“I have no problem with that—we’ve done that throughout the years,” Jeter said. “When I first came up, we didn’t hit a lot home runs. We won a lot, but we didn’t hit a lot of home runs.

Jeter's actually right about this. In his first full year (1996) when the Yanks won it all, they were 12th out of 14 teams in the AL in home runs, and in fact had an OPS+ of only 100. Being as how their pitching was good but not great (108 ERA+), it's obvious that it was pretty much only their Clutchiness Index of 3.388 that brought home Da Ringz.

Jeter is in an odd spot for an athlete - they won it all 4 of his 1st 5 years, and everyone told him his clutchiness had more to do with it than great starting pitching and Mariano.

then he didn't win again the next 8 years, so he once suggested that he no longer had clutchy teammates. then they won once more, so the hounds were called off. then he didn't win again the next 3 years.

He is doing a decent job of recognizing correlations, which leads most people to turn it into cause and effect..

Somebody asked Derek Jeter this morning whether it concerns him that his team lost 155 homers from the 2012 roster, and he didn’t skip a beat

155 HR sounded crazy but if you include Granderson (but not Jeter), that's the total Martin, A-Rod, Granderson, Ibanez, Chavez, Swisher and Jones hit. I had no idea Martin hit 21 and Chavez hit 16 last year.

Martin for some reason had a really weird season where he totally lost the ability to hit for average (but wasn't striking out more ) but did hit for good power, while Chavez had what was clearly his best season since he started to keep getting hurt.

Chavez is a textbook "could I try this career over?" guy.

Why would you include Granderson? He isn't dead, he is just out for a month. As for the rest... Martin, Ibanez and Jones may have hit 54 home runs over 1179 PA but they did it with a combined OBP of .306. I doubt they will be missed that much and additions like Youklis and Hafner may hit a few HRs themselves to cover some of the rest. If all else fails Ichiro! can hit 155 HRs anyway, if he wanted to.

I don't think their 1.5 HR/game in the regular season was that big a problem. Not when it gets you 95 wins and all.

When your team post-season batting line is 184/254/303, I don't think it matters how you run the bases, even with the pitching the Yankees got last October.

We didn’t win with the home runs.

The Yankees, in fact, led the league with 95 wins, and won a Division Series. Pretty sure the home runs were a big part of that.

(Yeah, I know, Jeter and Yankee fans have a higher standard of "winning"...)

[Half Coke to G.W.O.]

let's get small

I was hoping this would turn into a Steve Martin thread.

Yeah? I was thinking it meant people would post Albrights.

Trading Doug Drabek for the remains of Roy Smalley was the most unfortunate deal of Roland Hemond's career.

Not for nothing, but didn't the very face of the NYY's, The Jeter Himself, in the above quotes from TFA, confirm the notion of "Parade or Bust"? IOW, if the Yankees don't win the WS, he's more or less saying that they didn't win anything that year to speak of.

This from no less of an authority than Derek Jeter, people. Derek Jeter, True Yankee Spokesman for His Yankee Generation.

He is doing a decent job of recognizing correlations, which leads most people to turn it into cause and effect..

Obligatory.

I was hoping this would turn into a Trouble Funk thread.

Next up from Jeter: "Fielding is overrated. Let's get slow."

Yeah? I was thinking it meant people would post Albrights.

Tlhat does make one part of me get small, true enough.

Too bad they just missed their chance to get Vince Coleman to teach them how to run the bases. That's where games are won and lost (per Vince Coleman).

Martin for some reason had a really weird season where he totally lost the ability to hit for average (but wasn't striking out more ) but did hit for good power

Isn't that a possible sign of being a step off the cliff? He can recognize pitches in and out of the strike zone, he can still drive balls in his sweet spot, but he can't get hits out of that sweet spot anymore? There might be BABIP flukiness here too.

I had no idea Martin hit 21 and Chavez hit 16 last year.

You hit 6 in that disgrace of a ballpark, and you never even played.

I was hoping this would turn into a Steve Martin thread.

Martin is one of those guys who's the reason for the execrable mainstream comic landscape. Okay peak in terms of actually being funny, then year after year of nothing. Eddie Murphy's similar. Better peak, but he's been hanging on forever hitting a buck fifty. Ben Stiller's another part of the problem. Ugh.

While you dramatically overstate your case, Jack, who do you like?

There are few comedians who stayed funny, edgy, and relevant for a long time. I have a theory that guys who get REALLY big (like on the Eddie Murphy level) have to have a rare confluence of talent and timing. Then, once the culture shifts, even if the talent stays at the same level, it won't fit as well in the moment. On the other hand, there are people who are wildly talented but always a bit out of the mainstream, so their act can pretty much play forever, since they were never dependent on being timely or part of the cultural landscape (Steven Wright, for example).

Have we ever had a comedian-to-MLBer equivalency thread? If not, I propose one forthwith.

Louis CK - R.A. Dickey

Ricky Gervais - Ichiro

Jerry Seinfeld - Tom Seaver

EDIT: One of these was not a serious suggestion but two names rammed together, can you tell the difference?

There are few comedians who stayed funny, edgy, and relevant for a long time. I have a theory that guys who get REALLY big (like on the Eddie Murphy level) have to have a rare confluence of talent and timing. Then, once the culture shifts, even if the talent stays at the same level, it won't fit as well in the moment. On the other hand, there are people who are wildly talented but always a bit out of the mainstream, so their act can pretty much play forever, since they were never dependent on being timely or part of the cultural landscape (Steven Wright, for example).

It's kind of hard playing the same schtick when the culture changes, and when you're visibly aging and the character you've created no longer seems as credible. It's probably no accident that the longest running successful comedy show on TV is a cartoon, and that most classic movie comedians seldom have a peak of much more than a decade or so before their humor starts to look forced.

I think the deal that all the Yankees fans I know made many years ago - World Series or bust - is quite a reasonable one. Sure, they have a massive amount of money to spend, but it's REALLY hard to win three consecutive series against good teams.

I've never met a Yankees fan who bragged about how many division titles they've won in the last 15-20 years. When they won 4 WS in 5 years, they had a right to brag, and did. But since then, the ones I know, at least, have been pretty tame. No doubt there are exceptions out there.

:)

Ricky Gervais - Ichiro

Explain.

EDIT: One of these was not a serious suggestion but two names rammed together, can you tell the difference?

Oh.

I hit a home run every time I go to my bedroom, so I'm not really worried about it.

Yes, they are espousing small ball.

Isn't that the problem with the 90's and 00's, is too much PED and small balls?

Martin just fathered a kid at 66 or whatever age he is.

Have any of you ever done standup? I wrote some material in case I ever decided to do an open mike. But I have to get up too early in the morning these days to go to one. I haven't digitized much of it yet, but I had one joke about overparenting that I put into Word:

My youngest cousin is in an aviation battalion in the National Guard. They got activated to go to Afghanistan. My aunt and another private’s mother went along with the unit. They rented a condo in Kandahar and pestered theirs kids’ platoon sergeant. “Why did Jones get promoted to spec 4 before my Peterson?” They pestered the mess sergeant. “T-rats again. My boy deserves better.”

“Moooom.” Their sons would protest.

“We’re not just Army moms. We’re helicopter parents.”

“You don’t know how right you are.”

One of the Apache pilots gave serious thought to letting a stray missile hit their townhouse.

I wrote some material in case I ever decided to do an open mike. But I have to get up too early in the morning these days to go to one.

This isn't the worst excuse ever, but it's not good. ;) Also, I read "Mooom" the way you would read "Zoom."

Darren, you inspired me to dig out the pad where I wrote the routine.

Certain medicines require fat to absorb them. Geodon, for example. Yeah, I know about anti-psychotics. Instead of using pills as delivery devices, why not use ice cream? The pharmacist would be the real Good Humor Man, man. Hood & Pfizer should merge. They'd make Xanaxicles.

You've seen those photocakes? They've been selling them in supermarkets since the Clinton Administration. I had the lady at the bakery department make one with a picture of a cake on top. So I took a picture of it. Next time I went in for a cake, I brought in THAT picture and asked them to put IT on top. Land O'Cakes!

I lived in Manchester, Connecticut for a while. The city of village charm. The local paper's editor would appear on cable TV. Not on CNN, MSNBC, or FoxNews He'd appear on History Channel shows about Fort Knox being empty.

Do any of you work with this guy? One of the guys in my office leaves used K-cups in the Keurig machine. This behavior is low on the totem pole of disgusting co-worker habits, but it drives on of our sales guys crazy. Joe. He'll go to the office manager and rant about it. And when Joe from sales drives me crazy, I put a used K-cup in the machine just to get back at him.

Fahrenheit 32

Fire trucks fight fires. Why don't ice cream trucks fight ice cream? I bet that's Mayor Bloomberg's dream; a whole cadre of converted ice cream trucks whizzing down Manhattan streets and those of the other borough; sirens playing off-key versions of Old MacDonald' looking for desserts to seize.

We've got a bakery in progress at the corner of Lexington and 42nd.

That's a four alarmer.

If this catches on, like smoking bans, small towns will have volunteer ice cream men. They'll hang out at the gingerbread house and help old ladies by getting pies out of their trees. They'd be assisted by teen-aged dessert Explorers. Some of these teens will fight boredom by baking cakes; just so they can have a call to respond to.

Funnybone in Manchester. Tuesday nights.

Did low level improv for years, wrote the occasional joke for a friend who was a touring standup, never tried it myself. Think about it now and then (mostly when I see a more talented person I used to work with doing a medium-to-high profile creative thing) - it's kind of amazing that I never gave it a go.
Have an idea that I'm unlikely to spec for a series of monologues, mostly about getting hit by blunt objects. (Yes, RJ - that's one of them.)

They've got a new test to see if you're small. They give you Yankee stadium, and if you can fit inside of it without hitting 30 HR, you're small.

I went to see a friend do a comedy bit at amateur night on a Thursday night about 20 years ago.
He was the 8th act out of 15 at the club.

It was amazing how they manage the acts - the first few are rank beginners, but hardly anyone is there yet, so who cares. By the 4th act, they are improving, as the crowd rolls in. My friend clearly ranked above average, but the next 3-5 acts to follow him were clearly better as the audience peaker for acts 10-12, roughly.

The last couple of acts sucked, but by then the crowd had thinned on a work night, and those left were either family/friends - or too drunk to notice the jokes weren't that funny.

Howie, that sounds like a boxing card. I once went to Foxwoods and there was still a fight or two after the Main Event.

Martin (Russell, that is), except for two hot weeks in September, basically - an early-month road trip through Tampa and Baltimore, a six-game swing through Minnesota and Toronto later - and a six-game homestand with the Rays and Mets in June, was awful - and that includes the postseason. He's moving from a park that was good for him to a park that won't be. And the Pirates paid $17 million over two years for that shell.

-- MWE

I took a sketch-writing class a few years ago, and made a couple of good friends out of it.
What I learned about sketch writing is that concepts are easy, endings are hard. If you've ever seen SNL, you probably already knew that.
Also, I learned that I find traditional sketches REALLY boring. I just automatically went weird / dark / gross. Almost never "worked," not even to me,* but I still enjoyed writing that stuff a hell of a lot more than "Hey, how about these new iPhones, huh? Haw, haw!"

* The only sketch I did that I still kind of like was a debate - this was 2008 - between the shark candidate and the nematode candidate, on how the animals were finally going to get rid of people, once and for all. The nematode was for "change": "The old way isn't going to work. Near as I can tell, your 'plan' is, Every person in the world falls into the water at the same time. Meanwhile, my kind are everywhere. I have relatives living in your genitalia, right now."

What I learned about sketch writing is that concepts are easy, endings are hard.

Not just true for sketch writing.

Also, I learned that I find traditional sketches REALLY boring.

Setting aside question about what "traditional" means, I feel largely the same way, though, as I've gotten older, I'm finding more to appreciate in "craft", doing a simple thing well. Sometimes the two coincide, like in the Mr. Show sketch about the pre-taped call-in show.

Assigning credit with collaborative efforts is hard, but Steve Martin had (imo) an incredibly high peak. If you don't like The Jerk, I don't know what to make of you.

It's kind of hard playing the same schtick when the culture changes, and when you're visibly aging and the character you've created no longer seems as credible.

That's part of it, I think.
My take: comedy is (among other things) about managing timing and expectations. You need to surprise but not confuse. With heavy exposure, people's expectations change - they know what you brought to the table - they probably know what you will bring to the table. That's not all bad, but it makes the job a lot harder... you can't unhear a joke, just you like can't unhear a song (musicians often have limited shelf lives too, in terms of popularity ... their situation also ties back in with andrewberg's 23).

What I learned about sketch writing is that concepts are easy, endings are hard.


Not just true for sketch writing.

Indeed. I have this problem trying to write mysteries and other stories. I was able to write a couple over the past year or so by just shortening them into poems, but I can't finish a prose sotry if my life depended on it.

Eddy Ruxpin thinks he is a secret agent man; an ersatz Aldrich Ames selling secrets to Japan. But he is more like a real life Walter Mitty and the way this whole thing ends is a real pity.

JD Anaconda is a puzzling gent. He isn’t proud to be a Grenada vet. But he’s a hawk not a dove. When he hits the bottle, he dreams of ‘Nam and glorious guerilla battles. An electronic warrior, he used his head. Planned to get out and go back to school. But he met a Mystic gal instead. Wedding bells would soon toll. Now he writes word games for the New London Day. His cryptography training is starting to pay.

Ruxpin is a squid on a submarine. Decompresses by smoking Stroh’s and drinking pot. The drills they have at sea are frighteningly grim. They never know down there if the Cold War’s getting hot. They go through a launch sequence right to the end never knowing if the balloon went up or if it was just a drill. Locked down in a nuclear powered prison at the bottom of the sea. For Ruxpin it’s no thrill.

Drinking Boone’s Farm and watching Platoon, envelopes Anaconda within an ethanol cocoon. That isn’t Memorex in the VCR; those are memories. Oh yeah, those scenes are his. JD wasn’t infantry; he was a rear echelon guy. That’s not good for his mystique, he’d cry. Yet, he never fired a shot in anger. Truth was that he was a chairborne Ranger.

Ruxpin screens the Falcon and The Snowman. Dreams that he was played by Timothy Hutton. Dead drops and disguises. Code Names, chalk marks on the street. Invisible ink revealed by applying heat. He writes a phony manual on acquiring a sonar fix on pages and pages of phony code. But it’s all smoke and dagger tricks. One day they inspect his bunk in the barracks. His CPO sees his handiwork. He starts to explode.

They call NCIS for an investigation. NCIS takes Ruxpin in for interrogation. Someone calls for JD, who isn’t in the navy. But he has the skills to decode. 48 hours in a soundproof basement cell two tins of Skoal were enough tell. Ruxpin’s notes are nothing to decipher, that’s Anaconda tells the navy lifer overseeing the case. Ruxpin breaks down; admits it was a hoax. His twisted mind plays sick jokes. He’s dishonorably discharged and sent home to upstate New York; somewhere near Rome.

Thus endeth the story except for a sad coda. Ruxpin wasn’t Ruxpin since I don’t know, nineteen eighty-four. He ends things by drinking Prestone and soda. The spy who wasn’t was no more.

If I recall correctly, the Yankees have 27 World Series trophies. And most of them, I suppose, were won by great small ball and pitching. Because you know all of those Yankee retired numbers that are there because of those memorable skills.

Well, there is Scooter.

---
Jeter coudl have scored a point if he had mentioned their last WS win, when the Phillies cranked out a bajillion home runs in 6 games and somehow still lost to the Yankees great pitching clutchiness. Oh, and except that A-Rod drove in 15 or so runs in the playoffs; that kinda helped too, I 'spose.