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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
And Maury dials up…“Now, all MLBAM needs to do is hire Rush, and you have the Red Sox/Yankees.”
MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) announced today that it has hired anchor, sportscaster and journalist Keith Olbermann as an at-large columnist. Olbermann’s columns, currently available three times per week at keitholbermann.mlblogs.com, will provide fans with his “Baseball Nerd” perspective of the game across various platforms. He also is the first national journalist hired as part of MLBAM’s digital newspaper initiative, currently scheduled for a May launch.
At his request, Olbermann’s full salary for his work as an at-large columnist will be split equally among three charitable organizations. They will be: the Baseball Assistance Team, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and the Jayden Braden/Ariana Marzano College Fund, established in support of the late John Marzano’s grandchildren. Marzano, a former Major Leaguer and MLB.com host, died just over one year ago in a home accident in Philadelphia.
“I’ve long respected MLB.com’s editorial independence and I’ll be delighted to test it,” said Olbermann. “Seriously, it’s an honor to be able to write about all the obscure things I love inside the game I love, and to help some worthy causes in the process, and to honor an old friend. Not to mention that it will be my politics-free oasis. Unless another cat jumps up at another Governor.”
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You mean, he's not the worst person in the world? You're just chumming the water for everyone's favorite troll, aren't you?
Kevin cares about Keith Olbermann?
Keith Olbermann and George Will may not agree on much of anything, but they both can agree that Baseball is the greatest sport on Earth. This is Beyond Politics. This is Beyond Baseball.
I'm sure it's only a paycheck to him.
Keith Olbermann and George Will may not agree on much of anything, but they both can agree that Baseball is the greatest sport on Earth. This is Beyond Politics. This is Beyond Baseball."
Better than Dane Cook. Or Big Tummy.
You know, I was just viewing my copy of "They Live" which I taped off of TV in the early 90s, and, in noting the commercials, I realized how a lot of the horrendous fashions I associated with the 80s actually belonged in the 90s. For instance, the mullet, which I think most people think of as an 80s thing, was the ubiquitous hairstyle of the 90s--even Jerry Seinfeld and Keith Olbermann and the entire 1991 Minnesota Twins starting lineup had them. It's like the symbol of the 90s; the 60s had the Kennedy assassination and the Beatles and Vietnam, and the 90s had the mullet and C & C Music Factory.
Parachute pants and cross-colors are another example.
I had the Christian Slater long-in-the-front thing going myself. C & C Music Factory. Gah. I can't believe that song still gets trotted out once in a while. More importantly, I've decided I want velour, v-neck shirts to come back in style. I want to dress like I'm in 3rd grade again!
No way. Parachute pants are definitely the 1980's.
Hammer time!
I always thought it was noteworthy how much his face looked like a Groucho nose/glasses in those days.
Hammer time!
Those weren't parachute pants!
The 70's as we remember them being "THE 70'S!" ran from about 1974-1982. The 80's from 1983-1991. The 90's ended in 1998.
Well, that's my quick take, anyhow.
The mullet was an 80's thing that remained very popular into the early 90's.
The early 90s had Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, REM at its peak, and U2 with an excellent album that showed their depth as a band.
That you were listening to awful music is your own damn fault. 1991 was the best year for albums since 1979, if not the late '60s.
Heh, I doubt you've wandered into the music discussions on this site all that often. No one here seems to be into the grunge sound, and you're going to get a lot of disagreement on the "REM at its peak" point. I don't know what the general opinion of U2 is here.
(Side note - I'm personally a fan of everything you listed, except Nirvana, who I think are the most overrated band of all time.)
in 1991???
Jacklyn Smith.
Hammer time!
Those weren't parachute pants!
I agree with Shooty. You wore parachute pants with a Members Only Jacket. If you wanted higher casual chic, you could go with more pastel colors and the Don Johnson jacket with rolled up sleeves.
Hammer just wore the baggy pants.
It's more that decades don't actually start and end on the ten-year spots.
The 70's as we remember them being "THE 70'S!" ran from about 1974-1982. The 80's from 1983-1991. The 90's ended in 1998.
Well, that's my quick take, anyhow.
I agree--its also worse if you were young during the decade. I think of disco as the 70s, but it probably was more commercially successful in the 80s. Likewise, most of the "Life on Mars" stuff, I think of as the 60s.
Well, yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to get at, though I still think the mullet was popular in the 90s for longer than it was in the 80s.
But yeah, Color Me Badd and Sugar Ray don't seem to belong to the same decade at all, while both suck in a way that is timeless.
(By the way, the first concert I ever saw was Paula Abdul and Color Me Badd in 1992. During the performance of 'Opposites Attract', a giant foam cat came out and performed the song with Paula.)
I think pretty negative. I still like them, though.
The Verve Pipe - "The Freshmen"
Semisonic - "Closing Time"
Fastball - "The Way"
Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed Life" (and a couple others)
Eve 6 - "Inside Out"
Spin Doctors - "Two Princes"
New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta"
Hell yeah.
We always called them "Hammer pants". My brother had a full "Hammer" outfit, with a black and purple top and black pants, made of 100% rayon.
Then why does your link say that they were?
I like 'em ok, espcially the early stuff (as is required). Bono has an incredible talent for stringing together cliches and platitudes, though. It's uncanny. He's like an encyclopedia of the stuff.
Typo.
JUST SAY boNO!
Living through that time period as a young person, it seems that most every young lady they tried to market to young men as being attractive were very boyish looking, e.g. Kristy McNichol, Jodie Foster. As Shooty mentioned, the grown ups looked good. I can't think of an unattractive Angel.
I contend that Jacklyn looks better now, and has looked better the last decade than she did during the aforementioned era of ugliness.
Yeah, same here. Up through the aforementioned 1991 album.
Really nice singles band. (Of course, a decade or so earlier, so were, say, ELO ... the main difference being, I guess, that Jeff Lynne never decided he was Jesus.)
Naw. She's always been hot, even through the era of ugliness, and the 1974-82 era was very, very ugly. Sometimes I just look at my mom and go, WTF? Mom! And she's all, What? And I'm all, the Plymouth Duster? Green shag carpeting? Feathered hair? WTF? And she's all, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Semisonic - "Closing Time"
Fastball - "The Way"
Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed Life" (and a couple others)
Eve 6 - "Inside Out"
Spin Doctors - "Two Princes"
New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta"
?
Played a lot at bars, probably to the point of annoyance.
?
Ugh.
?
Double ugh. I quickly turn off the radio when that comes on.
I liked this one, but it was very pretentious.
I very much like this one, but I think that's because of the internet video where they sing this in an office.
In fairness to that era, I hadn't started wanking off yet.
There is a joke about that. A musician dies and goes to heaven. He gets there--he's stoked. All the greats from all genres of music are there, hanging out. Mozart hanging with Elvis etc. Then, he sees this short, stumpy guy, screeching over in the corner and talking nonsensically about social causes. He asks who it is and someone says, "That's just God. He thinks he's Bono."
I went to see U2 in the 1980s, and we were on the top row of the arena. We were there very early. About two hours before the show, a guy wearing an "all-access" badge came up to us and handed us tix for floor seats--maybe 20 feet away from the stage. He went around the whole top row doing this for about 20 minutes in the nosebleeds--handed out upgrades to people who, apparently, they figured were loyal fans and poor, unable to spring for expensive tickets. Don't know if this is common, but it was pretty cool. The woman I was with nearly fainted (literally) being that close to Larry Mullin, Jr. and His Stumpiness during the show.
I'll have to look through the old copies of Dyn-O-Mite magazine, because I seem to remember: Kate Jackson, Cheryl Tiegs, Cheryl Ladd, and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders causing quite the buzz in middle school.
That was just the pot you were smoking during lunch.
Aside from the ones Backlasher mentioned, there's Lynda Carter and Christie Brinkley.
And it was a golden era of porn stars with real boobs.
Jill St. John
Barbi Benton
Brit Ecklund
Natalie Wood
Jacqueline Bissett
Also, Stevie Nicks in this video should make up for ANY deficiency of that era. I still get chills watching that baton-twirling.
(Like Shooty this was all [slightly] before my time, but close enough for memory)
They were all too skinny. Except Pam Grier. Was it the coke?
Feathered hair? WTF?
Much better than this look, which looks terrible now and presumably will only look worse in 20 years. (sorry I can't find better photos...but it's a terrible do)
War is still my favorite U2 album, actually, I think.
Might be mine as well. Or Unforgettable Fire or Joshua Tree. I don't care for them post-Zooropa.
We are racing towards the bottom and I love it!
So does Mr. Bob Costas.
Yes, I forgot all about the Bond girls of that era. Jane Seymore as Domino. Also, that is the era that gave us the phrase "Daisy Dukes"
mrams, you're getting a little too fabulous for me now. You're on your own!
So's your mom.
So's your mom.
At least my mom had some fashion sense.
woah, woah, woah...hold up there. I hate having to defend Sugar Ray, but there's no comparison between them and Color Me Badd. None. Sugar Ray produced some ok sugary pop. Color Me Badd was a malignant growth on the landscape of the early 90's.
?"
For the life of you, you can not remember?
The 70's styles do seem tacky today and seemed tacky then (some of it was a little before my time as well).
One interesting thing, to me, at least, is the differences in baseball uniform styles then and now and how they reflect the styles of the time.
I agree in theory, but I always found Sugar Ray particularly annoying in practice.
Edit: I think I have Color Me Badd mixed up with some other band. What was their big hit?
I saw them live.
WAIT WAIT WAIT before you all unleash the FAIL, they were a Chuck D. project, of all things. He dragged them out to open for the Primus/Public Enemy/Anthrax tour I saw in 1991. In a gym/community center/auditorium in Poughkeepsie. Definitely a top-5 show of my life.
Actually, I think Nirvana's ranking at acclaimedmusic.net is about right: Fringe top 20. Several bands' rankings there make just absolutely no sense (Radiohead #11? OutKast ahead of AC/DC, Chuck Berry, and Fleetwood Mac?) but I think that's about right for Nirvana. Huge peak, relatively little career value. And, really, some of the most legendary bands in rock history had short careers. The Beatles only lasted six years after their '64 tour to America, the Doors were done four years after their first album came out, the Clash were finished in five years.
the first concert I ever saw was Paula Abdul and Color Me Badd in 1992. During the performance of 'Opposites Attract', a giant foam cat came out and performed the song with Paula
This is one of the best things ever written. Even better would be if the crowd collectively lost their sh!t when the cat came out.
Loooove grunge. Chris Cornell = greatest vocalist of all time. Discuss amongst yourselves.
No, that's totally wrong. I was confusing them with the white rap group known as "Young Black Teengaers". That's who Chuck D. was pushing on us. They still sucked.
Stone Temple Pilots
Soundgarden
Screaming Trees
Nirvana
Pond
Everclear
Thirty-Ought Six
I also liked grunge, in its time. However, the time did pass.
The 70,000 seat stadium there was in use that night, I guess. I had forgotten about Anthrax. I do remember Primus.
Chris Cornell = greatest vocalist of all time. Discuss amongst yourselves.
I'd go for Mike Patton, but Cornell was awesome at his peak. I think his best work was on the Temple of the Dog album. Cornell hasn't been very good for a while now, though...he sounded terrible for Audioslave.
You must be joking, right? I'm not forgetting some venue, I assume. Wait, were you AT that show in Poughkeepsie, or somewhere else on the tour? One of the main reasons for the tour was the remixed Anthrax b-side that mixed in PE, I'm pretty sure.
He could probably pull off opera if he wanted to. He's just so insanely talented.
Including "Creature Vocals" for I Am Legend!
I was joking, and I was far too busy and poor in 1991 to go to any shows where they charged for tickets. It sounds like a fun show, though.
I managed to run into, shake the hand of, and say hello to Little Jimmy Scott a few nights ago in Columbus Circle, but I guess that's just something else entirely.
I agree on Patton, I just wish he had done more to show it off to a wider audience, I guess. Fantomas didn't quite do the job.
I unfortunately doubt that anything he does from here on out will get to a wider audience than Faith No More, since FNM did at least have the one hit (even if it was nowhere near their best song).
See, I think your mom is the exception to that "there were no hot, fast, trashy, depraved women in the 70s" thing.
That is what we're talking about, right?
Anyway: Despite the occasional excess (a gospel choir? really?) U2 is fine through Zooropa, and I am one of the only 5 people in the western world who actually likes Pop. All that you can't leave behind and everything since is total suck.
I'm not a fan of Green and I'm pretty lukewarm on Out of Time, but everything else REM did up to and including New Adventures in Hi-Fi was pretty damn solid, with Automatic for the People being their best album in my mind. Post Hi-Fi is totally forgettable stuff, but good for them for getting a paycheck, because they were undervalued in their pre-arb years.
I was actually kind of stunned with how much I liked the tracks I heard from their newest album. Although I won't count out that was because of the retro quality.
As far as "Out of Time" goes, I really loved the album opener, Radio Song.
That'd be a kick-ass show. I'd probably buy a ticket for that right now, honestly, if you could get everybody back together.
"Totally agree on Mike Patton, Biff."
Question for the floor: Favorite Mike Patton album?
I'm probably going to go with Mr. Bungle, Anonymous, or The Director's Cut. Only the first of which has much real singing on it, but oh well.
I really disliked "Automatic for the People".
I really, really liked "Document" and earlier albums, but never enjoyed anything later. But I'm sort of a sucker for that lo-fi sound.
Good song until the end, but the rap killed it for me. It's just . . .not good.
Thank god you cleared that up. For a few seconds there my world had been turned upside down.
Early 90's was a great time for music.
Automatic for the People: Best REM album
Achtung Baby: Best U2 album
Nirvana
Stereolab
Public Enemy
Beastie Boys
Dinosaur Jr.
Some solid Neil Young work
Semisonic - "Closing Time"
Fastball - "The Way"
Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed Life" (and a couple others)
Eve 6 - "Inside Out"
Spin Doctors - "Two Princes"
New Radicals - "You Get What You Give"
Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta"
The funny thing is, I actually bought five of the albums containing these eight one-hit wonders.
Also, Automatic for the People and Achtung Baby are the two best albums of the early 90s. AftP is a weird case in that, in my opinion, by FAR the worst song of the album was the one that seems to be remembered most by history ("Everybody Hurts").
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