Tag: Baseball

Was the Angels’ victory over the 1994 Chicago White Sox in Angels in the Outfield the most improbable sports victory in movie history?

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I’ll come out and say it: The most improbable aspect of Disney’s Angels in the Outfield isn’t the fact that Christopher Lloyd somehow skirted the player’s union to get on the field or that Joseph Gordon-Levitt wouldn’t be adopted. Instead, what really grinds my gears is that the lowly California Angels—despite not receiving any angel assistance whatsoever in their final game—somehow beat the 1994 Chicago White Sox to clinch the division title and the pennant at the end of the movie.

How could this have happened? How could that year’s Angels squad, a team so bad that Gordon-Levitt’s father bet that he wouldn’t have to regain custody of his child until they won the pennant, pull off a victory against a White Sox team that clearly would have won its first World Series championship in 77 years had the 1994 season not been stopped short by a player’s strike? It’s a mystery that grows ever more perplexing when you compare the team’s rosters: 

First Base
White Sox: Frank Thomas. Frank Thomas losing out on the full 1994 season is one of the worst travesties in American sports. The Big Hurt posted a shocking 1.217 OPS in 1994, the 18th best single-season OPS of all time. The guy was in the midst of a Ted Williams–caliber streak, and he was well on his way to earning his second straight AL MVP award and my everlasting love and affection. The Angel Gabriel couldn’t have stopped Frank from winning this game. Post-playing career boosted by Nugenix. 
Angels: Mitchell Page. Second place AL Rookie of the Year in 1977. Career batting average of .266, but he couldn’t make the roster for the Athletics’ 1981 postseason campaign. Post-playing career cut short by alcoholism. 
Advantage: White Sox, and it’s not even close. 

Second Base
White Sox: Joey Cora. Survived a stabbing, one-time All Star, and won a ring as the third base coach for the 2005 White Sox. Brother of Rob Manfred–patsy Alex Cora.
Angels: Israel Juarbe. Played Freddy Fernandez in The Karate Kid, a role for which he has been referred to as a “bitch motherf*cker” in at least one MMA-themed forum. Probably best known for his limited role as the room service waiter in this exceptionally 80s clip. 
Advantage: White Sox.

Short Stop
White Sox: Ozzie Guillén. There’s a lot that can be said about Ozzie. The spitfire-spewing third baseman-turned-Fidel-Castro-praising-and-gay-slur-using manager who we let things kind of slide with. The man invented Ozzieball (grind out a single, bunt him over to second, then smash a two-run home run) and managed the best Sox team of the 21st century. But I think this clip comes the closest to capturing all he brings to the table.
Angels: Albert Garcia. Dude doesn’t even have a wikipedia. 
Advantage: White Sox.

Third Base
White Sox: Robin Ventura. A two-time all star, six-time gold glove third baseman, and by all accounts a nice guy who was never as good of a manager as he was as a player.
Angels: Stoney Jackson. Appeared in the “Beat It” music video. Doesn’t seem to have heard of a “Drake LaRoche.” 
Advantage: Angels. As far as I know, Jackson never got his ass whooped by a 65-year-old Nolan Ryan. 

Left Field
White Sox: Tim Raines. A 10th-ballot hall of famer and arguably on the Mt. Rushmore of Montreal Expos players (I assume that this is a statue made out of chewing gum and used kilts outside a Montreal punk venue). 
Angels: Mark Cole. Actors without their own wikipedia pages are the theater equivalent of kids getting stuck playing left-center field. 
Advantage: White Sox.

Center Field
White Sox: Lance Johnson. Most famous for the fact that I somehow confuse his name with Larry Walker’s. Wikipedia tells me he’s the only person to lead both the AL and the NL in bats, hits, and triples, which is cool if that’s the thing you’re into. 
Angels: Matthew McConaughey. With McConaughey, you get power and longevity. The McConaissance was still decades away when McConaughey made this spectacular catch in center field. Dude had range, and no I’m not talking about going from Dallas Buyers Club to Wolf of Wall Street to True Detective to Interstellar in a calendar year.  Just imagine the 30–30 potential he would have deep into his Magic Mike era as a ballplayer. 
Advantage: Alright, alright, alright. Angels. 

Right Field
White Sox: Darrin Jackson. Jackson’s most notable career achievement to date has been the fact that he (mostly) stayed awake alongside Ed Farmer’s radio calls (RIP to a real one, Farmio). That fact alone is far more impressive than beating out Nicolas Cage for a bullshit Oscar for The Pianist.
Angels: Adrien Brody. This man definitely would not kneel for the national anthem. We never see him playing his position, but given his Mookie Betts–esque stature and Italian American–ass quaff, he must be a right fielder. 
Advantage: Angels, I guess. 

Designated Hitter
White Sox: Kit “Hit or Die” Kesey. In real life, this position would probably be filled by Julio Franco, who slashed .319/.406/.510 in 112 games. But one of the few White Sox players we actually get to see in the movie is good old “Hit or Die,” which doesn’t even come close to the worst nickname for a White Sox player. 
Angels: O.B. Babbs. He’s listed as only an “Angels Player” on Wikipedia, so I guess he gets slotted in at DH. 
Advantage: White Sox. You don’t cross a guy with a nickname like “Hit or Die,” especially when he’s allegedly the league RBI leader. 

Pitcher
White Sox: Jack McDowell. Played in a band that once opened for The Smithereens. Also pulled off a goatee for most of his career and won the Cy Young in the year before Anaheim started receiving angelbolic steroids. 
Angels: Tony Danza. Angels wasn’t Danza’s first or best role as a washed-up MLB player. In real life, Danza went 9–3 as a professional boxer, but in Angels it is revealed that he’s about to die because of his lifelong smoking (womp womp).
Advantage: White Sox.

Catcher: 
White Sox: Ron Karkovice.Daddy. The only thing Ron Karkovice looked like he enjoyed more than performing an unconstitutional traffic stop is drinking a Miller High Life after mowing the lawn. 
Angels: Tony Longo.Daddier. And noted chili dog aficionado. 
Advantage: Nobody’s out-thiccing Longo. 

Manager
White Sox: Gene Lamont. Fresh off a 1993 Manager of the Year Campaign. Survived more than 15 years of working in Detroit and Pittsburgh. 
Angels: Danny Glover. Keeps referring to a mysterious, ill-fated “stint in Cincinnati” throughout the movie. But he won’t come clean about working with Mel Gibson? Also, google keeps thinking I’m trying to do half-assed research about Donald Glover. 
Advantage: White Sox. Say what you will, but Lamont never threw his players on the bus by suggesting that they needed angels to win a game.

Secret Weapon
White Sox: Michael Jordan. Performed surprisingly well at AA Birmingham while he was riding out the storm after retiring from the NBA under suspicious circumstances. Would probably choke out Ozzie during a practice. Remember, even angels buy shoes. 
Angels: Joseph Gordon-Levitt. College dropout. Shoehorns the female lead into a “manic pixie dream girl” persona in (500) Days of Summer. Had better chemistry with Tony Danza in Don Jon. 


As if that wasn’t bad enough, JGL gets savagely dunked on during one of the worst (among many) screenwriting of this film: 

  • [having just given up custody of Roger, JGL’s character, forever] 
  • Mr. Bomman (JGL’s character’s father): I’m sorry, boy. 
  • [he exits the courtroom]


Advantage: White Sox. And you know Jordan is betting on this game too. 

Owner
White Sox: Jerry Reinsdorf.
Angels: Ben Johnson.
Advantage: TBH both of these owners seem pretty anti-player and determined to lose rather than spend an extra dollar. This one’s a toss-up. 

Overall: If this game had actually occurred in real life, I had known about sports gambling, and the internet existed to the point where I could place a bet with an offshore sportsbook whose servers are located in modern-day Yugoslavia, this would have been a traumatic gambling loss for me. That is to say, it is patently absurd that the White Sox didn’t win this fictional game, and I hope that Disney deep-sixes Angels in the Outfield from Disney+ like it did to Song of the South and Star Wars: Ewoks. 

MLB End of Season Awards

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Whether or not they know it yet, Major League Baseball’s 2020 season is coming to a close. Big boy in chief Bobby Manfred may not be a quitter, but COVID also isn’t backing down, and I know who my money is on (though I obviously also have a couple dollars on the underdog to cover any potential losses. No, it’s not an addiction if I’m good at it). As we approach the final days of the season, we at Left on Read wanted to honor the incredible effort put forth by every team over the demanding six games of the year. Without further ado, here are our picks for MLB’s end of season awards. 

MVP: Covid-19—Day in and day out, ole CoCo RoRo has been putting in work. Marlins? Speared. Cardinals? Shot right out of the sky. Yoenis Cespedes was literally so intimidated, he fled his team to avoid a potential match-up. There have been some impressive performances, but this one has been one for the history books.

Cy Young: Joe Kelly—An icon and a legend. Enough said.

Biggest Idiot Piece of Dogshit: Rob Manfred—Now it’s rare for a new award to be introduced, but this one is so very well-deserved. Rob Manfred has displayed the highest level of total incompetence any professional can, while simultaneously being a complete travesty of a human being. A true double-threat, Manfred deserves this award and the lifetime’s supply of Arby’s that comes with it.

Rookie of the Year: Baseball’s Complete Irrelevancy—Baseball’s Complete and Utter Irrelevancy as a national sport has been working hard in the minor leagues for years, but this is the year it finally squeezed into the Majors. After its amazing showing in the preseason, helping to almost entirely cripple the league’s 2020 season before it even started, we all knew it had potential. However, after this year’s performance, Baseball’s Total Lack of Appeal as the National Pastime has cemented itself as a force to be reckoned with, and I for one am incredibly excited to not see what it can do in the coming years. 

Proposed Line Items for MLB’s Negotiations to Bring Baseball Back

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Baseball’s owners have finally stooped to considering whether or not they’ll return to the negotiating table to discuss with the player’s union if America will have its national pastime back this year. Here are our proposed line items to add to the bargaining process to ensure that the return of baseball is a success:

  • Automatically declare Tim Anderson and Javy Baez the AL and NL MVPs of our hearts, respectively.
  • Finally put the Seattle Mariners out of their misery.
  • 200% more steroids.
  • Give me a firm commitment that I will be able to download an app version of Backyard Baseball to my phone by no later than mid-July.
  • No concrete policy idea here, but can we make this sport a little more fucking exciting?
  • All players must choose among The Outfield’s “Your Love,” Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” or Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” for their walk-up song. There are no other options. 
    • LoR would be willing to accept a proviso outlining that a player may choose either Megan Thee Stallion’s initial version of “Savage” or Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyonce “Savage (remix).” 
  • Mandatory racial sensitivity training for all St. Louis Cardinals baseball fans before they’re allowed to tweet. Actually, better expand this to all baseball fans. 
  • Change the Hall of Fame induction rules to make Charlie Blackmon’s beard immediately eligible.
  • Two Pirates–Reds games per year replaced with a three-hour, no-holds-barred, dugout-on-dugout bench-clearing brawl. 
  • Atlanta Braves aren’t allowed to use the name “Atlanta” until they move back within the city limits. 
  • I get to hit Bud Selig.
  • Send all Cubs fans a $10.50 cup of warm Bud Light and an audio recording of Karen from Naperville loudly insisting that “all lives matter” to simulate the gameday experience at Wrigley Field.
  • Force Joe Buck to run blindfolded in front of the pitcher’s mound every half inning.
  • Any team with a baby-blue throwback uniform required to wear it until there’s a new CBA (yes that’s over half the league) (and yes that last one was a stretch). 
  • Defund Tom Ricketts. 

Who is the real Greatest Basketball Player of All Time?

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The Last Dance might be over, but debates about who is the true Greatest Player of all Time will never end. So, do you want to find out who the real GOAT is, once and for all?

Check this out: we’ve assembled two mystery players—both NBA champions on teams that were among the best basketball squads in the league’s history—for comparison’s sake. Which one do you think is the true hardwood legend? 

Who you got? It’s got to be Player B, right? 

***

***

***

That’s right, Danny Ainge (a.k.a. Player B) is the greatest player of all time, while Michael Jordan (a.k.a. Player A) is a distant second.

The Mormon Mad Dog was a way bigger threat from behind the arc, he was a lockdown defensive guard, and he has the numbers to prove it. And that’s all before we get to his much more impressive baseball career, his considerably better odds for how he will fare in the afterlife, and his success as an executive. The man just knew how to win, whether he was going up against Jordan on the court, taking Jordan’s money on the links, or appearing in any of his six Finals—the same number of Finals that all-timers by the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, and Scottie Pippen have played in.

Give it up for the GOAT!

The Cub Fan’s Lament

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We swore we just wanted one before we died. We didn’t set preconditions or enter into negotiations. That’s not really how deals with the devil work. We just wanted a World Series title for our beloved North Siders before we passed on — and honestly, if it came a year or two after we croaked that was fine too. For that single trophy, no cost was too high.

And then we got it. Ohhhh boy did we get it. 10 innings of it. Five million people in the streets for it. The miracles and rain delays and David Ross of it. It was all we’d ever dreamed of.

But from the very get-go, we knew what we’d given up. I remember saying the night of Game 7 that in hindsight, I was actually glad that Aroldis Chapman had given up the lead in the eighth inning because it meant that he – fresh off a suspension for domestic violence and seemingly unrepentant – wasn’t on the mound the moment we clinched. He wasn’t in the photos and wouldn’t be remembered as our savior. He could be relegated to the role of a rent-an-arm who had sort of panned out and could now be shipped back to the Bronx.

Fast forward four seasons and things are… blurrier. When the Ricketts family delivered a World Series championship, the love they felt from the city was as overpowering as it was genuine. Perhaps no owners in American sports built up such a vast amount of goodwill in such a short amount of time. And they immediately started spending it.

Consider: 

Now, as the 2020 season approaches, the relationship between ownership and fans has deteriorated even further. Tom Ricketts was booed heartily at the Cubs Convention when he mentioned the yet-to-be-launched Marquee Sports Network, and he seemed genuinely confused by the reaction. Never mind that with less than a month until pitchers and catchers report, 60% of Cubs fans still have no way to watch games. Or that the lucky few who are permitted to watch games will be forced to tune in to a channel owned by the people who did this. What’s not to love? Why are all you booing the nice billionaire?? Where has all the goodwill gone???

The honest answer is that it was spent much faster than anyone could have anticipated. And while the on-field results have been disappointing (at least by the newly high standards of the fans), the reality is that it had little to do with baseball.

The Ricketts have, intentionally or not, carried out a real-time sociological experiment on the importance of local sports teams relative to other issues. Could a trophy paper over the racism and bigotry of those who delivered it? What was more likely to drive action: a desire to see the team in person, or a fear of indirectly funding the president’s reelection campaign? And just how far can you push a group of people, once you’ve given them everything they wanted?

The loser in all of this is, as it always is, the fan. Just three years removed from the highest of highs, Cubs fans are now grappling with questions as basic as whether their team’s professional baseball games will be televised to ones as profound as when to walk away from something you love.

It is, of course, not fair of ownership to do this to the fans. But then, there has rarely been anything fair about being a Cubs fan. So as we enter the twilight of this team’s championship window, Cubs fans are left to grapple with a question that seemed inconceivable just a few years ago: was it worth it?