From Todd
Mailbag question. Did the Braves not intend to make a "big" headline hire at manager? Seems like this was an after-thought pick for management. Maybe no one they wanted was available?
Todd -
Fair point Todd, and we're not really sure if they were planning on a 'splash' hire or not. What we are sure of is that:
a) The Braves nailed this since Brian Snitker got a one-year deal with a team option for 2018. This tells all of us, including Snitker, that the interim term really is just extended for another season. Plus, it gives the team the chance to see how he can handle a team in the pressure of potentially contending, if the Braves can improve to get to that point.
b) Snitker did a lot in the second half of the season with limited roster options.
It also suggests that maybe the Braves are not as close to contending in 2017 as they may have hoped. Yes, they have some pieces, but we'll see.
That said, with Bud Black and Ron Washington interested to the point of interviewing, it looks like some of the biggest names available were certainly open to talking with the Braves. Heck, they added Washington as the new third-base coach, so maybe it's a trial run for a lot of folks come next spring.
LSU running back Derrius Guice (5) leaps into the end zone in front of Missouri safety Thomas Wilson (8) during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Oct. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Max Becherer)From a ton of you
What are your reactions/thoughts to the LSU-Florida ruling?
Gang -
We'll start with the positive. In the end, they are playing the game and that's the only way this could have ended without it being an awful black eye for the league on a national scale.
We believed it would be played on the weekend of Nov. 19 from the very beginning, too, as we talked about it on Press Row. It's surprising that they moved it to Baton Rouge, but it makes sense.
That said, let's review the winners and losers from this thing:
Winner: CBS, which not gets the chance to show this game at 3:30 on that regularly awful Saturday before Thanksgiving. The best other options were between UT-MIssouri and Ole Miss-Vandy.
Winner: Presbyterian and South Alabama, who get the check and then maybe some extra coin for the buyout reschedule stuff. Plus, if those two iron out the details to play that week, here's saying the SEC Network should volunteer to broadcast it as a tip of the visor.
Winner: LSU AD Joe Alleva. He was prepared to do anything needed last week - including playing the game with no fans in the stands if it came to that - and he was stern in protecting the home date because of what it means to Baton Rouge.
Loser: Florida AD Jeremy Foley, who had all the right intentions and priorities in trying to protect his school and its fans from a forecasted hurricane, but the entire Florida bunch was unable - or unwilling - to adjust and listen and only offered one option. No matter the intent, the way it played out made it look like the Gators were trying to game the system for their advantage.
Loser: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who was rendered relatively powerless in this whole thing until the rest of the schools got involved and supplied him support. Man college sports are crazy like that. The power flow chart is inverted.
Most powerful man in the hierarchy is the superstar coach -> big-time AD -> conference commissioners -> NCAA president. We're not even sure if Mark Emmertt could get a spot Nick Saban's calendar without six months advance notice.
FILE - In this Jan. 28, 1990, file photo, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jerry Rice celebrates his first-quarter touchdown against the Denver Broncos during NFL football's Super Bowl XXIV in New Orleans. Joe Montana and the 49ers managed to outscore their own nickname in this 55-10 trampling of the Broncos, still the most points ever scored by a Super Bowl team and the largest margin of victory in the game’s history. (AP Photo/Bill Haber/FIle) From Pete W.
I started reading your column and listening to you guys on the radio. I love the Rushmores, and you had some great ones this week. Did you pick any of the choices?
Thanks.
Pete -
Great point Pete, and thanks for listening.
Thursday was the Rushmore of wide receivers (Jerry Rice, Moss, TO and Don Hutson, who put up Ruthian-like numbers when the NFL was very run heavy) and the Rushmore of HBCU players (Rice, Ed Too Tall Jones, Walter Payton and we'll go Steve McNair with an edge over Doug Williams, who was a stud, and guys like Mel Blount and Deacon Jones.)
Wednesday was Rushmore of soups, and if you don't count chili as a soup, we'll go gumbo, brunswick stew, vegetable beef and a good hot and sour from a Chinese restaurant.
Tuesday was Rushmore of reoccurring SNL sketches man this one is too hard. Terrible Rushmore idea from us. Let's just move along.
Monday was Rushmore of Lee, which will go with Robert E. Lee, Bruce Lee, Tommy Lee and Lee Greeson (the Lil' 5-at-10). But that leaves some great choices off the list such as Spike Lee, Harper Lee, Brenda Lee, Jason Lee (who was great as Earl on his TV show and as the lead singer of Still Water in Almost Famous) and Lee Majors - who along with Burt Reynolds was 'da man' in the 1970s, considering Burt had Lonnie Anderson and Majors was hitched with Farrah Fawcett.
The Sandlot is a 1993 film directed by David M. Evans.From Josh
You are the perfect person to answer to give the final answer on something my friends and I have been discussing. Of all the baseball movies out there, who is the best pitcher? We have been discussing a real-looking motion and who, considering the character, would have the best (fictional) baseball career?
We also did a starting lineup for kind of a movie all-star team and were wondering what yours would look like.
Thanks, and thanks for the 5-at-10 -- we read it everyday.
Josh -
Wow, what a great question on so many levels, and yes, this is the one that we spent entirely too much time on this week.
Best delivery: Charlie Sheen was a really good baseball player growing up and worked with several trainers before "Major League" and got to the point that he was throwing in the low-to-mid-80s during filming. Costner - who is the Ruth in almost all of these type of questions since he actually played some college baseball at Cal-State Fullerton - is very realistic in "For Love of the Game" and looked Maddux-esque. A sneaky pick here could be Robert Redford in "The Natural" because Roy Hobbs came up as a pitcher, but we'll give the final nod to Sheen on velocity alone.
(Side note: Worst delivery is quite easy. Tim Robbins as Nuke LaLoosh looks like part stork, and part unfolding lawn chair. And side note to the side note: Remember early on in "Bull Durham" when they review his first start and say "he struck out 18 - new league record - and he walked 18, another new league record" after Nuke's debut? That means in an early spring game at the beginning of the season, those guys let a 'teenager' who is a big enough prospect for the parent club to bring in a catcher/caddie threw what, 200 pitches? To walk and fan 18, that means you went at least six innings - the 18 outs naturally - and and pitched to no fewer than six hitters each inning, which would be walking the bases loaded and then striking out the side in some order. Now if each of those six at-bats averaged say 5.5 pitches per, which seems fair, that's 33 pitches per inning for six innings is 198 pitches. Granted this was in the 1980s, so we weren't overly spaz-tastic about pitch counts as we are today, but still.)
As for the genius that is the question about the starting lineup, well, if we are talking about numbers in the season and career-wise, we'll go with the following:
Pitcher - Kevin Chappell, For Love of the Game. (You could make a hard argument for Steve Nebraska, who threw the most-perfect of perfect games in "The Scout" by striking out 27 on 81 pitches, but that movie is so atrocious, it got eliminated.)
Catcher - Jack Parkman, Major League II (As much as we love Crash, he's an eternal minor leaguer. Parkman was a star.)
First base - Clue Heywood, Major League (Remember he was the AL triple crown winner and led the league in most offensive categories, including nose hair.)
Second base - Marla Hooch, League of Their Own (Marla Hooch, what a hitter.)
Shortstop - Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez, Sandlot. (OK, dude never really played a spot, but we're kind of running low on options.)
Third base - Ray Mitchell, Angels in the Outfield. (Don't peddle that Roger Dorn stuff here either.)
Left field - Robby Rayburn, The Fan. (The movie is simply awful - man did Bobby DeNiro make them pay him in cash for this one - but Wesley Snipes' character was a three-time MVP.)
Center field - Kelly Leak, Bad News Bears. (As long as he can stay clean, he's going to be a star. He was hitting .841 at one point.
Right field - Roy Hobbs, The Natural. (My dad wanted me to be a baseball player. Well, you're better than anyone I ever had and you're the best (blank-blank) hitter I ever saw.) That last quote was from Pop in the locker room before the final game in The Natural. Which begs a even tougher question: What fictional movie-based manager runs this bunch? Is Lou Brown (got a guy on the other line about a set of whitewalls, can I call you back) or Pop or Buttermaker or even Crash Davis, who certainly had a better chance to make it to the show as a skipper rather than a catcher? Or even Jimmy Dugan, who famously signed "Avoid the clap, Jimmy Dugan" on a baseball for a kid. That's good advice.
Great question.