Thoughts, lists and other compulsive bits about baseball from comedian filmmaker television producer/Red Sox fan Paul Francis Sullivan....
feel free to call him “Sully.”
The beauty of baseball is that no matter how great you play or how painful the loss is, there is always a game the next day.
That beauty is on display tonight. After one of the worst games in the HISTORY of the Red Sox (that's saying something) the Sox and Yankees have to play again tonight.
They have to. It is in the schedule. There is no choice. It is the ESPN game.
But should we WATCH it?
I thought about tonight's game and it brought to mind a line Jeff Goldblum had in Jurassic Park.
When he was criticizing the casual use of awesome technology by Richard Attenborough's character he said "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
Well Red Sox fans... we COULD watch this game, but stop and think if you should.
It is Sunday night. Spend time with your family. There is good stuff on TV. Read a book. Get some sleep.
It was a bizarre night for Red Sox fans. The Sox blew a late lead and lost the 4 game series and the home finale to the supposedly lowly Orioles.
And the Yankees won a pair of games… once clinched a spot in the playoffs and the next clinched the American League East.
It’s a disaster… right? Well not really. Most days you would want to have your team carve 2 off of the Magic Number.
And oddly something good happened when the Yankees stunned the Rays twice and the Red Sox benefitted despite not doing anything positive.
Remind you of any movie? It’s the end of Jurassic Park!
(Spoiler Alerts for a movie that came out 18 years ago.)
Sam Neill, Laura Dern and the kids are trying to escape the raptors. No matter what they try, they can’t get away from them. Injured and exhausted they are surrounded by the resilient raptors who managed to open doors and sneak through vents to get them.
And then, when all hope is lost, how did the heroes win? By just standing there and letting the T-Rex eat the raptors. Now the T-Rex is bigger, scarier and earlier in the movie was the source of terror.
But in the end it was the very thing that saved their butts.
Here’s the analogy… The Rays are the raptors. Tough, sneaky and clever and probably scarier than you thought going into the movie.
The Yankees are the T-Rex. The scariest dinosaur from our childhood and the big beast that can crush anyone and fears no one.
The Red Sox are Sam Neill, Laura Dern and the kids. Just trying to survive and get on that helicopter off the island. They won even though they SHOULD have been eaten. And they escaped not because they outsmarted the raptor but because for an instant the overwhelming power of the T-Rex benefitted them.
One more week of games. We can’t keep counting on the T-Rex to save us.
Here is the scene for the 6 of you who never saw Jurassic Park.
I stumbled across this on YouTube. I love watching some of the cold opens and graphics of baseball telecasts. And ALL baseball fans should download old ballgames on iTunes.
But for the love of Roone Arledge how long is this opening sequence?
It opens well enough with the World Series trophy super imposed over Busch Stadium and Dick Enberg's great pipes introducing the game.
After that, it turns into a nightmare of 1980s graphics and disco music. Now I first learned how to shoot and cut video in the 1980s and I remember when graphics, titles and images became easily accessible.
And there was the temptation to use graphics and images all the time. But as Jeff Goldblum warned in Jurassic Park, they spent all the time wondering if they could use the technology but not enough thought if they SHOULD!
There's...
The light show around NBC Sports. (10 Seconds.) Yes, we know it's NBC Sports. We've already tuned in. Start the game already.
The busts of great baseball players molded evidently in Butterscotch. (20 Seconds.)
You've got a random collection with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb (who never won a World Series), someone who was either Joe DiMaggio or Fred MacMurray, Ted Williams (who flopped in his only World Series), Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial (the lone Cardinal in the montage), Willie Mays and Hank Aaron (who of course starred in Milwaukee and finished with the Brewers.)
Of course none were shown in action... just their heads moving... very... slowly.
Computer Baseball flies across the screen showing the 1982 World Series logo. (10 Seconds.)
45 seconds into this opening and we've established the event, the network and NONE of the players.
Meanwhile the words "World Series 1982" are evidently radioactive.
The Leagues swoosh across the screen along with the team names. (10 Seconds)
At least we are establishing who is playing... except that all of the info was effectively conveyed 10 seconds into this sequence.
The credits. THE CREDITS! (13 seconds.)
You know most of the time now they don't even run credits at the end of the show. But NBC Sports decided to have a longer opening credit sequence than Superman the Movie.
And while we are finally treated to clips of past World Series... they are scrunched and distorted into a tiny diamond in the middle of the screen... all to make sure that Harry Coyle and company get their names read.
I'm sure Harry did a great job... I just hope it wasn't Harry's decision to spend more time on the laser light show than showing clips of past World Series!
FLYING BASEBALL CARDS! (25 seconds.)
Finally we get to see the participants of the World Series about 1 minute and 22 seconds into this opening... and we get a bunch of baseball card flying across the stargate from the end of 2001.
No close ups and I think NBC can pull off some trades because there are some doubles in there!
And not only are the Brewers and Cardinals introduced with baseball cards that are too small to make out who the players are... they are using the 1982 Fleer series, which I have already declared as being one of the worst in baseball card history.
BACK TO THE LOGOS! (10 seconds.)
The ending is kind of appropriate. It is as if the graphics designer said "Yup, I just wasted 1 minute and 35 seconds of network air... and THIS IS THE NETWORK that I basically just F'ed around on."
And NOW a word from our sponsor?
Really? It never occurred to you while having baseball cards floating, Willie Mays' catch obscured by Len Stucker's credit and flying logos to maybe have the sponsors mentioned THEN???
By 2 minutes and 7 seconds we FINALLY are getting back to the baseball broadcast.
Were we more patient back then?
Or were we all getting chips?
Oh and nice touch by Dick Enberg at the end.
Enberg is a great announcer... but it is Tony KUBEK...not KO-beck.
There is a scene in the book version of Jurassic Park when one of the characters thinks the dinosaurs are breeding. The park supervisors claim they are monitoring the situation and the number of dinosaurs has remained constant.
However they find out that the computers are simply checking to see if the population decreased instead of increased. When they checked a new screen, they were stunned to find there were many MORE dinosaurs than they thought.
Why am I thinking of this scene from the book?
I was reminded of it today regarding the San Francisco Giants.
My dad has been e mailing me and talking up his Giants.
"They are looking good! How about my Giants?"
And I'd nod and say "Hey! They are above .500!" but not give them much thought.
Clearly they are not a playoff team. I'm living a quick drive down the 110 from Dodger Stadium. I see a lot of the Dodgers. They are running away with the NL West. A winning season would be a nice step in the right direction for the Giants, but they aren't a playoff contender yet.
Then today, I looked at the standings. As always, they are listed by divisions with the Giants a distant 7 games back of Los Angeles.
Then, for probably the first time this season, I clicked on the Wild Card Standings.
And it was exactly like that scene from the book, Jurassic Park.
The Giants weren't just having a winning season.
They are tied for a playoff spot!
I know it is too early to say "If the playoffs started today" but it isn't THAT early!
It's not April.
It's mid June and before you know it, it will be July and the trade deadline will be looming.
And if the playoffs started today, the Giants would have a one game playoff with the Cardinals.
And the Giants would start someone like Tim Lincecum or Matt Cain...
And with Barry Zito pitching better and Randy Johnson maybe having a little in the tank...
Who knows?
There may be more raptors than we thought.
Why the hell didn't Spielberg put that part in the movie? That was the best scene in the book!
(Yeah Sully... I'm sure when the movie became the biggest hit of all time, Spielberg was kicking himself for making that change!)
There is a moment in the first Jurassic Park film when Muldoon, the game warden, thinks he is about to kill one of he raptors terrorizing the heroes.
He has it in his sites and just before he pulls the trigger, he sees a second raptor is about to attack him.
At the very moment he knows he's about to be eaten he mutters "Clever girl" and then becomes lunch.
Well guess what? The Red Sox were poor Muldoon. And the Tampa Bay Rays were that raptor.
My boys had a 4-1 lead... they were going to avoid the sweep and quicker than that raptor attacked the lead was gone... and the best team in baseball is now up 5 games in the loss column.
No more underestimating Tampa Bay. Mentioning their past is as relevant as chanting 19-18.
