sek69 Posted October 20, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 Not that baseball talk isn't fun, but to steer this back to WO topix: have they announced plans for another entry in their shoot video series? Considering they picked the worst possible guy for the first one, I wonder what the sales ended up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted October 20, 2010 Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 The last two pages here were totally fun to read. Good stuff, guys. jdw, do you write about baseball elsewhere ala articles, Op peices, or analysis? I really enjoyed your stuff here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 20, 2010 Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 I don't know. Garvey wasn't really any good after 1980. I l know he made a couple All-Star teams but that was based on reputation and the fact that he still hit .280. The drop from where he was in 1984 to not deserving a job wasn't that far Agree on Garvey. He was declining all the way back to 1982. His 1983 is a good OPS+, but it also was the year he broke the leg and stopped the games streak. Who knows if he would have faded as the year went on. 1984 wasn't any good, 1985 wasn't that good for a 1B, and 1986 was as poor as 1984. Given his age in that era, not too surprising. The fall-off-a-cliff list gets much longer if you open it up to guys like Baerga and Mayberry. Ted Kluszewski averaged 43 homers and hit .300 every year between 1953 and 1956. He never hit more than 15 homers again. Career altering injury. A little different from the self induced issues with Baerga and Mayberry. In 1953, Al Rosen had one of the great offensive seasons ever by a third baseman. He declined to mere excellence the following season, fell to barely average the following two years and was done after 1956. Career altering injury as well. Charlie Keller looked like a surefire Hall-of-Famer through age 29 and never played more than 83 games in a season again. Terrible back issues that destroyed his career. We can find a long list of guys like that... kind of leary about lumping them in with the typical "fall of the cliff" guys where they just went to shit. It all goes to show that the gap between great and obsolete is a lot slimmer than we tend to think. Completely agree on that. Folks can waste their talents (like Mayberry) while others can it snatched away from them (Tony Oliva's knees). John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted October 20, 2010 Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 Not that baseball talk isn't fun, but to steer this back to WO topix: have they announced plans for another entry in their shoot video series? Considering they picked the worst possible guy for the first one, I wonder what the sales ended up.They announced Bas Rutten for the 2nd one but I don't recall hearing anything since then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 20, 2010 Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 He had a hell of a year here in Baltimore, long after his glory days in Cincy. Let's see -- .327 with 28 HR, .970 OPS at age 36. Not bad at all. With Davis, of course, injuries were always the problem. He was just never meant to play 150 games a year. But he had Hall-of-Fame talent. Davis was amazing in coming back off the cliff several times, from injuries then the cancer. 1996 coming back from half a decade of injuries to hit .287/.394/.523/.917. Then of to the start of another excellent year in 1997 (.302/.363/.543/.906) before finding out he had colon cancer. He came back at the end of the season, then in 1998 had the season Childs points to above. An amazing, sublime talent. You always felt for him because his injuries had nothing to do with being a jake: he'd injure himself trying to make plays or take extra bases. It's very much that he tried *too hard*. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 20, 2010 Report Share Posted October 20, 2010 jdw, do you write about baseball elsewhere ala articles, Op peices, or analysis? I really enjoyed your stuff here. Just an old time baseball fan, rambling on it like I do on wrestling. Old Bill James reader from the early to mid 80s, so that would be were a lot of the influence is from. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrisZ Posted October 24, 2010 Report Share Posted October 24, 2010 Oh God I can't wait for tonight's post UFC podcast. I hope there is enough tissue to go around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted October 24, 2010 Report Share Posted October 24, 2010 Sherdog is down lol Will dave review Smackdown in the newsletter now on a full time basis? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 24, 2010 Report Share Posted October 24, 2010 Oh God I can't wait for tonight's post UFC podcast. I hope there is enough tissue to go around. Dave in the newsletter was saying positive things about Cane's chances of winning, though he often does point-counterpoint in his previews where either guy could win. They could easily flip this into a pro wrestling analogy: Brock's big money is in the chase. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eduardo Posted October 24, 2010 Report Share Posted October 24, 2010 From hearing Meltzer talk since July about Lesnar-Velasquez fight, he was either subtly or outright picking Velasquez to defeat Lesnar. Maybe Alvarez would need a tissue though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrisZ Posted October 24, 2010 Report Share Posted October 24, 2010 What I was meaning was they were crying a couple of weeks ago about how Cain has no charisma or mic skills and can't sell a fight like a pro wrestler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted October 24, 2010 Report Share Posted October 24, 2010 What I was meaning was they were crying a couple of weeks ago about how Cain has no charisma or mic skills and can't sell a fight like a pro wrestler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Thread Killer Posted October 25, 2010 Report Share Posted October 25, 2010 I have seen online today some fans saying that there is no way Brock could have legitimately lost that fight, so it must have been fixed. I have also seen the conspiracy theory floated that Lesnar threw the fight so he could back to the WWE and fight UT at WM, after their post match confrontation. There is so much wrong with both those theories that they call for the biggest facepalm gif in history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted November 9, 2010 Report Share Posted November 9, 2010 Joe Babinsack reviews the MMA Encyclopedia There’s a picture of Bob Sapp that is captioned “His ring entrance is pure Ric Flair”. Aside from the boxing gloves, bicycle shorts with “Hoopla” written on them, the heavily muscular frame and the fact that Mr. Sapp is an African American, I’m not quite sure what that has to do with Ric Flair. Unfair? Perhaps, but I’m not so sure a reference to Flair is fair in an MMA focused book. I take it Babinsack has never seen Sapp's ring entrance then? A lot of his other criticisms seem really nit picky. It's an encyclopedia. You haven't got room to do long essays on the intricate subjects of the history of pro wrestling and how it relates to MMA (which was in the early part of the last century a lot more like pro wrestling than Babinsack wants to admit) or the issue of performance enhancing drugs in MMA. Some things are going to have to be omitted in the limited space you have for entries. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrisZ Posted November 9, 2010 Report Share Posted November 9, 2010 Words can't describe the Josh Koscheck talk from last night's WON podcast. Everyone must listen to this somehow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted November 9, 2010 Report Share Posted November 9, 2010 Words can't describe the Josh Koscheck talk from last night's WON podcast. Everyone must listen to this somehow. It was rather combative wasn’t it? Basically if you think Josh isn’t the best heel in business you are wrong and an idiot. Didnt they say the exact same thing about Sonnen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 Was it Host vs Host, or was it Host vs Call-In? John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 Was it Host vs Host, or was it Host vs Call-In? John Host vs Host The combativeness was in how Bryan introduced the subject of TUF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomk Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 So I've been following Team Koscheck assistant coach Daniel Cormier's career since before he got into MMA. I was hoping someone would call into the WON show to complain that Comier works too much like Pez Whatley, and how if he wants to make it in the competitive MMA market he needs to work more like Shaska. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 Words can't describe the Josh Koscheck talk from last night's WON podcast. Everyone must listen to this somehow. It was rather combative wasn’t it? Basically if you think Josh isn’t the best heel in business you are wrong and an idiot. Didnt they say the exact same thing about Sonnen The highlight was Dave revealing that the so called greatest heel in the world today actually came off as almost the babyface in a confrontation with his fighter Brad Tate who was being a complete dick in the raw footage that somehow got leaked, which was edited by UFC to make him look like Wile E. Koscheck Super Heel on the latest Ultimate Fighter episode, and Bryan being all which idiot leaked the footage and he should be FIRED (for breaching Zuffa kayfabe or some such nonsense). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 Was it Host vs Host, or was it Host vs Call-In? John Host vs Host The combativeness was in how Bryan introduced the subject of TUF. It wasn't really Host vs. Host or Host vs. Call-In. It was Hosts vs. The Internet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted November 10, 2010 Report Share Posted November 10, 2010 They also seemed baffled by the fact Smackdown has been voted ahead of The Ultimate Fighter in a "best TV show" poll. As in "best *wrestling* TV show". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artDDP Posted November 11, 2010 Report Share Posted November 11, 2010 Dave's coverage of MMA outside of his Yahoo! column is at times both maddeningly frustrating and sickly entertaining. I'll say this again, Dave must have a really great editor at Yahoo! because his column there does not read like anything I've read in the Observer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted November 11, 2010 Report Share Posted November 11, 2010 In 2010. If you're a heel who people pay to see get beat up. You're not a heel because people actually believe you're an asshole. A true heel is contrived and fake, we see through and would never want to actually buy tickets to see. Being seen by a public that doesn't know you as being an asshole has nothing to do with being a great heel. Yeah, I'm trying to learn the modernization of all the words I grew up with. Pretty soon guys who draw big gates aren't really drawing cards, because people actually believe they want to see them fight, so that has nothing to do with being drawig cards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S.L.L. Posted November 11, 2010 Report Share Posted November 11, 2010 So, at the cost of breaking Godwinn's Law, Hitler was a heel? I mean, a lot of people who didn't know him thought he was an asshole. I certainly do. If that's all it means...damn. It would be an interesting social experiment to see Dave give a lecture at the Holocaust Memorial Museum about how Hitler was a great heel "like The Sheik or Roddy Piper!". And by "interesting social experiment", I mean it would be a great opportunity to see someone throw a brick at his head and maybe rescramble his brain to the proper alignment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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