The annals of rock music’s history are filled with legendary stories of bands’ backstage antics. But Rush bassist and singer Geddy Lee, who’ll be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April alongside his band-mates, has a habit that seems particularly unusual for a rock star – if all-too-familiar to baseball fans.
“We do an intermission between sets,” he said Tuesday while visiting MLB.com’s studios in Manhattan, “and the first thing I do is check box scores.”
...Lee’s growing interest in the sport led him to the work of sabermetric guru Bill James and, ultimately, the fantasy-baseball addiction that has him checking box scores between sets.
“I started reading Bill James quite early on – not when he was first doing his pamphlets, but when he first started doing the Baseball Abstracts, I was right there buying them. I still have all the old baseball abstracts. So that got the wheels turning, and my friends and I used to talk about those stats.”
Lee’s dynasty keeper league assigns point values to nearly every event that happens on a baseball field, and employs a system he jokingly compared to socialism wherein the worst teams are allowed to keep more players for the next season than the highest finishers. The league even includes defense, assigning point values to double plays, outfield assists, errors and passed balls, and features – in Lee’s words – “an ongoing conversation about how the league should be run” that “can be very heated at times.”
“I would be embarrassed to admit how much time I spend on it,” he said. “I scour the box scores and I scour websites looking for players.”
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1. Worrierking Posted: February 26, 2013 at 06:44 PM (#4376615)of the boxscores unobtrusive
See the homer that's so elusive
fantasy winning makes your morning good.
Today's Tom Seaver he comes high on you.
If our count reaches four balls
We can run alone and free
If we can hit it past the walls
Let the OBP be lighted
Let the SLG shine clear
Stitched cow hide leather
Rubbed with mud from who knows where
With the cork and yarn united in a single
Perfect
Sphere
This, however, is the first time ive read about Geddy in years. Are they still putting out albums?
@6. Well done ending of hemispheres
They just released a new album last year ("Clockwork Angels") which is pretty good, and are pretty much on tour year-round.
If you didn't like their openers, you'll be happy to know they haven't had an opener is well over a decade.
Now there's no more Geddy oppression, for they passed a noble law
And the teams are all kept equal by keepers... salary caps... and auctions
Not as serious as most people think. They've always--OK, not always, but certainly in the last 20 years--poked A LOT of fun at themselves. In the best sense, they take their music seriously, but not themselves. Cartoons behind them during shows, a real down-to-"earthness" in their interactions with fans. Some of the perception may be because Neil Peart is intensely private, and does not do many interviews. (Though they all did appear on the Colbert Report; he dedicated nearly a whole show to them).
I dated a girl who's on the cover of Exit... Stage Left.
Not that girl, but still. What do I win?
I think you're talking about this one, one of my favorite music threads as well.
Actually, neither of us was. Double win!
Yes, they do laundry on stage. A roadie changes the load mid-set.
I was just glancing over his numbers - what's with the comeback in '91 with KC? He was 37 and hadn't been in the bigs for 8 years! Was Cromartie a Senior League success story or some such?
Also, I'm a Rush fan who is currently in a long-term relationship with a girl. And she knows about it! (Along with all my other quirks and nerdiness. Also, I'm listening to Blue Oyster Cult as I make this post.)
EDIT: I just checked the old Rush topic which was linked to earlier in this topic and my first post says "Rush is awesome. I get to see them in concert for the first time this summer." So that dates that concert!
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy
(i know him, and he does)
Well you're my fact checking cuz!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh_9NY56Sxw
The day I hear about them receiving intermission fellattio in a room undrer the stage from girls they plucked from the crowd, that's when they might finally deserve to be called a rock band.
Impeccable, if not amazing musicianship from every member?
Well crafted, meaningful and even moving lyrics?
Thematically consistent albums covering a wide range of musical influences?
Mature, thoughtful adult behavior?
Bah, they are just posers, really just a jazz/classical fusion trio who hide it behind distortion and volume.
When are they going to destroy a suite of hotel rooms, go to rehab with supermodel girlfriends,, or play drunk destruction derby with their ferraris and lamborginis on a public interstate?
When are the going to stop using so many goddam notes and chords? Three! That's all you need! Three chords, a bottle of jack, and a 17 year old groupie, that's rock n roll!!!
Every time I'm forced to listen to these guys as their songs come on my iPod I say, please, miss a note just by a little, come in late just once , just let me find a friggin mistake so I know you are human. But all I hear is an inhuman level of perfection, and I just can't stop listening on and on trying to find that point where they suck. It's been a life long quest, one that I probably won't ever quit...
Obligatory video.
Aw, Neil Peart's drum solo was just getting started.
Yeah, me too. I got through 45 seconds of that before I killed it. I don't get bands that seemingly revel in their inability to play their instruments.
I like RUSH, I don't love them, but they could at least play their instruments - if they found a real singer they could be amazing. The only thing that annoys me with them is Geddy singing. The music and even lyric content is solid. But then Geddy opens his mouth....
Pavement? #### - that's awful. Sorry folks. Turrible.
Cromartie had one of the more successful careers for an American playing in Japan, initially being typecast as an "Ugly American" by the Japanese media, but gaining their respect by the end of his time there. In seven years with the Yomiuri Giants, he hit .321/.372/.558, with 171 home runs. In 1989, he won the Central League MVP award, after hitting a league-leading .378. He hit .346 in that year's Japan Series, which the Giants won in seven games, one of two championships they won in his time there.
I'm with Repoz.
Do you enjoy being wrong? ;-)
I was a ping-pong nut at 11 years old or so, and while spending 10 days camping up at Wellesley Island and destroying all comers in the rec hall for hours every day, someone had that album on infinite repeat on the juke. I still never want to hear any of it it again.
Uh, no. They've been showing the documentary/concert video Rush: Time Machine on the Movie Network lately, and its a must-see for anyone remotely into rock music. The funniest thing, and proof positive that they don't take themselves seriously, is towards the end of the film when they're doing a show onstage with a mechanical sausage maker behind them, and then Geddy and Alex go grab some sausages and start throwing them out into the (90% male) crowd. If that's not poking fun at yourself I don't know what is.
I really wanted to see their show in Halifax, NS this summer, because I've never seen them, but it sold out in 20 minutes. Hopefully they'll add an outdoor show in Moncton to the end of their tour.
I went out and bought a Pavement greatest hits album a couple of years ago after hearing Ray and others go on about them (I'd never heard them before) and its OK. I give it a listen every once in awhile. Unseen Power of the Picket Fence is by far my favourite song of theirs. And no, they can't play worth ####. Musicianship can be important, but its not the be-all and end-all. Mumford and Sons are excellent musicians, and I don't think any band has induced such utter disgust in me as them, the minute I heard them. To me, they are the definition of contrived and inauthentic. Can't ####### stand them.
I totally don't get the M&S love. I am kind of a musical slut (I like many things), but to me they sound like a mediocre Irish Bar band. I like irish bar bands, but this is winning awards and fans everywhere, really?
And yes I like Rush. At some point I will listen to Pavement.
I wonder what Neil Peart's thoughts are on a socialist fantasy league?
Thanks. I'll probably skip it as I'm sure I already own all the songs on one disc or another. I don't think they're a good greatest hits kind of band but I really am not sure which album I'd recommend for new listeners. Slanted and Enchanted is a good one but, over time, Westing by Musket and Sextant has become my favorite though I think it would scare first time listeners off. Maybe Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is the best place to start?
Failing that, probably Crooker Rain. I actually used Terror Twilight with one friend, thinking the Godrich production (and Malkmus-centeredness) might make for a good gateway point - but I get why others might not do that. [I also like TT more than most.]
You know, this wasn't a band I "got" right away - I had copies of Wowee Zowie and S and E sitting in the closet for years, getting semi-annual token listens, before it finally clicked one day.
It does make you wonder about the voice of Geddy Lee. How did it get so high?
Oh, maybe it doesn't.
But that's not the best entryway into the band anyway. "Gold Soundz," "Silence Kit," "Range Life," "Elevate Me Later" (hell, most of Crooked Rain)...that's where you begin. Pavement were always about songwriting and arranging first and foremost, and then experimentation second, and only finally instrumentation. And nobody wrote better songs during the 1990s than Pavement.
One other thing I like about them is how emotionally resonant their music can be despite the fact that it often, lyrically, makes very little literal sense. It's not an accident, I think, it's actually a truly clever trick of sideways lyric-writing.
My question: Are the fans violent? Raucous, I can handle. Getting sucker-punched, not so much.
Nothing exceptionally clever. Just a guy who's aware of his reputation and is willing to play a straight man for a few laughs.
A real rock band would be tossing their own sausages out if you get my drift, hopefully to a 90% female crowd.
Today i have an App submission to get ready for Apple. I think I will start with a Passage to Bangkok, and let Geddy/Neal/Alex help me through one more tough day.
Agree....not sure that there is anything redeeming in that. Of course I'm not a hardcore music aficionado (about the only band that I like which many people haven't heard of, was Savatage...everything else I listen to, actually has played on the radio, although I always am surprised when I hear Ministry on the radio)
I do find it funny that someone pointed to Rush and not getting a girl, in my experience from high school, basically all the "cool" people were Rush fans and always had women, who also happen to be Rush fans...I always thought of Rush as more a girl band than other bands, but that might have to do with having 4 sisters who are big fans of the band. Rush was never my thing, but they have put out about 10 songs or so that I appreciate. Free Will is one of my favorite songs of all time.
Greenlander
Frontwards
Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)
Silence Kit
Gold Soundz
Fillmore Jive
All My Friends
Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence
Rattled By The Rush
Grave Architecture
Painted Soldiers
AT&T
And Then... [The Hexx]
Starlings Of The Slipstream
Fin
The self-effacing humor isn't anything new - The short intro music on the live album A Show of Hands is the Three Stooges theme, and that came out 25 years ago.
Glanced through it just now & gathered that I'd wandered off by then, else I'd have noted that Adventure is by far my favorite of their albums.
Otherwise, just saw a Gear Daddies reference about halfway through. Great debut LP in particular; saw them in Little Rock circa '91.
Raucous, not violent. Stay out of any mosh or tornado pit, and you'll be fine.
Things have certainly changed since I was a kid (last time I was in any sort of pit was Minor Threat in Tucson in 3/83, I think).
Edit: Pavement is also awesome. Malkmus actually pisses me off with how clever musically he is. The only thing missing from Pavement is emotional impact, although some songs have that (Fin, the chorus of Gold Soundz, Grounded). And really? They are #### musicians? Listen to the slide guitar on Father to a Sister of Thought and tell me Malkmus isn't a great guitarist.
Haven't made it to a concert yet, but gotta go sometime. Hmm, May 11 in Atlantic City.
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