Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

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Your loser update: May 16, 2025.

Friday, May 16th, 2025

We’re about 25% of the way through the MLB season, so I thought it was time to do a loser update.

The question is: what teams are worth covering?

The Braves, which started out horribly, are now 22-22, for a .500 average. I don’t think they’re worth considering in the loser update any longer unless there’s a dramatic change.

There are some teams that are below .400 that might be worth consideration:

Baltimore is at 15-27, for a .357 winning percentage.

The Miami Marlins are at 16-26, .381.

Pittsburgh, the first team this season to fire their manager, is at 15-29, .341.

The Chicago White Sox are at 14-30, for a .318 winning percentage. This projects out to 110 losses, which is bad, but not historically bad, and at least better than last year.

And the Colorado Rockies…7-36, .163 winning percentage. This is bad. This is historically bad. This is a projected total of 135 losses. This is the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network publishing an article:

“Are Rockies worse than 2024 White Sox? Breaking down the numbers”.

The 2024 Sox lost 121 games, but didn’t quite nail down the “worst team in the modern era” mark. Could the Rockies accomplish what the Sox didn’t? Hope springs eternal.

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 12, 2025.

Monday, May 12th, 2025

Hattip to pigpen51 for letting us know about the death of Chet Lemon, center fielder for the Detroit Tigers. ESPN.

Lemon played seven seasons with the Chicago White Sox from 1975 to ’81 and nine with the Tigers from 1982 to ’90. He batted .273 with 215 homers, 884 RBIs, 973 runs and 1,875 hits in 1,988 games.
Lemon set a still-standing American League record for outfielders with 512 putouts during the 1977 season.
He led the American League with 44 doubles in 1979 and made the All-Star teams in 1978, 1979 and 1984.

Baseball Reference.

Johnny Rodriguez, musician. NYT (archived).

Terry Brunk, who used the professional name “Sabu” in his wrestling career. He mostly worked with Extreme Championship Wrestling, though he did spend one year with W.W.E.

Although widely remembered for his use of props and tables in the ring, Mr. Sabu was wary of professional wrestling’s spectacle. He would go on to criticize the larger-than-life stunts that would come to define later iterations of the W.W.E. and other wrestling promotion companies.
“In an Olympic match, you cannot stack a couple tables and then climb something and jump off. That’s a stunt,” Mr. Brunk told an interviewer with Covalent TV at Wrestlecade 2024. “I’m not a stuntman or an actor.”

Somewhat related: a NYT article about wrestlers who died young.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Out of the black…

Monday, May 12th, 2025

On Saturday, general manager of the Colorado Rockies Bill Schmidt came out in support of manager Bud Black.

“I think our guys are still playing hard, and that’s what I look at,” Schmidt told the Post. “Guys are working hard every day, they come with energy, for the most part. I don’t think we are [at that point of firing Black]. Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed. We are all frustrated.”

Saturday night, the Rockies lost to the San Diego Padres…21-0.

Sunday, the Rockies fired Bud Black. Also out: bench coach Mike Redmond.

Black was in his ninth year as Rockies manager and had a career record with Colorado of 544-690. He is the winningest manager in franchise history.

I have been planning to do a loser update later this week. I’ve been waiting until we got to about the 25 percent mark in the season. However, I will say that right now, the Rockies are 7-33, for a .175 winning percentage. If my projections are correct, and this holds up for the rest of the season, I estimate that they will lose 133 games. Which would not just be “historically bad”, but would be the worst percentage in the modern era.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Walking the plank.

Thursday, May 8th, 2025

The baseball season doesn’t really start until the ceremonial throwing out of the first manager.

Derek Shelton out as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

12-26 so far this season, for a .316 winning percentage. Not great, but better than the White Sox and Rockies.

306-440 in “five plus” seasons, according to ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 25, 2025.

Friday, April 25th, 2025

Lawrence sent over an obit for Steve McMichael, legendary Chicago Bear.

Though somewhat small for a defensive lineman at 6 feet 2 inches and 270 pounds, McMichael possessed immense strength and slippery quickness. He starred on a defense that included three other future Hall of Famers: the defensive ends Hampton and Dent and the linebacker Mike Singletary. He played in 191 consecutive games for the Bears and 12 more in the playoffs, a franchise record.

…

McMichael reveled in an exaggerated, untamed persona. His nicknames included Ming the Merciless, after the tyrant in “Flash Gordon,” and Mongo, after the dimwitted ruffian who punches out a horse in the Mel Brooks comedy “Blazing Saddles.”

Lulu Roman, perhaps most famous for “Hee Haw”.

Roman appeared on the first episode of CBS’ Hee Haw in June 1969 and on the last one, with the show in syndication, in June 1993. During its impressive run, she reinvented herself as a gospel singer, and she would release more than a dozen albums, perform in concert and record with the likes of Dolly Parton. (Watch and hear her sing “Crazy” here).

IMDB.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Sunday, April 20th, 2025

So I guess yesterday was the NHL equivalent of the NFL’s “Bloody Monday”.

Peter Laviolette out as head coach of the New York Rangers.

The Rangers are now searching for their fourth coach since 2021, with Laviolette joining a list of fired bench bosses that includes David Quinn and Gerard Gallant.

Also out: “associate coach” Phil Housley.

Greg Cronin out as coach of the Anaheim Ducks.

The Ducks were 35-37-10 (80 points) with a .488 points percentage. While that was an improvement over last season (27-50-5, 59 points), it wasn’t enough to bring Cronin back after two seasons behind the bench. Anaheim missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Sun Sweat.

Monday, April 14th, 2025

The Suns are sweating.

As much as I prefer to quote local news sources, I can’t pass up the way the Post put it:

The Suns have fired head coach Mike Budenholzer after they finished with a 36-46 record, didn’t sniff a playoff-clinching top-six seed and missed the play-in tournament by three games.

AZCentral:

The Suns closed a disappointing 36-46 season on April 13 at Sacramento that began with championship expectations for the NBA’s first $400 million team with three max players in Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. It ended with Phoenix missing the playoffs for the first time since 2019-20.
Booker, Durant and Beal are due a combined $150 million this season.

Budenholzer coached for one season. He took over after Frank Vogel was fired.

Phoenix has been paying Vogel, who signed a five-year, $31-million deal.

Post:

It’s the third consecutive season that Phoenix has fired its head coach, as Monty Williams was canned after a 45-37 season the year before Vogel took over.

And ESPN, for the record.

Also fired: David Griffin, executive VP of the Pelicans.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

Tuesday, April 8th, 2025

Michael Malone out as head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Also gone: general manager Calvin Booth.

Malone went 471-327 in ten seasons as coach. There are three games left in the NBA regular season, and Denver is in fourth place in the Western Conference.

More from ESPN, which is spinning Booth’s termination as “not extending his contract” rather than a firing.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

This one goes out to pigpen51.

Tuesday, April 8th, 2025

We run a full service blog here. And this time, we remembered to stop and get photos on our way out of town.

Even better, the weather on Monday was actually nice, after dealing with cold, rain, and overcast from Wednesday night through Sunday night.

Interestingly (well, to me) the Billy Sims Barbecue we went to on our last trip has moved. The new location replaces a shabu-shabu place that both Mike the Musicologist and I liked. And it looked like whatever went in where the old location was has also closed.

But: they did take the statue with them. There’s a large empty plinth in front of the old location, though. I’m not sure what you can do with an empty plinth, other than put a replacement statue on it. But given there’s nothing at that location right now…

Posted in NFL, Photography, Sports | 1 Comment »

Travel update.

Sunday, April 6th, 2025

Travel day tomorrow for the return, so probably light blogging unless someone important dies or something major happens.

In the meantime, Atlanta won Friday night. There are now no teams that can go 0-162, but the Braves are 1-8, for a .111 winning percentage. Projecting that out over the season, it comes out to 136 losses.

Our trip has been successful, but we did end our day early. Not so much out of exhaustion (at least for me) but because people started packing up around noon. While we didn’t see everything, we came closer than we did last year and probably could have seen it all, except by 2:15 PM diminishing returns had set in: there were so many empty tables and so many people packing and leaving that we decided it wasn’t worth it to explore the rest of the unexplored country.

While I don’t like discussing other people’s purchases, I will say that our VRBO could also now be known as the Winchester Mystery House. I will also say, at some point, folks will see the return of another one of this blog’s peculiar obsessions.

Posted in Guns, Loser, Sports, Travel | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: April 4, 2025.

Friday, April 4th, 2025

Still on the road, but have time to get in a quick one.

MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:

Atlanta Braves

Atlanta, which I’ve always thought to be a generally good team, is 0-7 right now. But it looks like they play the Marlins tonight, and are pretty heavy favorites.

Posted in Loser, Sports | 1 Comment »

Unbearable.

Friday, March 28th, 2025

Taylor Jenkins is out as head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies.

Six seasons, 250-214 overall, and 9-14 in the playoffs.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

Your loser update: March 28, 2025.

Friday, March 28th, 2025

The MLB season started yesterday. I guess? Sort of? Apparently, the Cubs and Dodgers played two regular season games in Japan a week or so ago, and the Cubs dropped both?

Shows how much I follow baseball.

Anyway, MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:

Tampa Bay Rays
Toronto Blue Jays
Minnesota Twins
Kansas City Royals
Detroit Tigers
Texas Rangers
City to be named later Athletics
Los Angeles Angels
New York Mets
Washington Nationals
Atlanta Braves
Pittsburgh Pirates
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
Colorado Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks

The Cleveland Indians Guardians won, which is nice. But Lawrence still hasn’t taken me up on my offer to bet $5 on the Guardians to win the World Series. Houston won, which is nice. And shockingly, the White Sox actually won. ESPN picked them to be the worst team in MLB this season, but could they be worse than last year? I think that would be hard.

Posted in Loser, Sports | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

Tuesday, March 25th, 2025

Stanford hit the reset button on their football program.

I mean that semi-literally.

“Since beginning my role as General Manager, I have been thoroughly assessing the entire Stanford football program. It has been clear that certain aspects of the program need change,” Stanford football general manager Andrew Luck said in a statement. “Additionally, in recent days, there has been significant attention to Stanford investigations in previous years related to Coach Taylor.
“After continued consideration it is evident to me that our program needs a reset. In consultation with university leadership, I no longer believe that Coach Taylor is the right coach to lead our football program. Coach Taylor has been informed today and the change is effective immediately.”

Per the linked article, Troy Taylor had back-to-back 3-9 seasons. But the bigger problem seems to be: he was a jerk.

According to documents obtained by ESPN, the investigations began after multiple employees filed complaints against Taylor for what they called hostile and aggressive behavior, as well as personal attacks, the reports said. The school hired Kate Weaver Patterson, of KWP Consulting & Mediation, to investigate in spring 2023.
After the first investigation, Taylor signed a warning letter on Feb. 14, 2024, acknowledging he could be fired if the conduct continued, according to the documents. Additional complaints were documented in a second investigation that ended last July 24, but Taylor remained on the job.
The second investigation cited evidence “that this is an ongoing pattern of concerning behavior by Coach Taylor.” It was conducted last June and July by Timothy O’Brien, senior counsel for the Libby, O’Brien, Kingsley & Champion law firm in Maine. O’Brien, who has advised several Division I and Power 5 programs, said in his report that he has never encountered “this palpable level of animosity and disdain” for a university compliance office.

…

He called Taylor’s treatment of the team’s compliance officer “inappropriate, discriminatory on the basis of her sex,” saying it had a “significant negative impact” on the staffer. O’Brien concluded that Taylor retaliated against the compliance staffer by “seeking her removal from her assigned duties” after she raised concerns about NCAA rules violations related to illegal practices and player eligibility.

…

One source with direct knowledge told ESPN that Taylor has “lost the locker room.” Two sources told ESPN that Taylor’s behavior extended beyond athletic department and compliance office staff and onto the field.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

Sunday, March 23rd, 2025

More than $5 worth of entertainment indeed.

Rodney Terry fired as University of Texas men’s basketball coach.

He coached for two seasons, but I can’t find an overall record. Texas was 19-16 this season, 6-12 in conference, and lost their first game in the NCAA tournament to Xavier.

ESPN, who is spinning it more as Texas is going to hire Sean Miller…the current coach at Xavier.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

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