BBM Super-League XXIX: The World Ends With Yu Darvish

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«‹›1996 »

FairGame: Jul 24, 2001; Der Kommander

"I don't have time for the Count of Monte Cristo's elaborate revenge plots when he's just one of many people unjustly imprisoned."

-Finnegan, woke as gently caress

# ? Jul 7, 2016 17:59

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 27, 2024 09:39

Harlock: Jan 15, 2006; Tap "A" to drink!!!

"It was a good run"

Team: Small Market Superstars
Location: Silver City, New Mexico
Stadium Name: Food Basket Field
Stadium Dimensions: 350 LF - 375 LCF - 425 CF - 375 RCF - 350 RF
Structure: Open
Surface: Natural Grass
Infield Quality: Excellent
Infield Grass: Good
Visibility: Good
Foul Ground: Average

Strategy:
Hit and Run: -2
Sacrifice Bunt: -5
Squeeze Play: -3
Trying for extra bases: 0
Stealing Bases: 0
Aggressively Tagging Up: 1
Pitch Outs (to prevent stolen bases): 0
Giving Intentional Walks: 1
Pitching Around Good Hitters: 1
Bringing the Infield In: 1
Guarding the Lines: 1
Making Cutoff Throws: 1
Bringing in Pinch Hitters: 0
Bringing in Pinch Runners: 0
Bringing in Defensive Replacements: 4
Starting Pitchers on Short Rest: 1
Letting pitchers pitch throw trouble: 0
Letting Pitchers rack up high pitch counts: 0

~The Rooster~

C Ivan Rodriguez 2003 Marlins
1B Derrek Lee 2003 Marlins
2B Charlie Gehringer 1940 Tigers
SS Jimmy Rollins 2004 Phillies
3B Josh Donaldson 2014 A's
LF Barry Bonds 1986 Pirates
CF Tris Speaker 1915 Red Sox
RF Al Kaline 1964 Tigers
DH Babe Ruth 1918 Red Sox

BN Coco Crisp 2014 A's
BN Adam Dunn 2014 A's
BN Nick Punto 2014 A's
BN Craig Biggio 1989 Astros
BN Miguel Cabrera 2003 Marlins

SP Greg Maddux 1992 Cubs
SP Gaylord Perry 1962 Giants
SP Luis Tiant 1971 Red Sox
SP Curt Schilling 1997 Phillies
SP Jon Lester 2014 A's

LR Billy Pierce 1962 Giants
CL Sean Doolittle 2014 A's
SU Matt Capps 2008 Pirates
RP Dave Smith 1989 Astros
RP Ugeth Urbina 2003 Marlins
RP Larry Andersen 1989 Astros

AAA - Demaso Marte 2008 Pirates
AAA - Bryan Harvey 1991 Angels
AAA - Lance Parish 1991 Angels
AAA - Adam Jones 2015 Orioles
AAA - Manny Machado 2015 Orioles

Lineup vs DH

2B Charlie Gehringer 1940 Tigers
LF Barry Bonds 1986 Pirates
CF Tris Speaker 1915 Red Sox
DH Babe Ruth 1918 Red Sox
1B Derrek Lee 2003 Marlins
RF Al Kaline 1964 Tigers
C Ivan Rodriguez 2003 Marlins
3B Josh Donaldson 2014 A's
SS Jimmy Rollins 2004 Phillies

Lineup vs No DH

2B Charlie Gehringer 1940 Tigers
LF Barry Bonds 1986 Pirates
CF Tris Speaker 1915 Red Sox
RF Babe Ruth 1918 Red Sox
1B Derrek Lee 2003 Marlins
C Ivan Rodriguez 2003 Marlins
3B Josh Donaldson 2014 A's
SS Jimmy Rollins 2004 Phillies

# ? Jul 7, 2016 23:55

shepard.shouldgo: Feb 2, 2016

Team: Dusty Baker's Base Clogger's

Suicide is painless if theres dingers right?

code:

Name	Pryor-Wood Memorial Ligamentory and Dinger Palace
Location	:   Riverside, CA
Grass Type	Natural Grass
Elevation	1000 feet
Open/Dome	Open
Grass Length	Very High
Infield Quality	Excellent
Foul Grounds	Average
Visibility	Excellent
LF	285
LCF	340
CF	375
RCF	340
RF	285

Strategies

code:

Hit and Run:	-5
Sacrifice Bunt:	-5
Squeeze Play:+1
Trying for extra bases:	0
Stealing Bases:	-5
Aggressively Tagging Up:	0
Pitch Outs (to prevent stolen bases):	-5
Giving Intentional Walks:	-3
Pitching Around Good Hitters: +2
Bringing the Infield In:	 +1
Guarding the Lines:	0
Making Cutoff Throws:	0
Bringing in Pinch Hitters:	+3
Bringing in Pinch Runners:	0
Bringing in Defensive Replacements:	-5
Starting Pitchers on Short Rest:	+0
Letting pitchers pitch through trouble: -2
Letting Pitchers rack up high pitch counts:	+1

n roste

code:

cappsma01,2010,,,,Matt,Capps
mauerjo01,2010,,,,Joe,Mauer
riverma01,2003,,,,Mariano,Rivera
trammal01,1982,,,,Alan,Trammell
piazzmi01,1998,,,,,Mike,Piazza
larocda01,1977,,,,Dave,LaRoche
powelja01,1902,,,,Jack,Powell
schmimi01,1973,,,,Mike,Schmidt
donahre0,1902,,,,Red,Donahue
odayda01,2014,,,,Darren,O'Day
mccovwi01,1962,,,,Willie,McCovey
cepedor01,1962,,,,Orlando,Cepeda
mayswi01,1962,,,,Willie,Mays
halleto01,1962,,,,Tom,Haller
matheed01,1953,,,,Eddie,Mathews
willite01,1952,,,,Ted,Williams
peskyjo01,1946,,,,Johnny,Pesky
ottme01,1938,,,,Mel,Ott
woodjo02,1908,,,,Smoky Joe,Wood
cicoted01,1908,,,,Eddie,Cicotte
youngcy01,1908,,,,Cy,Young
gregelu01,2015,,,,Luke,Gregerson
wintege01,1908,,,,George,Winter
speaktr01,1908,,,,Tris,Speaker
lajoina01,1905,,,,Nap,Lajoie
radboch01,1890,,,,Old Hoss,Radbourn
suzukic01,2001,,,,Ichiro,Suzuki
torrejo01,1973,,,,Joe,Torre
gehrilo01,1925,,,,Lou,Gehrig
shockur01,1925,,,,Urban,Shocker
smithle02,1990,,,,Lee,Smith
anderla01,1977,,,,Larry,Andersen

Starting Rotation and Bullpen

quote:

4 Man Rotation
Cy Young
Smokey Joe Wood
Jack Powell
Old Hoss Radbourn

Bullpen
Mopup: Eddie Cicotte
Closer: Mariano Rivera
Setup: Luke Gregerson
Short 1: Darren O�day
Short 2: Dave LaRoche
Middle:Lee Smith
Long :Red Donahue

Starting Lineups and Bench

quote:

Speaker, CF
Lajoie, 2B
Ott, RF
Williams, LF
Gehrig, 1B
Torre, 3B
Mays, DH
Trammel, SS
Piazza, C

Bench

code:

Suzuki
Pesky
Matthews
Cepeda
Mauer

Minor Leagues

code:

Capps
Winter
Haller
McCovey
Schmidt
Shocker
Anderson

# ? Jul 8, 2016 03:20

FairGame: Jul 24, 2001; Der Kommander

How the hell was this team so bad

# ? Jul 8, 2016 04:15

shepard.shouldgo: Feb 2, 2016

FairGame posted:

How the hell was this team so bad

Kennel. From. Hell.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 04:26

Smasher Dynamo: Oct 16, 2008; ~~Eternal~~ Commissioner of the Super League. A new avatar. A new age, of the same old embittered Smasher that failed to escape the bonds of the SL, FM3, Johnny Hopp and Eri Yoshida "The Knuckle Princess". "The flames of Smasher's ire scorch the skies... Igniting St. Bellhorn's funeral pyre."

FairGame posted:

How the hell was this team so bad

What you fail to understand is that the Super-League is not only a test of wits, but it is also a test of spirit.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 04:36

Ice To Meet You: Mar 5, 2007

Sub-Par League VII: Gyros League Championship Series

Strange things happen when two teams don't know how to win, but they win nonetheless...

I think everyone knows the deal with the Jersey City Jobbers by now. No matter what happens to them, their roster will never remain constant. No matter how much success they have, there will always be players who underperform, even if it's just by random chance. And Armitage wastes no time in first punishing those players, and then trading them out of town, whether he can get a good return for them or not. But this year, despite a late charge by the Werebears, Armitage didn't have to make that many trades, because his team was generally pretty effective outside of the standard bullpen woes. Indeed, that may be their biggest weakness, as there are few relievers left who haven't suffered Armitage's wrath at one time or another.

The Brookings Dinosaurs have a long history with me. They won the first ever live streamed championship series, back in Expansion Cup XII. Then, eventually, they lost in the Super-League, and came back down. Then they made the Sub-Par League IV Finals, taking them back to the promised land again. Where they proceeded to finish last again and come back down. And now, after a move away from Hill City, they're back in the playoffs again. I think this team is boring and I don't like them, but I can't seem to make them lose. Will I ever be free from these Dinos? Or will they just continue their Sisyphean quest to not lose in the Super-League, forvermore?

Game 1: Jersey City Jobbers @ Brookings Dinosaurs (Series Tied 0-0)

Frank Gaiman posted:

JOBBERS OUTLAST DINOSAURS, TAKE 1-0 SERIES LEAD

Brookings - You wouldn�t have known Armitage�s team was in good shape before the game.

�Oh god what do I do, what do I do,� muttered the Jobbers� owner as he paced nervously in the passage between the clubhouse and the dugout. �We aren�t supposed to win! Jobbers don�t win! What do I do, what do I do?�

His nervous pacing was interrupted by Harry Heilmann, who sauntered over to give him a hug. �Uh, there there,� he said.

Heilmann himself is the perfect Jobber: a player good enough that you can mistake him for being of significant value, but who is easily outclassed at his position by the faces of the Super League, Babe Ruth, Ted WIlliams, Stan Musial, and so on.

Armitage staggered toward the dugout and presented his lineup card to the ump.

The lineup was certainly more impressive than what the Dinosaurs mustered, and as if to emphasize the point, Arky Vaughan homered in his first at bat to stake the Jobbers to a 1-0 lead. His counterpart in the 2 slot of the lineup, Robinson Cano, certainly wouldn�t match that.

Rick Reuschel then cruised through the next several innings--the Dinosaurs are a team that slowly strangle you rather than score in bunches, and it�s hard to strangle a big man like Reuschel.

Babe Herman stretched the lead to 3-0 with a single a couple innings later, and it looked like the Jobbers would break the game open. George Kell strode to the plate with first-and-third, nobody out, just needing to loft a fly ball to make it 4-0.

But then Forzelt emerged from the dugout holding a sign.

Upon closer inspection, it merely listed Kell�s season batting statistics: statistics that were already posted on the stadium jumbotron.

But this seemed different. Forzelt gestured meaningfully toward the sign, then pointed at Kell. Perhaps it was just a psychological game. Perhaps it was an ancient statistician�s curse. Perhaps it was neither and George Kell just sucks.

In any event, Kell promptly popped out, and with Reuschel up behind him, the threat was effectively neutralized.

Still, not even Kell�s ineptitude could stop Reuschel from succeeding. Sure, he got touched-up by a Jim Thome homer to lead off the fifth, but that just cut the lead to 3-1 and he pitched out of the sixth with no further damage.
�Oh god I might win what do I do what do I do,� muttered Armitage. He noticed that Reuschel was cruising, only at 72 pitches through 6, and realized what he had to do. He summoned Chief Bender.

Forzelt quirked an eyebrow, then retreated back into the dugout. For a moment, it looked like he�d do something to hex Bender, but apparently he thought better of it. Instead, he came back out with a list of all the Super League�s top right fielders and pointed it in Heilmann�s direction.

Heilmann looked at it. �Well, gosh,� he said to himself in the outfield. �I guess it�s only fair that Babe and Musial are ahead of me. No shame in that, nossir.� He kicked absentmindedly at a plot of dirt in the outfield grass.

But then his jaw dropped. �Vlad Guerrero and Gary Sheffield? Now wait just a gosh danged minute here, neither of those guys��

He used his 100-rated eye to make out the fine print on those lines--their production in Subpar League VII.

�Oh jeez, oh man,� fretted Heilmann. �I really am mediocre!�

Noticing his counterpart�s inferiority complex, the Dinosaurs� Ruth lofted a can of corn to right that Heilmann promptly dropped. It started a Rally. Derek �YEAH JEETS� Jeter singled Ruth home, then went to third on a Bill Dickey single. He then scored on a Willie Mays sac fly. Bender neutralized the threat, however, when he got Dick Allen to line out to center as a pinch hitter.

So the game was 3-3, and suddenly neither team seemed to feel much like winning.Neither team got a runner so far as second base until the eleventh inning, when Forzelt looked at his bullpen.

He saw two Rollies Finger and one Trevor Hoffman. Knowing full well that Rollie Fingers would doom his team in the postseason, he elected to go with Hoffman.

It...ended poorly. The Jobbers piled five runs on Hoffman, capped by a bases clearing triple by Joe DiMaggio.

Not even Lindy McDaniel was so bad that he could cough up an 8-3 lead, instead choosing to just give up two runs (a tithe for the lord, he explained, when asked later) as he mopped up the game, and gave the Jobbers a 1-0 series lead and home field advantage.

�Oh god oh god what if we win how will I even?� muttered Armitage, his constant negativity just droning endlessly to the point that it wasn�t even worth writing about.

�No matter,� said Forzelt. �There�s always the other Drysdale. And if not him, the other other Drysdale.�

GAME NOTES

- YEAH JEETS had a hell of a game.

- A bullpen battle favors the Dinosaurs, but Pedro Borbon did a hell of a job pitching two perfect innings and getting the Dinos to blink.

- Dick Allen�s talents are wasted on the Dinos. He�d look great on the Janus, Scientists, Beer Dads, or SpaceFish, though.

Box Score

Game 2: Jersey City Jobbers @ Brookings Dinosaurs (JCJ Leads 1-0)

Mornacale posted:

HELL--Be warned: you are about to witness a dingerless world.

I have been asked to tell you about this, the second game of the series to see who will be the Subpar League runner-up this season. Frankly, I didn't want to do it. The no-DH league is a blight on the Subpar, the hidden shame of the SuperLeague, and there are serious ethical issues with helping to promote it.

That said, could I in good conscience force kw, or FairGame, or McFreeze to be subjected to another game? No. I may as well take the opportunity to scout my "competition" for the Subpar League Championship. Then I will have the data to runs so many sims that even random chance can't prevent my victory. As the standard-bearer for the DH league, I owe the rest of the teams (except the Scientists) no less. But rabidsquid, look away! It's not right for you to see the teams keeping you from being SpL runner-up.

Anyway. The Jobbers were at the Dinos for game two of their series, with the Jersey City squad apparently having taken the first. You will probably be as surprised as I was to find out that the pitching matchup--in, remember, game TWO--was Don Drysdale vs John Smoltz. Drysdale, I suppose is a decent enough piece, the type of ok-power/ok-control/ok-GB% mid-century innings-eater that Forzelt seems to like for some reason. Smoltz is a nice MR for a legitimate team.

So it wasn't a surprise when the first inning saw a run score. Except that it was driven in by the Dinos' Robinson Cano, inexplicably batting 2nd instead of stashed in AAA to rip off a new owner and/or Bruiser re-reg. But I swear to you that the game recap really says Cano doubled in Rickey Henderson to give the Dinos a 1-0 lead. But then Smoltz smartly walked Babe Ruth and, Forzelt's supply of good hitters exhausted for a while, ended the threat.

Meanwhile, the Jobbers lineup--a post-modern performance piece about getting rid of any above-average player (see the Monateam division preview)--behaved the way you'd expect a lineup starting with 2B-SS-CF-C to behave. Specifically, they presented barely any threat until managing to scrape a run together on two walks and two singles in the 6th. Which by the way included Arky Vaughan getting picked off, probably because he was busy daydreaming about seeing real baseball if they manage to make the finals.

That tied the game up, but the Bambino was up first in the bottom of the inning, and Smoltz accidentally threw him something to hit (he walked his other three times up) and he deposited a double into left-center. #5 hitter Derek Jeter (#5 hitter Derek Jeter?!?!) singled him in, took second on a "productive" out, and managed to get home as well on a Willie Mays single.

Then the Jobbers failed to get a single runner on base for the last three innings and they lost 3-1. The game ended with three consecutive foul popouts, everyone in the stands let out a collective nothing, and finally the ineffable sadness that had filled the world for the previous two and a half hours lifted. No dingers were hit, no storylines were advanced, nothing of interest occurred at all. The End.

I considered, in the fine sportswriter tradition, asking to speak to Armitage and/or Forzelt after the game. Then I decided there was no chance they'd have anything useful to say, and that speaking to them would only risk somehow becoming stupider and less able to build a SuperLeague winner through some foul osmosis. So instead I flew back to Genoa to fistbump my rad as hell players and do coke with models and all the things that you do when your team is actually talented. But fear not, here are some things I made up about what they probably said, minus the drooling and babbling:

Armitage, on a lifeless loss after a come-from-behind game 1 victory:
(Well, first, let me digress. I feel fairly sure that the Jobbers' win in game 1 was a come-from-behind affair because I note the 22.50 ERA of Trevor Hoffman, even after his clean one-inning save in this sordid affair. Hoffman, the Hill City closer, would likely have only come in with a lead, and surely an ERA that high was responsible for the 1-0 series score. It's small deductions like this that separate the clueless from the prepared in the SuperLeague.)
"This is no different from when my favorite wrestleman feuded with some other wrestleman in 2009. He won an emotional match at a PPV to take the title belt, but then was too exhausted to hold on to it when his enemy attacked him the next night. But in the end, he couldn't maintain any heat and lost all the time for the rest of his career, just like we will in the SuperLeague."
Then Zack Ryder, who has more intelligence and charisma than anyone else associated with the no-DH league, would appear and troll Armitage or something and a merry laugh would be had by all. Woo woo woo you know it.

Next I would ask Forzelt something that I'm too bored to think of right now and he would probably say something about threshers, or threshing, or the League of Legends champion Thresh. I don't know, I'm pretty sure one of those is his gimmick? Or maybe he'd get offended that I care too little to stop calling his team the Hill City Dinos for the forseeable future. Anyway, I assume Forzelt is as nice-enough-but-nondescript as his starting rotation, so everyone would just skim over the quote anyway. In fact, they're probably skimming over this sentence, so I'm going to stop writing.

I don't know who's going to win this farce, but Janus in 3. Later.

Box Score

Game 3: Brookings Dinosaurs @ Jersey City Jobbers (Series Tied 1-1)

posted:

WOE, WOE, WOE! YOU KNOW IT; JOBBERS BULLPEN BLOWS IT

The ghosts of Armitage's past were out in full force tonight in Jersey City.

Having taken a game in Brookings, the Jobbers found themselves in a favourable position, having home field advantage in the series. This was a pivotal matchup in a series with a lot on the line; the opportunity to face the Janus in the Sub-Par Bowl. For Forzelt, a Sub-Par title would ensure no Triad members would be forced to fight eachother for survival, further rooting their hold on the Super League. For Armitage, it would mean his fears of Smasher placing him the bloodiest of Dynamo League divisions, the Sic Transit Vir, would be dispelled.

With this in mind, it's clear to see why both teams were galvanized heading into tonights matchup. Both pitchers pitched immaculately, neither giving up anything more than inconsequential singles, until the bottom of the 3rd when Babe Adams, whether it was through determination or sheer disdain towards his teammates, ripped a 1 out double down the left field line. The next batter, Buddy Myer, weakly grounded to Derek Jeter. In any other circumstance, this would be the 2nd out of the inning, but, as Derek Jeter is wont to do, the ball somehow slipped past the glove, allowing Adams to advance to third on the error. This would cost the Dinos, as Adams was brought in via sacrifice fly the very next batter.

This lead would hold until the sixth inning, where a Babe Ruth double tied the game at 1, but the Jobbers came firing back in the bottom half. With two outs and runners on the corners, Babe Herman, enforcing a trend of the night up to that point where only people named Babe are allowed to do anything useful, painted the left field foul line and put the Jobbers in front 3-1. Those who do not learn from past mistakes, such as Dinos third baseman Jud Wilson, are bound to repeat them, as the next batter, Cecil Travis, ripped another ball down past Wilson and down the left field line, scoring Herman and putting the Jobbers up by 3 after six.

The lead would be cut down to 2 after Willie Mays crushed a hanging curve over the center field fence, but that would be all until the Dinos were down to their final three outs. Pedro Borbon got the first out via Bubbles Hargrave popout, before Willie Mays doubled to put the tying run at the plate. In an interesting move, Armitage elected to intentionally walk Jud Wilson to set up the double play, knowing the pitcher spot was next. Borbon struck out the pinch-hitting Edgar Martinez to bring the game down to Rickey Henderson. With the count 1 and 1, Borbon started his windup when suddenly a primal shriek came from the Jobbers dugout.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Armitage cried, looking at his phone. This sharp, almost inhuman scream was enough to throw off Borbon's concentration, making him miss his spot badly. Henderson, also thrown off by the eldritch screech, steeled himself and launched the ball out of left-centre field, giving the Dinos the lead.

"This is horrible! A travesty! This is the worst thing that could have ever happened!" Armitage shouted, flailing about in the dugout, "I just saw the Smackdown results! Zack Ryder beat Sheamus!" Amazingly, he was so beside himself he was unaware of the game surrounding him, and the lead his team had just given up. A terrified Jobbers lineup came up in the bottom of the inning to try and tie the game versus the Dinos Trevor Hoffman, former E-VIL Corp Villain, and Armitage's third least favourite person in the world behind Zack Ryder and Juerys Familia. Armitage's mental breakdown clearly had an emotional effect on the lineup, as they found themselves swinging at every single pitch. Cecil Travis and Bob Johnson both went down, before Buddy Myer got himself on base with a single on the middle.

"Can you believe this poo poo?!" Armitage continued from the dugout, "He has a new theme song! He has new clothes! Commentary is praising him! This is the worst loving day of my life. Why of all people, Zack Ryder? Why must the world mock me so?" he flailed his arms in distress. This gesture caught Buddy Myer's attention at first base. A gesture he took as "steal second". He went on the first pitch and was gunned down easily at second. After only 5 pitches, Armitage's former Trevor Hoffman had gotten the save, and the Dinos had taken back home field advantage.

At the post-game conference, Armitage spoke, "I would like to apologize for the incident that occurred during the 9th inning of tonight's game. It was unprofessional, and I should know better than to trust the booking of the WWE to do the right thing. I'm sad this has taken attention from the game tonight, as the team went out there and worked really hard for the victory," The room went dead silent, "...what's wrong?" Armitage nervously spoke, "Did I say something wrong? Guys? ...G-guys?"

GAME NOTES

- Hoffman's ERA is all the way down to 15! Amazing.

- Cap'n Jeets, calm eyes, but a glove that was a bit nervous tonight.

- Babe Adams got two hits. I think this game is broken.

Box Score

Game 4: Brookings Dinosaurs @ Jersey City Jobbers (BRO leads 2-1)

The Commander posted:

JOBBERS OVERCOME DINOSAURS, SELVES, WIN 7-5

Jersey City - Facing a game they probably should have won, the Dinosaurs showed they were definitely who we thought they were. Trying to prove that they were a team worth fearing, one that could be respected for its ability to out job the Jobbers, the Dinosaurs instead moved one step closer to extinction and a berth in some wildly unfavorable Super-League division that would likely kill them before they got there.

The Jobbers struck in the second inning, building a 3-0 lead largely based on singling the Dinosaurs to death. A well-placed Harry Heilmann double sent in two more RBI�s making the game 5-0, which should have been enough for a team like the Jobbers to put it away and end the day.

Unfortunately for the Jobbers, during the 7th inning Armitage decided do change his twitter handle. And then change it again. And then make something else unrelated. After that he started deciding to have fun with word inversions in a group chat. This proved to be a bit of a problem because while his pitch count was reasonably low, Mel Stottlemyre was running into trouble of the power hitter variety, a bit of a deadly mix given that he isn�t a deadball pitcher and power hitters feast on flyball pitchers like they�re bacon bits.

In a quick series of unfortunate events a 5-2 lead turned into a 5-3 lead as the result of a first pitch slider to Willie Mays. Having seen his slider fail him, Stottlemyre then decided to throw nothing but sliders for the rest of eternity in order to prove that it was totally a fluke that Mays had homered off him. This strategy was not the most desirable, as it led to Robinson Cano and Babe Ruth singling in runs, since they are all time greats and Stottlemyre is just kind of a dude.

Luckily for Amitage, Forzelt was forced to go to his bullpen in the next inning due to his failed effort to have a pinch hitter press the advantage during the Dinosaurs rally. Mike Adams then promptly decided to prove that bullpens are a flukish construct by self-destructing, allowing Dickey to single in a run and walking the park to make it a 7-5 game.

In the 9th inning Pedro Borbon came in and did not screw things up, leaving the series tied at 2-2.

After the game forzelt declined to address the press, muttering something about needing to prey to the great thrasher maw or some weird South Dakota thing.

Armitage also could not be reached for comment as he was busy attending a perhaps too early funeral service for Matt Harvey�s career while making up funny spoonerisms.

GAME NOTES

- Nothing involving Rollie and his follies ends well. Even when it's not his fault, it's his fault.

- YAY a competitive playoff series!

- That said, I feel the need to again reiterate that the No-DH league should be abolished post haste.

Box Score

Game 5: Brookings Dinosaurs @ Jersey City Jobbers (Series Tied 2-2)

Charles Foster Balla posted:

DRYSDALE DOESN'T WALK 7 BATTERS, DINOS WIN EASY

Don Drysdale Prime was not happy after game 1 of this series. Sure, he didn't pitch that bad. He only gave up 3 runs over 7 innings pitched. In the future, he would have acquired what is now known as a "Quality Start." For those of you that don't know, a quality start was a term coined by sportswriter John Lowe in 1985 while writing for Philly. Poor soul. I digress, however, as it was Drysdale's inability to control his pitches that led to 7 walks. Without those walks, one could conceive that he would have completely shut down the Jobbers. Today, that was a different story.

In 7 innings pitched, Drysdale Prime only gave up 2 walks, while giving up the same amount of hits. In doing so, though, he gave up 0 runs, leading to what I would like to call a "Super Duper Quality Start�" (original idea do not steal). Over those 7 innings of work, his offense helped him out quite a bit. In the 4th, a pair of doubles by Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter drove in a couple runs, while in the 6th, a flurry of singles led to Cano and Thome scoring of a Jeter and Hargrave single, respectively.

After 7 innings of work, only 85 pitches thrown, and no sign of slowing down, it was expected that Drysdale Prime would come out and try for the complete game shutout. No such luck, I'm afraid, as Forzelt decided to go to his admittedly strong bullpen. After retiring the first two batters in the Jobbers line-up, Nen gave up a single to Joe Dimaggio. Unperturbed, he then got Bill Dickey to line-out to left to end the inning. In the 9th, Forzelt made the curious decision of going with Mike Adams, rather than his more reliable set-up man Fingers or closer Hoffman. The decision seemed to make the game interesting once Jimmie Foxx led off the inning with a bomb over the right field fence, bringing the score to 4-1.

Whether or not that home run seemed to unsettle Mike Adams is up for debate, but he followed that by giving up a single to Harry Heilmann. After Babe Herman hit a weak groundout to 3rd, allowing Heilmann to advance to 2nd, Forzelt made his most questionable call of the night by deciding to intentionally walk Willie Stargell to get to Chief Bender in the pitcher's spot, knowing full well that the Jobbers had plenty of power on the bench. Armitage made the obvious decision and had Bob Johnson pinch hit for Chief Bender, representing the tying run in this game. The Saber nerds did the math, and Forzelt's decision to intentionally walk Stargell actually gave the Jobber's a >10% chance at victory. But hey, double play chance, right?

Actually, right. Bob Johnson hit a hard groundball to short, and it looked like this game was over, but JEETZ fumbled the transition, only getting the runner at 2B. With two outs, Forzelt again made a strange call, by signalling to have Trevor Hoffman come in with only 1 out away from victory. He subsequently gave up a single to Buddy Myer, which everyone here must understand is the peak of irony, giving the Jobbers another run and changing the score to 4-2, with Arky Vaughan representing the winning run. Unfortunately for Armitage, happy endings don't exist for Jobbers, as Vaughan hit a weak fly ball to LF to end the game.

After the game, Drysdale Prime and Hoffman were available for comment. Forzelt was no where to be found. Drysdale was not pleased with his manager's handling of the pitching staff today, expressing his frustration in the most eloquent way possible: "Don't know what the gently caress Forzelt was thinking. I was in a groove. Drysdale's are always in a groove. He needs to trust us more than this ragtag bunch he calls a bullpen. gently caress it, I'm getting a Jim Beam."

"I CAN HELP YOU WITH THAT!" Forzelt burst into the scene, with a large glass of what appeared to be a brown liquid. "HERE, HAVE SOME OF MY JIM BEAM/DR. PEPPER MIX!"

"Eww, gross. I thought that was a joke. Everyone on the team has agreed that that was just a myth. People actually enjoying that stuff, come on! Isn't that right, Hoff?"

"Y-yeah, sure, whatever...anyway, I just would like to say I'm a little upset I was brought into the situation you brought me into, Forzelt. Why not just let me pitch the 9th?"

"IT WASN'T SAVE SITUATION. ONCE THE RUN SCORED, IT WAS. CONgRATS, I GOT YOU A SAVE!"

"Well, uh, thanks. But the team almost lost. Are you oka-"

"SUPER!!"

Armitage, with his team now down 3 game to 2, was a tad more upbeat than expected.

"Oh well. These things happen. Just have to go do our best tomorrow!"

Informed that there was, in fact, no game tomorrow, since the series was traveling to Brookings, Armitage was nonplussed.

"Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. We'll just go win two games in Brookings. Easy. Can I go home now? I'm tired and would like to sleep."

GAME NOTES

- Arky Vaughan is not having a great series. I recommend picking up a Masked SS to replace him.

- Rick Reuschel did not have the best performance out on the mound. I recommend picking up a Horned Power Arm to replace him.

- Willie Mays did not get much done today, along with killing a rally by GIDP. I recommend picking up a Cloaked CF. Should help.

Box Score

Game 6: Jersey City Jobbers @ Brookings Dinosaurs (BRO leads 3-2)

Mick Freese posted:

ARMITAGE EVENS UP SERIES, GOES INSANE, WELL, MORE INSANE

Brookings - The Dinos have looked strong in this series, but they won't be able to put it away for at least one more night.

This was a tough one for the favorites, as the Jobbers were finally able to get to a Don Drysdale early in the game, taking a 3-1 lead in the fourth. To make matters worse, Drysdale fielded a Joe DiMaggio ground ball in the fifth for what looked like the third out, only to throw it into the stands. One Bill Dickey base hit later, and the Jobbers had their fourth run.

The Dinos would have another chance in the seventh, getting two runners on base with two outs. Armitage, realizing he had Tim Burke on the mound, chose to walk Babe Ruth and bring in the lefty Jerry Koosman to pitch to Jim Thome. The gamble worked, as Koosman got an easy ground ball to end the inning, and the last chance the Dinos would have in the game.

"This was a tough one tonight," forzelt spoke at his press conference, clearly annoyed, but determined not to show it, "It would have been nice to take this series today, no doubt about it. But we've still got tomorrow at our home field, and we've beaten the Jobbers here a lot this season. And if Sutton can keep pitching like he has been, I think we'll have a real good shot at the win."

It was at that moment that everything changed.

"BROTHER FONZIE," a booming British/Australian/Brooklyn/Carolina accent bellowed. "I KNEW YOU'D COME." It was Armitage, sporting frazzled, bone-dry hair with a white streak down the middle.

"Of course I'm here, this is my press conference and you're interrupting it." forzelt was relatively calm, before turning toward the sound of the voice, and realizing it was in fact a hologram of Armitage, projected by a hovering drone. "I... what?"

"THE TIME HAS COME FOR OUR FINAL BATTLE. TOMORROW NIGHT, AT SUNDOWN, YOU WILL COME TO THE BALLFIELD, AND THERE YOU WILL EXPERIENCE YOUR FINAL... DELETION!!!!" forzelt had no idea what to make of this and stared straight ahead for a moment, before turning around to see what has going on behind him.

The locker room, for reasons inexplicable to anyone, was suddenly under siege by an army of drones. As the Dinos ducked for cover, Jim Thome valiantly tried to beat the fleet back with his bat, but sadly whiffing every time. Why would Armitage go to such lengths, and what did he hope to accomplish? Who was the middle-aged man sneaking away from Don Sutton's locker? And also, huh? These are questions that we sadly may never find out the answers to.

GAME NOTES

- At press time, Armitage was busy holding a baby and maniacally cackling as he mowed shapes into the outfield, again, for purposes unknown.

- Joe DiMaggio is so efficient, he scored 3 times on only 2 hits! Wow!

- The Jobbers chose to pitch around Babe Ruth, walking him three times in the game. It paid off because Jim Thome has not hit at all.

Box Score

Game 7: Jersey City Jobbers @ Brookings Dinosaurs (Series Tied 3-3)

Keith Wuncler CXXXIV posted:

Docent Randack looked over his latest crop of tourists. Mostly fresh-faced youths from the various megalopolises that arose from the ruins of Sodak after the Thresher Wars had reclaimed untold lives and many acres of farmland, they were all eager to get out into the "country" and review their natural history. The youngin's had already passed through the visitor's center, with a quick overview of the various creatures that had once roamed this land, gone forever in some cataclysm or another. Time was slipping and with only thirteen minutes shy of quatorze o'clock, he needed to get the tour going.

"How-Die," as he gave the traditional greeting. "We are about to begin, so if the chaperones could stay close to us." He tapped his sound projector to test, and some of the people closer to him winced from the feedback. "I do apologize. Now, if everyone can hear me clearly, let us walk." He lead them before the reconstituted remains of a fearsome beast. The holo-plaque sprang to life, projecting some light-artist's belief of what the creature appeared as clad in flesh. The huddled children oohed and aahed.

"This here is a Dino known as 'Dun Suttin'. We believe that this was the most numerous of a particular species which roamed these grounds many millions of years ago. This conservatoire was constructed near the first known excavation of this magnificent creature. You can tell from the shape of the forearm bones that it had only the most vestigial of upper limbs. We suspect that they met their demise in a single event where they were outcompeted from their evolutionary niche; that is, the requirement to throw very well. As you can see, their physiology was very ill-suited for this, and they appeared to have been wiped out in that geological event."

"'xcuse me, but what sex is it?"

"We don't know. We believe this one was a male, but we have no other confirmed specimens that differ to know. If you ask me, they likely had on the whole poor reproductive chances."

The brood murmured among themselves and heads bobbed in comprehension. The holo-plaque showed how this Dun Suttin might have thrown a rock the size of a lozenge ball, it's pathetic arms winding up to throw it slowly and awkwardly towards some brute of a hominid, which naturally slammed it out of view. Scattered applause broke out at the sight of it.

"Moving along. Now, some of you might be wondering what this 'event' was. While the Dinos are a taxonomic -- that is, a group of creatures all similar physically -- grouping, their opponents were a hominid group who left few artifacts. It is believed they were hunting these Dinos, but scraps of polyester and stretchy fabrics inscribed with 'Jobbers' are the only remains that we could decipher. Even now, these deductions are best guesses." Another holo-plaque lit up, showing a large being with heavy brows, studded with long lines of facial hair. "We believe this, based on chiseled tablets left at the scene, depicts a Jim Fox."
Randack paused while the chaperones took out their omni-teks to capture the moment to share with their friends back in the high rises of their homes. Some of the smaller kin fooled around with the holo-image, climbing on top of each other to point out the bulging muscles on the upper arm and the thigh. "This seems improbably large" said a skeptical chaperone.

"The archaeological evidence is that this species, though his remains have not been located, had enormous striking power. Detritus from the site indicate that he was capable of hitting back the stones the Dun Suttins favored as weapons back to them with incredible speed and power. One such crater -- though the projectile is long gone -- was found a long ways from the locus of the main combat. Though, yes, this is definitely a conjectural reconstruction." Randack allowed a rueful smile to cross his face. "Some skeletal remains would settle the question, but that is not at hand." He gestured to urge his charges onward.

Pausing before one of the more rotund fossils, he waited until the group filed all around it in a circle. Multiple projectors powered on at the impatient tap of Randack's stylus on the holo-plaque, and all who have not seen this before gasped at once. Even those that knew what to expect from the Data Archives were taken aback at the sheer scale -- nothing really prepared you for seeing it in person.

"Now this, this is our grandest specimen, in many senses. This is 'Toddler Rutz,' which name is still the subject of much controversy. This was an older specimen, and was considered the leader of this group of Dinos. You can see that this one was believed to be very corpulent -- that is, fat -- and was already past his prime. But you can see that he would have been a fearsome predator in his day, though that day was long gone by the time he met his end."

"What did he do?" inquired a small voice in the shuffling awe-struck crowd.

"Well, best as we can tell," Randack scratched the back of his head in a theatrical display of faux-confusion, " is that he was supposed to shield the rest of the group from projectiles thrown at the way of the herd, by hitting them."

Eyes widened. "Oh, like that Jim Fox earlier!" said another anxious voice.

"Quite right!" Getting these groups to put two and two together never failed to enliven the process for both him and his followers who now listened quite attentively. "the Jim Fox was very successful indeed. Evidence of that is scattered all over. But, in the same way, the Rutz was not much so. We find very little of the same anywhere here. It is little wonder that for this band of Dinos, the failure of their leader to protect them lead to their downfall.

"Looking around, you can see the other members of this herd. The fossils we uncovered show them to all have had severe physical shortcomings." Randack pointed to a smaller skeleton. "That 'Derk Jeets' had clumsy hands and could not catch prey very well." He pointed to another stand of dusty bones. "That is a Jip Thom, which had very poor eyesight and would swing and miss the projectiles. As you split up, each display tells a story, once you can put together and see how the one fails in its own way to ensure the survival of their herd." The group split up and started interacting with the exhibits on their own, their delight echoing in the cavernous space as they imagined how a Buble Hargav would find itself stranded away from the pack or how a R'binson Canew would consistently fail when facing a Jobber.

"That was pretty good," came an adult voice. "So this band of 'Jobbers' wiped out these Dinos, is that the story?"

"Yes, that's what the remains say, and of course we have no such live examples any more, so clearly they're extinct."

"So, then, what about these mythical 'Jobbers'?" An eyebrow arched in challenge.

Baker, have mercy on me thought Randack as he prepared for the outrageous but only logical conclusion the lead scienters had offered. "It would seem, somehow, that these Jobbers, being victorious in this one-sided 'battle', moved on from this site. We know not where they are now. It is suspected they, having conquered and feasted on these Dinos leaving only scattered bones, went on to challenge another tribe."

"Who were they?"

"Some guys with two faces. There are no records found, nothing in the stratigraphic rock layers that indicate what may have come of that." Randack shrugged.

"Could this have been not a prey-predator contest, but some sort of athletic game?"

Randack laughed, though he did not mean to. Even ignorance such as this needed to be let down gently. "What kind of game could this have been? Such brutality. Anyway, though there are small etched stones set in regular intervals around a central mound, we believe they're coincidental. After all, what kind of interesting game could possibly involve such a contrived setup?"

Box Score

Playoff Injury Report

Nobody!

:siren:

Expansion Teams Pick 'em! :siren:

The Gauntlet, Round 1
Pick TWO!
Idaho Potatoes
Seattle Cagey Bees
Small Market Superstars
The Gay Agenda

# ? Jul 8, 2016 05:30

Smasher Dynamo: Oct 16, 2008; ~~Eternal~~ Commissioner of the Super League. A new avatar. A new age, of the same old embittered Smasher that failed to escape the bonds of the SL, FM3, Johnny Hopp and Eri Yoshida "The Knuckle Princess". "The flames of Smasher's ire scorch the skies... Igniting St. Bellhorn's funeral pyre."

Are you telling me that the only hope I have to save us from the Janus-induced apocalypse is the Jobbers?

I'm putting the fate of the Super-League in a man who is obsessed with the idea that Zack Ryder does not lose enough.

All is lost.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 05:40

Armitage: Aug 16, 2005; "Mathman's not here." "Oh? Where is he?" "He's in the Mathroom."

Smasher Dynamo posted:

Are you telling me that the only hope I have to save us from the Janus-induced apocalypse is the Jobbers?

I'm putting the fate of the Super-League in a man who is obsessed with the idea that Zack Ryder does not lose enough.

All is lost.

You should look inside your heart and... BO-LIEVE!!

# ? Jul 8, 2016 05:49

Ice To Meet You: Mar 5, 2007

Smasher Dynamo posted:

Are you telling me that the only hope I have to save us from the Janus-induced apocalypse is the Jobbers?

I'm putting the fate of the Super-League in a man who is obsessed with the idea that Zack Ryder does not lose enough.

All is lost.

If you wanted a better team in the finals, you should have relegated the Marmosets last year.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 05:55

Forzelt: Jul 23, 2012; Variance? Fuck that noise.

1. We do not talk about the other other Drysdale. He brings shame to the name.
2. Morna whatever the **** his name is an insufferable twat.
3. I lost this series because armtiage had more faith in Buddy Myer...

# ? Jul 8, 2016 05:56

Ice To Meet You: Mar 5, 2007

Well, Bill Dickey also got hurt, but Bubbles went 6/18 so I don't know if you can blame that.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 06:06

Smasher Dynamo: Oct 16, 2008; ~~Eternal~~ Commissioner of the Super League. A new avatar. A new age, of the same old embittered Smasher that failed to escape the bonds of the SL, FM3, Johnny Hopp and Eri Yoshida "The Knuckle Princess". "The flames of Smasher's ire scorch the skies... Igniting St. Bellhorn's funeral pyre."

Forzelt posted:

2. Morna whatever the **** his name is an insufferable twat.

It is Mornacale's destiny to be in the same division as Pander. The League needs the ultimate showdown of ultimate smugness.

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

# ? Jul 8, 2016 06:25

Pander: Oct 9, 2007; Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.

FairGame posted:

How the hell was this team so bad

Tris Speaker spent the first four months gripping the wrong end of the bat.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 06:36

Mornacale: Dec 19, 2007; n=y where
y=hope and n=folly,
prospects=lies, win=lose,

self=Pirates

I don't really like my SuperLeague Canon Character outside of the Bloggers but sometimes you gotta run with it.

e: Congrats to both Forzelt and Armitage! I'm hype for the 'Ship!

# ? Jul 8, 2016 06:44

shepard.shouldgo: Feb 2, 2016

Pander posted:

Tris Speaker spent the first four months gripping the wrong end of the bat.

I was also betrayed by the following:
Lou Gehrig
Ted Williams
Joe Mauer
Luis Tiant
Joe Torre
Mel Ott
All SP not named Smokey Joe Wood
Larry Andersen

# ? Jul 8, 2016 06:59

CraigK: Nov 4, 2008; by exmarx

shepard.shouldgo posted:

I was also betrayed by the following:
Lou Gehrig

Larry Andersen

HELL SAME

# ? Jul 8, 2016 07:37

Ice To Meet You: Mar 5, 2007

Mornacale posted:

e: Congrats to both Forzelt and Armitage! I'm hype for the 'Ship!

Do not ship Super-League owners.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 07:41

ForeverBWFC: Oct 19, 2011; Oh, the lads! You should've seen 'em running!
Ask 'em why and they reply the Bolton Boys are coming! All the lads and lasses, smiles upon their faces,

WALKING DOWN THE MANNY ROAD, TO SEE THE BURNDEN ACES!

Ignore this post...

# ? Jul 8, 2016 09:56

Mornacale: Dec 19, 2007; n=y where
y=hope and n=folly,
prospects=lies, win=lose,

self=Pirates

ForeverBWFC posted:

Ignore this post...

buddy i do that for everything in this thread

# ? Jul 8, 2016 11:01

FairGame: Jul 24, 2001; Der Kommander

Ice To Meet You posted:

Do not ship Super-League owners.

Not even Pander and JRLeap?

# ? Jul 8, 2016 11:43

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

FairGame posted:

Not even Pander and JRLeap?

Canon ships aren't fun.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 11:46

CVE: Jan 27, 2012

Expansion Pick'em

Potatoes
Gay Agenda

# ? Jul 8, 2016 12:15

TheFlyingLlama: Jan 2, 2013; You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and be a llama?

Expansion Pick'em

Small Market Superstars
Gay Agenda

# ? Jul 8, 2016 12:47

mrnoun: Jul 24, 2007

Oh, right, Pick 'em. Uh, the Potato Agenda!

Expansion Pick'em

Potatoes
Gay Agenda

# ? Jul 8, 2016 12:51

Armitage: Aug 16, 2005; "Mathman's not here." "Oh? Where is he?" "He's in the Mathroom."

Forzelt posted:

1. We do not talk about the other other Drysdale. He brings shame to the name.
2. Morna whatever the **** his name is an insufferable twat.
3. I lost this series because armtiage had more faith in Buddy Myer...

I think this time we remembered the advice of the wise duo Was (Not Was). We opened the door, got on the floor, and walked the Dinosaurs.

Now to figure out how to use the power of late 80s dance music to get past the Janus.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 15:23

Clangbang: Jun 3, 2016

Small Market Superstars
Gay Agenda

# ? Jul 8, 2016 15:54

Harlock: Jan 15, 2006; Tap "A" to drink!!!

Everyone, lend me your energy

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:03

shepard.shouldgo: Feb 2, 2016

CraigK posted:

HELL SAME

My baby Andersen is probably age bugging yours. Anything you'd trade for the right to launch him into the sun? by which I mean like any sort of 3rd string backup level player who can handle 2B or shortstop?

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:32

rabidsquid: Oct 11, 2004; LOVES THE KOG

I don't think age bugging is as common as some people seem to think it is.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:35

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

rabidsquid posted:

I don't think age bugging is as common as some people seem to think it is.

Yeah, it's more the exception than the rule, since it requires the old/young version to be loaded last (at least from what I understand), which is mathematically improbable. It's just that it can really gently caress things up if it does happen. Don't blame a lovely reliever season on age bugs, it's just a lovely reliever season, everybody has those. Craig just has them more because he's Craig, it's what he does.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:42

Pander: Oct 9, 2007; Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.

rabidsquid posted:

I don't think age bugging is as common as some people seem to think it is.

If you have a guy past his prime showing a potential (88/92) he's been age-bugged. This happened to my 1920 Joe Jackson when the Eazy Ws rostered his 1910 Joe Jackson. It changed his normal rating (between 93 and 96) to something like 84/88, with many ratings lowered (contact, power, eye, speed, defensive ratings), usually between 3 to 10 points.

It's like Babe Ruth turning into Gary Sheffield. It may not kill you, but it will hurt.

Old-guy age bugging, like the Collins Plague, is sometimes harder to spot. Seeing all Collinses being rated in the low 80s is easy, but sometimes it might be a guy normally high 90s showing up as low 90s, and it's hard to distinguish between normal aging or injuries and age bugging. I think that is what is used sometimes as an excuse for poor performance, but it's pretty hard to say unless you get into the save file and start checking player cards for ages.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:45

Pander: Oct 9, 2007; Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.

TheMcD posted:

Yeah, it's more the exception than the rule, since it requires the old/young version to be loaded last (at least from what I understand), which is mathematically improbable. It's just that it can really gently caress things up if it does happen. Don't blame a lovely reliever season on age bugs, it's just a lovely reliever season, everybody has those. Craig just has them more because he's Craig, it's what he does.

If there's only a couple copies of a guy in a league and one of them is super young or old it's not improbable at all.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:46

StupidSexyMothman: Aug 9, 2010

The Gauntlet, Round 1
Pick TWO!
Idaho Potatoes
Small Market Superstars

# ? Jul 8, 2016 16:54

FairGame: Jul 24, 2001; Der Kommander

There's a guy with my exact name who's a couple years younger than me who likes to post his weird fantasy art and pictures of him shirtless in a samurai sword.

The next time I have a bad day at work I'm gonna blame this guy for age bugging me.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 17:48

CraigK: Nov 4, 2008; by exmarx

FairGame posted:

There's a guy with my exact name who's a couple years younger than me who likes to post his weird fantasy art and pictures of him shirtless in a samurai sword.

The next time I have a bad day at work I'm gonna blame this guy for age bugging me.

don't doxx me, cardinals fan

# ? Jul 8, 2016 17:56

Smasher Dynamo: Oct 16, 2008; ~~Eternal~~ Commissioner of the Super League. A new avatar. A new age, of the same old embittered Smasher that failed to escape the bonds of the SL, FM3, Johnny Hopp and Eri Yoshida "The Knuckle Princess". "The flames of Smasher's ire scorch the skies... Igniting St. Bellhorn's funeral pyre."

Super-League XIX, Smasher League Divisional Series: Khartoum Doom vs. Portland Panderers

Nuts and Bolts

I don't think that it's hard to figure out what the Doom are all about. They are going to bash your head in with their lineup. Hamilton and sometimes Kelley will get on base, and then Slug Lyfe will drive them home. That's a pretty successful combination. They also have a decent rotation, even if Dihigo isn't part of it for this round, backed up by a good defensive infield. There's a reason they keep making the playoffs, and it's because, as far as fundamentals of team construction go, the Doom are one of the most solid teams around. They can hit for a ton of power, they can draw a ton of walks, they have good fielders where they need them, they have good pitchers.

All of that said, you might be wondering why the Doom keep having trouble getting out of the first round of the playoffs, and that is while there team is fundamentally solid, the avenues an opposing team can take to get one over on the Doom are also fairly obvious, and have been exploited in the past.

Look at the lineup. A lot of the production is coming from Williams and Ruth and Bonds and Mantle. That's great, those are great hitters. But, if you're facing a left-handed pitcher with good breaking stuff, that's going to make things hard on them. If you're facing a deadballer, who cuts down on home runs and walks, that's also tough. Williams and Ruth are good contact hitters, verging on being great contact hitters. But without the ability to hit dingers or take walks, being great contact hitters only makes them marginally better than a guy like Fred Clarke.

For that matter, you put the Doom in the wrong stadium, and they're going to be in trouble. If they can't crush dingers over the right field wall, then their offense loses a lot of punch. In a neutral setting, it's hard to beat Slug Lyfe, but, once you get to the playoffs, you're no longer really talking about playing in a neutral setting.

In the end, that's the Doom's biggest problem. They are a great team in any reasonable situation, and then, in the playoffs, some team takes them to an unreasonable place, and it all falls apart.

The motherfucking Portland Panderers.

I talked a lot about gimmicks when I talked about the Zephyrs. And while TheMcD has accomplished something, I don't know what, but it's something, I feel like TheMcD is still working his gimmicks by feel rather than calculation. I think that his stadium, as it stands, feels like it's good for his team, but it's probably not completely optimized for him. The Panderers, on the other hand, are a triumph of baseball engineering.

The Zephyrs went 52-29 at home. That was, by any measure, pretty drat good. The Panderers went 58-23. Basically, if you go into the Panderers' stadium you would be lucky to win one of three, just because of how much it favors their style of play. And the Panderers' have home-field advantage in this best-of-five series, meaning that, in fact, the Doom have to win one of three to have literally any chance of winning. That's rough.

Because their stadium doesn't really allow for the possibility of many home runs, their lineup is entirely devoid of sluggers. It's packed with guys who aren't going to walk, aren't going to strikeout, but are just going to make contact in as many at-bats as possible, knowing that the huge expanse of the outfield is going to allow a lot of those balls in play to become doubles. On the road, that plan doesn't always work out, because a solo home run is a lot more efficient than however many singles it takes to score a run, and that's a vulnerability in theory, except for the fact that they'll have home-field advantage in this round, and, if they win, the next round as well.

The other thing that the Panderers have going for them is that the top-end of their bullpen has been very good this season. The Panderers' relievers are, for the most part, guys who will strike a lot of people out, and they are actual relievers. It's not groundbreaking stuff, but it's very effective. If the Panderers can keep a game close late, the odds are that they'll breakthrough before the other team does, and that means that they're a team that is going to win a disproportionate amount of close games.

Put it all together, and you have a team that is going to consistently punch above its weight and frustrate a lot of people.

Pander's Guide to Life, Chapter One posted:

Finding Your Dream

Everyone has a dream for their lives. Their ideal vision of how they want to live and what they want to be doing. This dream can be a powerful thing that can provide the motivation to do incredible things.

Dreams, of course, are stupid, and only idiots try and follow their dreams.

I don't think I should have to go into much detail to explain just why it is that following your dreams is the dumbest possible thing you can do, but, because I know that you wouldn't have turned to my guide to life if you weren't in the process of making a complete waste of your life, I'll do you the favor of spelling it out.

The easiest way to explain why dreams as stupid is just to look around your day-to-day life. Odds are, in the course of your day, you're stopping in at a gas station to get gas for your car, or buy cigarettes, or maybe just to get some gas station sushi. I don't know why you're at the gas station. But think about the guy working at the gas station. His dream, I can assure you, isn't work at the gas station, making change for nerds like you. He's not following his dream. But think about this, what if he weren't there? What if, instead of working his job in a gas station, he was out pursuing whatever real dream he had? You wouldn't be able to get your gas or cigarettes, or gas station sushi. You'd be stuck.

And as you go about your day, think about how many people you interact with that have terrible, miserable jobs that no one would ever dream of having. All of these people perform vital services to each other, but they can hardly be said to have dreamed of it. The reality is that modern society is built on the vast, vast majority of people subordinating their will to the common enterprise of civilization. There are a lot of libertarians out there who will decry socialism and communism as ideologies that force the individual to surrender his will to the consensus, but looking at things fairly, it's pretty clear that there's no force in the universe that's more efficient at breaking the dreams of people and forcing them into virtual serfdom to society than the free market. A man is born into this world, and then spends the best years of his life, his singular life, the only time he will get to experience this universe, toiling away in obscurity doing tasks he does not love, and, in many cases, grows to hate. Perhaps, if he is fortunate, he might watch the world pass him by from a window near his cubicle as he sits in front of mostly meaningless reports on his work computer, moving around numbers so as to keep the great commercial engine of his firm running smoothly. The purpose of his labors is to enrich others. He will work and work and work until the day comes when he finally grows too infirm to provide efficient labor, and then he will face a period of deteriorating health, marked by pain and weakness, until he dies, and is gone forever. Maybe, if he is lucky, a bus will hit him, and cut short this parade of horribles.

But, of course, what other choice is there? People's dreams are rarely productive. The world doesn't need ten million terrible speculative fiction novels. It doesn't need ten million bad post-punk albums. It doesn't need ten million terrible fusion restaurants. It needs people to man the gas stations, people to fill the cubicles, and all of the rest of hte dreary jobs that keep this world moving. That is man's lot in life.

The point is, you will never achieve your dreams. You, of course, will counter that there must be some out there who have achieved their dreams. Someone will point out Joss Whedon, because, of course they will. To that, I must remind you that, Joss Whedon's path is not likely to be replicated. A network executive is not, more than once in a trillion times, going to give a man who came up with the idea for the Buffy the Vampire Hunter movie, which flopped, and then wrote the screenplay for Alien Resurrection a television show. For that matter, I still maintain that Avengers movies that Whedon directed were overrated.

But let me give you a more concrete example. There's this guy I know, let's call him Freezy Mike. He thinks that he can build a team capable of beating mine, despite the fact that I've used actual engineering skills to creat the perfect team. Now, I've built a stadium that will shot his offense down, but he's convinced that, this time, he's going to crack it. And when Babe Ruth hits a two-run shot in the first inning, he knows he has it. And then when Joe Kelley of all people hits a two-run shot in the third, he's absolutely sure. He's up 4-0, and what am I going to do about it? He's living the dream, he's transcended his role as just a facilitator to my team's greatness. He's no longer just serving me, he's doing this for his team.

And so we come to the bottom of the ninth, two outs, him up 4-3, with the bases empty. A more dire situation for my team would be hard to imagine. Except, I built my team to win in impossible situations, and his team, for all of his bluster, for all of their supposed talent, is just incapable of fulfilling Freezy Mike's dream, because dreams are stupid and pointless. What happens then, you might ask? A single, another single, and then a walk to get the bases loaded.

Now there bases are loaded, but there are two outs. Freezy Mike can still pull this off, he can still live his dream, right? Wrong. Even when his dream was so close, it was impossible. He was never going to be anything more than a cog in a machine to produce glory for me, just like all of you are just cogs in machines to enrich your betters. The next batter is walked, forcing in the tying run, and then the next batter hits a single to win the game. I win, Freezy Mike loses, and his dreams are crushed, because he forgot that no one will ever get to live their dreams. A harsh lesson, but a necessary one.

Pander's Guide to Life, Chapter Two posted:

Dealing With Rejection/The Art of War of Love

I haven't dealt with much rejection in my life. My professional accomplishments are such that, any time I want a new job, I can basically get it. I have a great wife, frankly, my experiences in life are so far removed from those of you, the reader, that I almost feel as though you should be teaching me about rejection. After all, I'm sure that you know a lot more about it than I do.

Nonetheless, you didn't read my guide to life because you needed to be reminded of your many failures. No, you got this guide because you know that a guy like me, who is tremendously successful, can help you to achieve some level of success in your life. I want to stop short of guaranteeing that you'll actually be successful. A lot of you, I would guess, are probably starting from so far behind that it would be impossible to really have a life that could be considered anything more than mildly, or perhaps partially successful.

I want to start the discussion by talking about relationships. If there is one thing I would bet heavily on most of my readers failing to succeed at, it's relationships. There is a cottage industry out there about "picking up" women. In fact, it's quite a large cottage. And it misses the point, as does most of modern culture. The reaiity is that, for reasons of efficiency, the only reasonable course of action in terms of relationships is creating a stable, long-term relationship with a high-earning partner.

The essential failures of pick-up artists are relatively clear. Even if you can successfully use tactics such as "negging" to get someone to sleep with you, what have you gotten? You still have to outlay a signficant amount of time and effort in the future the next time you go out "picking up" a new partner. That is simply not an efficient use of your team and resources, which, given that you are presumptively bad at life, are likely not extensive.

For that matter, 'negging' is a poor choice of tactic to use on a romantic partner in the course of a long-term relationship. One key to having a productive and efficient relationship is ensuring that your parnter needs as little maintenance as possible, and brings as much financial productivity to the relationship as possible. Reducing someone's self-esteem through the sort of slights that 'negging' uses is counter-productive to that goal. To succeed in life, a person needs to have the confidence that they can crush their enemies with the force of their iron-hard will. In a meeting, they can't have doubts, they must be ready to strike against any possible rivals or opposition. To earn a high salary, they must have the will to power. You cannot jeopardize the sheer ruthlessness and business ferocity of your romantic power through negging. No, your partner must be strong and cruel to succeed in life, and bring in an acceptable salary into your home. Anything less is a waste of resources and energy. One night stands are only gratifying for that night, they provide no further benefit to you.

Of course, in seeking such an ubermate, you will have to face rejection. The class of partner that is capable of such ambition will likely reject anyone whose attributes are less than outstanding. Most of you, I believe, would not be capable of attracting such a person. Therefore, my advice to you, to avoid rejection, is to become a perfected man like me. You must relentlessly improve yourself, fastidiously destroying all inefficient and unattractive parts of yourself in the process. No doubt that you will miss your love of video games, but they are holding you back.

Which ties us back to the issue of rejection. The worst thing a person can do when they're rejected is just chalk it up to 'one of those things', and assume that if they keep trying, that things will work out. In reality, when you're rejected, it's because of the deep flaws within yourself, and a rejection is a direct repudiation by someone else of those flaws. If you're rejected, in any circumstance, it's a direct attack on yourself, and proof that you are bad and need to rip yourself apart and rebuild yourself into a better person. Don't let the mollycoddlers tell you different. If you are rejected, you are bad and should feel bad.

Allow me to give you an example of what happens when you don't eliminate these weak aspects of yourself. Once again, I will refer to the hyopthetical Freezy Mike. Now, Freezy Mike, in the last example, was done in because of his shameful bullpen. A perfected man, like me, would have responded to this setback by erasing that mistake as quickly and completely as possible. Freezy Mike, of course, is hardly perfected. He expected that his bullpen would rebound, that he would set things right.

And so we went to the eighth inning, with him leading 2-0. This time, Freezy Mike was sure, he would get one over on me. After all, even though I am a perfected man, Freezy Mike, in his own twisted mind, thought that he could beat me. Freezy Mike, I have to admit, is merely hypothetical. After all, no one could really think that a duo of Joakim Soria and Greg Holland were going to beat my team, not with how carefully I had constructed it. Of course, just like in Game One, when it all came down to it, we scored the two runs we needed, and got another come-from-behind victory.

Why? Because Freezy Mike couldn't handle the rejection of Game One correctly. He just decided that the problem was with everyone else, and not with him, and that he would just try it again, and assume that it would work out the second time. He was wrong. A person like Freezy Mike should have realized after Game One that his team was outmatched and couldn't compete with mine. Of course, he didn't, because he was just too flawed as a person. Don't be like Freezy Mike.

Pander's Guide to Life, Chapter Three posted:

On the Unfairness of Life

Life isn't fair. That much is undeniably true.

Granted, there are those who think that it is fair. Many rich and successful people, if asked, will claim that life is fair. I can't imagine that any of them believe it, of course, they would have to be delusional to think that their successes came from the result of hard work and just rewards rather than the whims of an uncaring universe. But they claim that life is fair because they can't let on that the reason that they get to enjoy their lives, while the masses spend their time on this earth toiling to provide them with even more spoils, is because they just happened to be born in the right spot. They need to keep alive this myth that the world is just, that by working hard, and doing the right things, that you can achieve something.

And so, even as I tell you that life isn't fair, there is at least some part of you that rejects that truth, that wants to cling to the idea that the hole you're in is not so deep that you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get out of it. It is a pernicious lie, because it's so tempting to believe in. After all, don't you want to believe that there's a way out, that if you just manage to get yourself right, that you can make your way upwards? It's a lie that puts a person in command of his own destiny, gives him control over his life. We all want desperately to be in control, and the idea that the world is fair speaks to that desire deeply.

But the world isn't fair. The world is so unfair that a large amount of theological debate is centered around the question of how to explain the evil in the world, given the existence of an all-loving god. After all, why would an all-powerful, all-merciful, all-just, all-everything god allow for suffering and misery? And, since they do exist, the question must become, what purpose do they serve?

I won't bore you with a discussion of the various bits of theodicy. Most of them center around the issues of free will, that god could create a world without evil, but that the existence of free will, a greater good, means that man must be allowed to do evil, or else that free will isn't really free. Of course, that does raise questions of suffering not caused by human action, for example, a deer being crushed by a falling tree knocked over by a lightning bolt. There is also the theory that the suffering is needed to somehow perfect the human soul, that this world that we live in, with all of its pains, is just one step on the path to enlightenment.

Obviously, these are just fancy rationalizations of how to keep alive the myth of a just world in the face of living in this profoundly unfair world. Of course, the reality of the situation is that life is unfair. There is no meaning or moral structure to the universe, it is all just chaos. Any sort of moral or ethical code is something that people accept because it is convenient to them, mostly in the sense that it protects them from the predations of others, and they accept it because they are not strong enough to be predators, only the prey. And even the predators, and I see myself as, in a sense, the apex predator of humanity, or, at least, an apex predator, are unable to prey on a united front of prey. In a just world, the apex predator of myself would not need to abide by the same set of morality as my prey. After all, a wolf is allowed to kill sheep without being subject to civil or criminal liability. And yet, in the world we live in, we've created limits to how the powerful can exploit the weak. Of course, a clever person can find ways around those rules, but even still, that too is unfair.

Let's go back to the examples. Based on the first two examples, you would think that the only fair way for my series against Freezy Mike to end would be me crushing him for a third straight time, and therefore ending our series once and for all. After all, in the first two games, Freezy Mike had be outclassed, outmatched, outworked. Freezy Mike had no expectations of winning this series by this point, and, really, there was no point to this series continuing past Game Three. In a just world, I win, and we all save ourselves further aggravation.

Instead, due to random chance, and the inherent unfairness of the universe, Freezy Mike wins the game, and the series has to continue, even though, honestly, there's no point to us playing any more games, because it's clear that I have the better team. The only thing that Freezy Mike gets by winning this game, which he only won because of a fluke series of hits in the bottom of the ninth inning, is that he gets to pretend that his team can beat mine for one more game. That's harmful not only to me, but to him as well, because it obfuscates just how much worse his team really is compared to mine. That's bad for him, and it's bad for everyone else, because they'll get the wrong idea from this game.

But, as I said before, the universe itself is unfair, so what else can we expect but for some injustice to occur in this series.

Pander's Guide to Life, Chapter Four posted:

Guile

Being smart and clever is important. I would go so far as to say that it's the reason that most of you reading this guide haven't been successful. You aren't smart enough, you aren't clever enough, and I'm not sure if you can really fix either of those problems. It may be that you are doomed to having a miserable life due to your cretinous nature.

There's actually something I need to address at this point.

Spoilers for Dreamfall Chapters follow

There's a difference between being clever and feeling compelled to show just how clever you are. And that, I think, has always been the problem of The Longest Journey/Dreamfall/Dreamfall Chapters trilogy.

I think that it's fair to say that, since around 1990 or so, that adventure games, to a fair degree, have lived and died by their characters and story. There was a point where the mechanics of adventure games, with their obtuse puzzles, and often underwhelming glitchy technical aspects, ceased to be in any way charming, especially once the technology improved to the point where playing computer games could actually be something more than an experience in frustration. With that in mind, I'm not going to complain too much about the actual gameplay of Dreamfall Chapters, because, at the end of the day, it is an adventure game in 2016. The genre is not alive today because graphical wonders or great gameplay. It just isn't.

That said, I think that the story of Dreamfall Chapters reflects a certain level of wanting to prove a level of sophistication on the part of the gamemakers that works to the detriment of the product. That's been a problem throughout the series, of course. The first game, The Longest Journey, had, as its quest, protagonist April Ryan trying to find the next guardian of the balance, a quest that, at one point, had a character outright telling her that she was the next guardian. And then, hours later, the game abruptly revealing that, in fact, she wasn't. That was an okay twist, in that, examining the story as a whole, it made a certain amount of sense for the character who had told her that she was the guardian to have just been wrong. But it did feel like a twist somewhat for the sake of having a twist with how it was presented. Still, it wasn't that much of a problem, and the story overall was good.

What happened in Dreamfall was not as harmless. In that game, the new protagonist, Zoe Castillo, is given the remit to find and save April Ryan. In the course of the game, Zoe does not quite achieve this task. She does find April Ryan, admittedly, and then proceeds, hours later, to watch as April Ryan gets gutted by a halberd and falls into the swamp. Now, the game does try to spin this as Zoe having "saved" April, though it does not entirely explain how, but the reality is that it definitely feels like a failure. It is a shocking twist, admittedly, in that you would not have seen it coming, but it fails on a couple of levels.

First of all, it makes Zoe out to be the least-successful video game protagonist in history. She was given a task, and she failed at it about as badly as a person could. Video games exist for escapism, that's their purpose, and most of the people that play them are failures in real life. The last thing a failure wants to do is play a game where they get to be in control of another failure who also can't do anything right. The play video games so that they can feel like winners for a few minutes before going back to their dreary lives. In Dreamfall, Zoe fails, and fails badly. After failing to save April Ryan, she then only partially succeeds in stopping the evil plot of a mega-corporation, though, by the end of the game, even that mild success ultimately goes for naught.

But that isn't the biggest problem, really. The bigger problem is that the guy behind these games clearly wants to tell a grand, overarching story. Fine, good for him. The problem with killing April Ryan off is that, in The Longest Journey, he had, as part of the story, established that April Ryan would, in some fashion, at least, live to old age. Killing April off, therefore, created a plot hole, one that he would have to figure out in Dreamfall Chapters.

That really left two good options. Either the creator could have stuck to his guns, and said that, yes, April Ryan was dead, and just made the claim that destiny has been broken, or something to that effect, and move on, or else he could have made it so that April was not entirely dead. Both ways were kind of cop-outs, but, well, he wrote himself into a corner. Instead, the creator managed to hit the worst of both worlds. He said that, yes, April Ryan was dead, but, after she died, she was reincarnated into a new life, but somehow had most of her old memories, though she no longer identified herself as April Ryan.

Obviously, it would take effort to come up with a more inelegant solution. On the one hand, if April Ryan is being reincarnated immediately after dying, then her dying really loses a lot of its meaning. If she's reborn, and there's no ambiguity that she was, then death isn't traumatic so much as a mild inconvenience. If, in addition, the new character takes on a new name and a new personality, then you have the additonal complication of having essential a new character which the audience has an uncertain affinity for. After all, is the audience supposed to have any connection to this new incarnation of April Ryan, now known as Saga? In the game, you only play as Saga for roughly a half-hour of gameplay, most of which isn't particularly good gameplay at that. In terms of character, she basically is a new character, who doesn't give any hint to being April Ryan in a new incarnation. It's a mess.

For that matter, it also creates a problem at the end of the game, where she acts as little more than profoundly unsubtle Deus Ex Machina to help move the plot from the final crisis to the resolution. If there had been a clearer establishment of who Saga was, and how exactly she related to April Ryan, then I think that her showing up at the end like that would have felt earned. Hell, had you had April Ryan go through some transformative journey in that half-hour of gameplay that they gave to Saga sneaking around her parents as a toddler, then I think that would have tied things together well. Instead, it just feels a bit haphazard, like the writer realized that, too late, he had written the two lead characters of the story into a situation where they had no way of defeating the villains on their own, and needed someone to bail them out at the last minute.

I think, looking back, it's clear that since the writer had set up that April Ryan, or at least an aspect of her, had survived to old age in the first game, and that her death was at least mildly ambiguous in the second, not to mention that her not completely dying would have, in retrospect, made Zoe's mission of 'save April Ryan' seem somewhat less than a total failure, what should have happened was that all of the storybeats of Dreamfall Chapters could stay the same, but, instead of the reincarnation bullshit, just have April Ryan have to come to terms with something in a quasi after-life situation, and then finally return for the final act as April Ryan. I think that would have flowed better than what really happened, and I think that the fact that they didn't go that route speaks more to the creator of the game out-thinking himself, which is a problem for a lot of writers. Just because some is more clever doesn't make it better. A simple story well-told will still be effective.

And I say all of this, because, in the end, the Panderers-Doom series was a simple story. Whether it was well-told or not is up to you, I suppose. I defeated good, old Freezy Mike in Game Four, and advanced to the next round. In fact, I beat him so handily, that I don't think there's a lesson to be gleaned from this game other than I am just better than him when it comes to building teams. That is the simple story, and because it is simple, and because I didn't clutter it up, everyone can appreciate it. You don't have to marvel at the fancy way I told it, you can just look at the box score, and understand that I am better than Freezy Mike. And in the end, that is the most important lesson of them all.

Really, all the stuff about Dreamfall Chapters was just something I wanted to get off my chest, and because my team was so much better in Game Four, and the series as a whole, I had plenty of time to do just that.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 18:28

StupidSexyMothman: Aug 9, 2010

Goddrat that was depressing. I mean it's not wrong, not a word of it, and that is probably the most depressing part, but still. Jesus.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 19:40

Grinnblade: Sep 24, 2007

jesus christ smasher

# ? Jul 8, 2016 19:41

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# ? May 27, 2024 09:39

Smasher Dynamo: Oct 16, 2008; ~~Eternal~~ Commissioner of the Super League. A new avatar. A new age, of the same old embittered Smasher that failed to escape the bonds of the SL, FM3, Johnny Hopp and Eri Yoshida "The Knuckle Princess". "The flames of Smasher's ire scorch the skies... Igniting St. Bellhorn's funeral pyre."

Grinnblade posted:

jesus christ smasher

I know, man, I was disappointed in Dreamfall Chapters too.

# ? Jul 8, 2016 19:51

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