Joe Posnanski: Lord of Lists

Leather

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I think that your Schur percentage is a little low though, I wish my kids loved me the way that Posnanski loves Mike Schur -- and I'm a huge Schur fan. It's just a little, strange.
Am I crazy, or did he used to have a similar crush on Lin Manuel Miranda, whom for some reason he never references, retweets, or tags anymore. Hasn't in years, now that I think about it. But 5-6 years ago it seemed like half of what Pos wrote about was Hamilton and LMM.

I wonder if LMM finally blew him off.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Am I crazy, or did he used to have a similar crush on Lin Manuel Miranda, whom for some reason he never references, retweets, or tags anymore. Hasn't in years, now that I think about it. But 5-6 years ago it seemed like half of what Pos wrote about was Hamilton and LMM.

I wonder if LMM finally blew him off.
You're right. He loved Hamilton, but to be fair, during that time EVERYONE loved Hamilton.

He really has his obsessions: Hamilton, Harry Potter, etc. that he goes 100%, all in on. I don't think that I've ever read him saying, "Yeah, True Detective (or whatever) is pretty good. I like it."
 

Bergs

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I've really enjoyed the last couple pages of this thread. I think all of the criticisms of Pos are totally on point, but even being the cynical fuck that I am, I really appreciate his schtick, at least in moderation. He often makes me smile and imagine there's a better world out there, if only for the occasional fleeting moment. I don't need him for anything other than that, and have no desire for him to change to scratch an itch that I don't except him to scratch (and let's face it - one he's poorly equipped to scratch at that).
 

cromulence

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I'm cynical AF, but I draw the line when it comes to That Thing You Do. I just can't do it. Let me have that one thing, please.
 

snowmanny

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*But what really drives me nuts about the movie is that the eponymous song that's at the center of the movie has a key change in it that would never have been written in 1965, and was clearly inserted to make the song more likely to be played on modern radio.
Any chance you could explain this to non-musicians? Sounds interesting.
 

Kliq

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I've really enjoyed the last couple pages of this thread. I think all of the criticisms of Pos are totally on point, but even being the cynical fuck that I am, I really appreciate his schtick, at least in moderation. He often makes me smile and imagine there's a better world out there, if only for the occasional fleeting moment. I don't need him for anything other than that, and have no desire for him to change to scratch an itch that I don't except him to scratch (and let's face it - one he's poorly equipped to scratch at that).
This is a much lower IQ comparison but I always enjoyed Mike Adams on WEEI at night because he was shamelessly optimistic about the teams while everyone else seemed to be in a race to be the most cynical. His show was mostly lowbrow and featured a lot of gags and references, but it was perfectly fine for night-time radio.
 

moretsyndrome

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Any chance you could explain this to non-musicians? Sounds interesting.
I'm not sure I'm hearing it myself. I could be wrong, I haven't broken the whole thing down or anything. It always seemed to be a composite of The Beatles and US garage bands that came directly in their wake like The Knickerbockers.

The song starts in E, and strays to include a minor 4th , (actually a toggle between A/Am, which was extremely common in Beatles songs, like She Loves You and I'll be Back) and I hear a flat 7th (D) which was even more common. The break moves up to A for a bit, but unless there's something else, none of those moves were unique to 90's pop.
 

johnmd20

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I'm not sure I'm hearing it myself. I could be wrong, I haven't broken the whole thing down or anything. It always seemed to be a composite of The Beatles and US garage bands that came directly in their wake like The Knickerbockers.

The song starts in E, and strays to include a minor 4th , (actually a toggle between A/Am, which was extremely common in Beatles songs, like She Loves You and I'll be Back) and I hear a flat 7th (D) which was even more common. The break moves up to A for a bit, but unless there's something else, none of those moves were unique to 90's pop.
It's also hilariously pedantic to complain about a key change in a pop song written for a movie that literally 99.9% of the people hearing the song would have no way of even knowing what a key change is, let alone be able to identify it.

That was a Leather humblebrag. He knows key changes. He bathes in them. And he wants you to know it. And he takes it personally when a pop song in a silly movie is not perfectly accurate to its time.
 

Leather

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But yeah, I mean I could just be over-listening to the thing. It certainly has a lot in common with hits by the Beatles and Byrds around that time.

Written by the guy from Fountains of Wayne (of "Stacy's Mom" fame).
 

moretsyndrome

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But yeah, I mean I could just be over-listening to the thing. It certainly has a lot in common with hits by the Beatles and Byrds around that time.

Written by the guy from Fountains of Wayne (of "Stacy's Mom" fame).
Yeah, unfortunately a fairly early victim of the pandemic, too.

I don't know, I enjoy that movie a lot. It's a confection, but it's well-made. There is some solid comedy with the drummer's dad, and the scene where they first hear the song on the radio always gets me. It definitely wasn't Oscar-worthy or a terribly accurate depiction of life for everyone in the mid-sixties, but it had its moments for me.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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I've really enjoyed the last couple pages of this thread. I think all of the criticisms of Pos are totally on point, but even being the cynical fuck that I am, I really appreciate his schtick, at least in moderation. He often makes me smile and imagine there's a better world out there, if only for the occasional fleeting moment. I don't need him for anything other than that, and have no desire for him to change to scratch an itch that I don't except him to scratch (and let's face it - one he's poorly equipped to scratch at that).
I agree wholeheartedly. I've never seen a second of Harry Potter or read a word of the books...yet a couple times a year i will read his Katie the Prefect post.

Also, his brother can be a pretty good twitter follow (for liberals...my wife follows him and i got him to autograph Joe's The Soul of Baseball book).
 

Leather

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Yeah, unfortunately a fairly early victim of the pandemic, too.

I don't know, I enjoy that movie a lot. It's a confection, but it's well-made. There is some solid comedy with the drummer's dad, and the scene where they first hear the song on the radio always gets me. It definitely wasn't Oscar-worthy or a terribly accurate depiction of life for everyone in the mid-sixties, but it had its moments for me.
I don't hate the movie; it's good for what it is (and it's not aiming for realism so much as nostalgia), and I'm always down for 90s Hanks and a little Steve Zahn. Johnmd is right that I often overanalyze things to the point where it seems like I'm being critical, or looking for excuses to shit on something, even when I'm really not trying to; sometimes I'm just laying down some shit I think in the moment to see if anyone else wants to bat it around with me.

I just think that Pos turning to it as an antidote for the kind-of-feelgood-already Lord of the Rings movies speaks to a worldview which I have a hard time understanding.
 

EvilEmpire

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I think if Pos was a corporation, he'd be Disney. Nothing wrong with that, but I think he is most enjoyable in small doses.
 

johnmd20

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I just think that Pos turning to it as an antidote for the kind-of-feelgood-already Lord of the Rings movies speaks to a worldview which I have a hard time understanding.
This part is definitely tough to understand. I guess the movies were just too long for him and the battles are also long. Still, those movies are powerful. I'll never get Pos' take on LoTR. And That Things You Do is a perfectly enjoyable movie. I loved it when I saw it. But it's not a movie I rewatch.

I've seen the LoTR movies over 100 times. I watch the extended editions multiple times a year. Sometimes, I'll just have it on in the background while I'm working or watching sports but can't fill all the screens. They are my go to rewatchable movie and nothing is even close. I can't abide by Lord of the Rings slander.
 

Bunt4aTriple

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I never read the source material but the trilogy was homework for me, nothing more. Just a slog I felt an obligation to get through.

Admittedly, when I have read books prior to a show/movie, I am most always more invested, but LotR is never something I'll revisit.

Joe did get addicted to @ing LMM for a while, but I'm sure that was more for his daughter than anything else. I don't get the feeling that his relationship with Schur is one-sided or sychophantic. They seem to like each other quite well?
 

jon abbey

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I never read the source material but the trilogy was homework for me, nothing more. Just a slog I felt an obligation to get through.

Admittedly, when I have read books prior to a show/movie, I am most always more invested, but LotR is never something I'll revisit.
Funny, I read the books a bunch as a kid (and loved them), which is why I have zero interest in the film versions and have never seen any of them.

Also haven’t seen the other film referenced here, but the Fountains of Wayne guy also wrote/co-wrote a lot of the songs in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, IMO one of the best shows of the past decade or so and the songs rule.
 

Vandalman

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Anyone know why his podcast has been absent for over a month and no Mike Schur since October? They didn’t change platforms again, did they?
 

Bunt4aTriple

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Anyone know why his podcast has been absent for over a month and no Mike Schur since October? They didn’t change platforms again, did they?
You have the wrong feed. Mike and Joe are putting out episodes more consistently then, well, ever. I'd do a new search on your podcast app.
 

Phil Plantier

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Also, Joe has been doing an old-school baseball preview for his substack subscribers, with a long preview for each division. As only he can do. 7 day free trial now.
 

Norm Siebern

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Did anyone else notice the woman in the red dress among the family section of Buck's family at the ceremony? I smiled when I saw her in the red dress. Buck would have been happy.
 

LoweTek

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I think I've told parts of this story before. I lived in Kansas City for a while in the early 2000's. At the time I was an IT executive at a fairly large shop with considerable influence on vendor selection. Vendors were always inviting us to special events, golf tournaments, dugout seats at Kauffman, luxury boxes at Arrowhead, etc. There was an annual event back then which took place during the Winter in the ballroom of one of the old downtown hotels. It featured Bob Costas and Bob Uecker recreating a live ad lib of the then current version of Costas' talk show. It was a charity event attended by all sorts of KC sports Illuminati - current and former Royals players, current and former Chiefs players, media and local civic treasures like Buck O'Neil and George Brett. We're talking several hundred people, black tie event, etc. I had to get a tux. My boss was not a baseball person so when he got an offer for two seats at a front row table one of the vendors had bought out he forwarded it to me. I met Posnanski there too but yesterday reminded me of meeting Buck O'Neil that night.

During one of the intermissions I guess you would call it, Buck was wandering around the front of the room and eventually sauntered over to our table. I approached him and before I even spoke he had a broad welcoming smile on his face looking me right in the eye with his right hand extended. I extended my hand and said, "It would be a great pleasure to meet you and chat for a minute Mr. O'Neil. My Name is LoweTek."

Buck takes my hand to shake and warmly and places his left hand over my right as well and says, "Well it is my great pleasure to meet you you Mr. Tek. You must call me Buck though."

"Then you must call me Lowe," I said. He smiled.

We proceeded to chat for a minute or two about how the museum was doing, how he was feeling, etc. Mundane stuff. We said our goodbyes and he went on to chat with someone else. While I was listening to his niece's induction speech yesterday, I had the thought cross my mind and remembering that day said this to Mrs. LT. "I remember when I met him in a room full of current and ex professional athletes, for a few minutes he made me feel like the most important person in the room."

He was a gentleman's gentleman and might be the kindest person I have ever met. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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Great story. I only met him once, and that was as an adjacent with my wife. She worked for H&R Block and had to go to Kansas City for business three or four times/year. She is a big baseball fan so she found the NLBM and became a member. She would visit it every time she went to KC and met Buck a few times there, and at monthly luncheons they held.

There was a Negro Leagues event at a game at Fenway in the early 2000s and we bought tickets, and wore hats she had bought at the NLBM gift shop. We stood near the Sox dugout and we saw Buck come out of the dugout. She yelled to him, he looked up and came running over, because, Buck O’Neil knew my wife. I picked a good one. We only got to talk with him for a few seconds, as he was being dragged 100 places, but that was very cool to me.

His niece mentioned Bob Kendrick in the speech, I’ve met him a few times at the museum, and he really is the right man to carry out Buck’s vision.
 

The Gray Eagle

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Joe and SOSH's Michael Schur came out with an "Emergency Poscast" the other day about the Red Sox recent collapse. (Amazingly, it came out before the most recent horrifying loss on Wednesday night.)

Michael's epic rant is cathartic to listen to as a Sox fan, and Joe does a good job chiming in as a neutral observer who is shocked at how bad they've been, and compares this team to the worst Royals team he ever saw.

Starts at 46 minutes in:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-red-sox-emergency/id1595575940?i=1000571336811

In a related move, Joe goes over the collapse on his blog today:
https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/the-red-sox-lost-july

On the morning of July 1, less than one month ago, the Boston Red Sox were 43-33 and tied with Toronto for the top spot in the American League wild-card race. They had a plus-60 run differential, good for third in the American League and not too far behind Houston for second.

No, they were not a serious threat to the Yankees, who were already 12 1/2 games up in the AL East, but baseball isn’t really played that way anymore. Let the Yankees win the division. Tampa Bay had won it easily in 2021 and look where it got them — Boston beat the Rays in four games in the Division Series, this after taking out the Yankees in the wild-card game …

If you get into the playoffs, you’re dangerous. We all understand that.

And Boston’s chances of making the playoffs on the morning of July 1 was hovering around 80 percent. The return of Chris Sale seemed imminent. Rafael Devers looked like a viable MVP candidate. It all seemed pretty good.

They’ve gone 7-17 since then. Their run differential is now minus-14. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a team collapse the way these Red Sox have collapsed.
He then goes on to look at 5 other teams that collapsed utterly, including a brief recap of the 2011 horror show-- thanks a lot Joe:

The Red Sox were 82-51 and leading the division after sweeping a doubleheader on Aug. 27. They had the best record in the American League, the second-best record in baseball, and though they weren’t thinking about wild cards, well, in case of emergency, they were NINE GAMES UP in the wild-card race.

The collapse was thorough. I can vividly remember tweeting something in the middle of the month—maybe after the Red Sox lost two or three in a row—along the lines of: “At what point do Red Sox fans start panicking?” It was kind of a joke; they were still nearly 100 percent certain to make the playoffs.

Only they kept on losing and kept on losing more — five in a row, then two in a row, then three in a row, then suddenly — after going 7-19 for the month — they HAD to beat Baltimore on the last day to get into the playoffs. They led the Orioles 4-2 going into the ninth inning. Closer Jonathan Papelbon struck out the first two batters swinging — it looked easy. Heck, some Red Sox were probably back in the clubhouse drinking beer and eating fast-food chicken.
Anyway, the Orioles came back to win the game, and everybody of note either left the Red Sox or got fired, and that was that.
Anyway, back to July 2022:
And in some ways, this Red Sox collapse does not compare with any of them because I don’t think even the most passionate Boston sports fan ever thought this was a great team. There was always a sense, even when the Red Sox were playing well, that they were keeping the pitching staff together with spit and duct tape and hope. It isn’t super-surprising to see this team fall off.

BUT … to see this team play the way they have played in July … well, you wouldn’t expect that of any team not playing the overture from the opera “Carmen.”
He goes over the collapse loss by loss. Here are some lowlights, starting with the defense handing a win to Tampa:

July 12 (Rays win 3-2): This was anything but routine. Chris Sale made his first start of the season and was quite good for his five innings, allowing just three hits and striking out five. And the Boston lineup, after getting shut down by Corey Kluber for four innings, scored two in the fifth and seemed to be in good shape.

Then came the play that probably foreshadows everything about to come—with the Red Sox still up 2-1 in the sixth, Taylor Walls hit a line drive back at reliever Matt Strahm, who turned his back to the ball. It bounced off his left wrist. One of the weirdest parts of this play was the way Strahm’s glove came flying off — it looked a bit like those comic strips of Charlie Brown losing all his clothes when a line drive gets hit at him.

Strahm picked up the ball and threw off-balance to first — it had absolutely no chance of getting even close to the bag. But, in this case, it was even worse because the Red Sox had decided to start Franchy Cordero at first. We’ll come back to this theme repeatedly over the next couple of weeks.

Cordero went racing after the ball, and the tying run scored. Then Cordero, for reasons only clear in his mind, decided to wing the ball home, even though nobody was trying to score and catcher Christian Vasquez wasn’t even looking his way. The ball bounced away and what ended up being the winning run scored.
The lead blown against Tampa a few days later:
July 14 (Rays win 5-4): The Red Sox took a 3-0 lead into the seventh but then their starter — the marvelously named Kutter Crawford, who had been pitching well — lost his stuff and gave up three consecutive hits to start the inning. John Schreiber came in and give up three more hits and hit a batter as the Rays scored five runs and Boston lost its fourth straight game and their eighth of 10.
Anyway, you get the idea.
Joe goes on to cover the 2 total pummelings dished out by the Yankees before the All-Star break, followed by the record-setting 28-5 disgrace, which I'm not even going to bother to read, and then the Toronto sweep and the Cleveland losses.

At the end... so you're saying there's a chance?

The Red Sox won on Thursday to get back to .500, but the season is almost certainly lost now. FanGraphs puts their playoff hopes at 26 percent, which actually seems generous.
But you never know. The Red Sox clearly forgot how to play baseball. Maybe, just as suddenly, they’ll remember.
At some point you have to find a way to laugh at this disaster, so listening to the Poscast is more cathartic and enjoyable than reliving the details in writing.
 

JimD

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I enjoy the Poscast, but if there was a drinking game where you took a shot every time Joe says the word 'delightful', you'd be sh*tfaced in 20 minutes.
 

johnmd20

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If you did "that's right", it might take 10.
On the last poscast, it's past the level of insanity. I am not exaggerating when I say Joe said, "That's right," 50 times in the first 15 minutes of the most recent episode. It's tough.

Not hyperbole. It is probably closer to 80. He says, "That's right," twice on top of each other at least 8 times.

That's right.

edit - I am at minute 14. Joe just said "That's right," four times in a row. I had to shut it off. I think he got to 100 in 14 minutes. Wow.
 

Vandalman

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Joe and Mike and guests have been opening and commenting on vintage packs of 80s baseball and basketball cards. I think they overestimated how interesting this would be.
 

Max Power

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I've actually really enjoyed those episodes and I'm not sure why. Maybe I understand the kids watching unboxing videos on YouTube now?
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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So am I. Giggling over random 80s players is really fun for me.
They used to do that on Deadspin (and Defector) and it was called "Remember Some Guys" and it's a blast. I may have to make my first foray into the podcast to listen to Joe and Mike do this.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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They did an episode last week with David Roth, the guy who created "Remember Some Guys," and it was really fun.
I saw that. I think I'm going to listen to it too. To be honest, I wasn't really sold on Joe and Mike for the first one that I listened to it. It was okay, but it wasn't great. There seemed to be a lot of, "Was he the guy that ..." I know this sounds dorky, but the thing I like about Roth remembering some guys is that he's confident about the trivia that he's pulling out of his ass for say, Mike Henneman. I felt it was a bit of a slog with Joe and Schur.

That being said, I know how podcasts go. You need to listen to more than a few to get the hosts timing and patter down, it's all very awkward when you begin one. So I'm not going to say that it sucks or that I didn't like, but it didn't really grab me on a first listen.
 

The Gray Eagle

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On his substack, Posnanski talks about a method Tom Tango came up with to try to measure which players are the most fun to watch.

Basically, Tom is handing out points to players for when they do fun things. What would qualify as a fun thing? Well, we all can agree that triples are fun, right? So, Tom gives out 12 points for every triple.

Doubles are fun, too … but maybe not as fun as triples. So Tom gives out nine points for doubles.

Home runs are fun … but how much fun? Tom did a couple of fan polls and determined that fans find home runs to be more fun than triples. So he gives out 14 points per home run.

Here’s the formula as Tom has it.

  • Walks and hit-by pitches: 1 fun point*
  • Strikeouts: 3 fun points (we’ll talk about this in a minute)
  • Singles: 4 fun points
  • Stolen bases: 6 fun points
  • Caught stealing: 1 fun point
  • Doubles: 9 fun points
  • Triples: 12 fun points
  • Home runs: 14 fun points
*Intentional walks get 0 fun points, as it should be.

And then you just take the total and divide it by plate appearances to get a fun score!
Now, here’s where you probably ask the first question I asked: How is it FUN for a hitter to strike out? That’s not fun at all. But here’s the thing: Tom is looking at the game in a fun-neutral way. That is to say he asked fans what kind of stuff like they like to see when watching a baseball game. Fans like strikeouts. They might say they only like it from the pitcher’s perspective — it’s fun to watch Pedro or deGrom or Kershaw strike out 15 in a game — but Tom’s idea is that if strikeouts are fun, then batters have to get some fun points for striking out.
The results are NOT what you might expect. Kind of shows that being "fun to watch" can't really by measured like this, as it's not only personal and subjective, but includes a whole lot of stuff that the numbers just aren't going to weigh.

Here are the top 10-- you will know all of them but would never in a million years guess number 1, much less agree with the rankings.

  1. Trevor Story
  2. Aaron Judge
  3. Ronald Acuña
  4. Shohei Ohtani
  5. Bo Jackson
  6. Mike Trout
  7. Byron Buxton
  8. Miguel Sano
  9. Teoscar Hernandez
  10. Joey Gallo
 

Zedia

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What would Adrian Beltre’s score be? I assume you get 20 points for swinging and missing and falling down, and 100 for freaking out when someone touches your head.
 

Bozo Texino

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*But what really drives me nuts about the movie is that the eponymous song that's at the center of the movie has a key change in it that would never have been written in 1965, and was clearly inserted to make the song more likely to be played on modern radio.
I'm not sure I'm hearing it myself. I could be wrong, I haven't broken the whole thing down or anything. It always seemed to be a composite of The Beatles and US garage bands that came directly in their wake like The Knickerbockers.

The song starts in E, and strays to include a minor 4th , (actually a toggle between A/Am, which was extremely common in Beatles songs, like She Loves You and I'll be Back) and I hear a flat 7th (D) which was even more common. The break moves up to A for a bit, but unless there's something else, none of those moves were unique to 90's pop.
Yeah, help me out here - where is the key change in "That Thing You Do?" I can't listen to it right now, but the surf/60's instrumental band I was in back in high school (look - it was the 1990s, okay?) adapted it. I don't remember any key changes at all. Does it jump up a half step for the final chorus, or something?

It's absolutely in E. And there are some some interesting substitutions - the Am and D mentioned by @moretsyndrome - along with some weird interplay between F# and F#m. The end of the bridge throws in a C, but I think that's really more a chromatic thing to increase tension before returning to the verse.
 

The Gray Eagle

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From Joe's blog, how the pitch clock doesn't change how baseball has always kept "time":

"I believe both in a pitch clock in baseball and no clock in baseball — it’s because I think we’re talking about two entirely different things. I don’t think the concepts clash at all.

See, by “no clock in baseball,” what I’m really thinking about is not time between pitches. It’s all about how outs, not minutes, are the currency of time in the game. That’s the magic. As Roger Angell famously wrote, “Since baseball is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time.”
If anyone tried to mess with that part of baseball, sure, I’d roar angrily. Three outs in an inning … nine innings in a game … this is the most elegant way ever created to time a sport in my view. There is no clock limiting your possibilities. You could be down six runs with two outs in the ninth inning and nobody on base, the way Pittsburgh was against Houston in 2001. If this were an NFL game or NBA game or NHL game or soccer game, there would have been no hope.

But baseball has no clock. And there was hope. And the Pirates came back and won. I’ll have more on that game as we get closer to a certain book I’ve written.

Point is, there’s still no clock in baseball. There’s now a timer to make sure that guys don’t just stand around and halt the forward momentum of the game. But you’re still alive until the last out is recorded.
 

shlincoln

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The holiday draft wasn't quite as unhinged as some years, but there were still some great bits.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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Not to be the curmudgeon, but I thought it was the worst holiday draft ever. Several of the participants had suggestions that were boring amd too sincere (a nice picture with your family, a spa day…), others clearly put no thought into it because they were too busy (hey, so maybe just don’t participate then), and even reliably funny/interesting guys like Sepinwall and Kanter felt like their bits were played out. Offerman was gold (lieterally), and Schur’s harping on the orange chocolate thing was a good runner… but this needs a reboot and a little more effort next time around.
 
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shlincoln

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This week's PosCast episode where they interview Dave Roberts Is great. It starts with talking about the 2004 ALCS, and somehow keeps getting better.
 
Mar 30, 2023
177
Blech. It’s truly shocking how much the Red Sox have fallen—not necessarily as a team, they’ll probably be meh this year but not terrible—but as an IDEA. A few years ago, they were baseball’s cutting-edge team, pushing the envelope always, trying to win always, representing the baseball hunger that surrounds them in New England. Now? No. Now they’re about spending less. They got Lucas Giolito, which wasn’t all that exciting even before news broke that he might miss the season. I do like Tyler O’Neill some; he looked like a breakout star in 2021. But it’s pretty grim.

Excitement level: 3?
https://joeblogs.joeposnanski.com/p/free-friday-wait-hes-there-now?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web