviews" on his website (more like people sent in questions and he answered them and some dude typed it up) and they are a source of consistent happiness. Here are two of my favorites:
-Michael wrote:
Mr. Mattingly:
I'm just finishing a book, that will be published this coming May, in which you make a brief appearance. You were the boyhood hero of Scott Hatteberg, now of the Oakland A's, and he is one of the central characters of the book. He modeled his swing after yours, snuck into your Spring training facility to watch you in the cage, drove three hours to watch you play every time you played in Seattle, etc. His first big league at bat came with the Red Sox in Yankee Stadium. He turned a double into a single against David Cone on Sept 8, 1995, just so he could stop at first base and meet you.
That's a longwinded way of getting to the question I'd like to ask you: who did YOU model your approach to hitting upon? My phone number is 510 540 7532 but you can answer here if you get this. Thank you in advance.
Regards
Michael
---
Michael,
I modeled my swing after Rod Carew. I tried to hit the ball to all fields like he did. Good luck with your book.
Don Mattingly
Do you think that was Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame writing in? I would think so. If so, you now have his digits.
And my favorite:
Reggie Wrote:
On the date the Yankees retired your number do you remember hearing a fan yell out "Hey, Chucky! Nice bald spot."? It happened while you were giving your acceptance speech during a pause. You did smile and I was wondering if you had heard it and what you were thinking. It was I that yelled it at a friend who was sitting about 10 rows in front of me.
Don Mattingly Wrote:
Reggie,
I definitely did not hear it. It is hard for me to remember anything about that day. It was such a busy, hectic, and overwhelming day. Sounds like it would have been very funny if I had heard it.
Sincerely,
Don Mattingly
Oh, Reggie. Incidentally, from reading the site I also learn that Mattingly is a not-straight-ticket-voting Republican, that his favorite book is the Bible, and that his favorite movie is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
OK, on to some exciting other biz. Dan K. is blogging again! After an abandoned side project called "Control-X", he has returned to his old website DanKois.com and he has some fine content up there already. Please check it out right now and go back every day.
Seeing that Dan had used the Blogger software to publish his blog to his own site, I decided to try to do the same thing. So I switched to the New Blogger, fucked around for about an hour with some settings that I don't quite understand, and I got it to work! So from now on, you will access this blog at our old site, verbungle.com. Please re-update your bookmarks. The blogspot address should expire in a few days. Unless I screwed something up.
Expect a few errors over the next week or so while we hammer down some loose edges. After that, just expect a good time.
Good football games this weekend. Rex Grossman = worst QB ever to start a Super Bowl? Maybe David Woodley? Tony Eason? Stan Humphries? James Vanderbeek? Just checking to see if you're still paying attention.
I still haven't had a sugar soda in '07. I have had cheesecake, cookies, Doritos, cheese puffs, and one lonesome cheeseburger. PB made a good point about carnivorism the other day which pretty well summarizes my beliefs about eating animals:
Animals are intelligent and have feelings and emotions. We vastly underestimate their capacity for thought and feeling because we like to eat meat.
Yep. You've seen animals run for their lives. They want to fucking live, man. Especially the big ones like cows and pigs -- they ain't dumb. I think that within 600 years all developed nations will be more than 75% vegetarian. Give me a holler then. I remember talking to a guy I know once, let's call him Nuge, and his attitude towards meat was "We are biologically programmed to want to eat animals. It's in our DNA. And these animals, the cows and pigs, are just here on earth for us to live off their meat. Being a vegetarian is completely unnatural."
What a load of horseshit. There are lots of things that we are "biologically programmed" to want to do, like fuck every able-bodied partner in sight. But we don't do it because we have a capacity for reason. We are capable of being more than animals. We can make philosophical judgments of right and wrong, wise and unwise. And because we are more than animals, we should, and eventually will, stop eating them.
I am dreading Monday more than usual this week. An egg and cheese sandwich will get things off to a decent start.
I am getting baptized in a couple of weeks. Any tips?
Labels: basketball, dan kois, don mattingly, vegetarianism
posted by hans q. bungle at 00:05
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