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This is the smoothest slide you're ever gonna see by Trea Turner. #Dodgers
— Dodgers Nation (@DodgersNation) August 11, 2021
Trea Turner’s slide into home looks like a number from one of those 1960s musicals with dancing Cockney workmen, such as Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and Oliver!. I expect that after he popped up, he told the umpire, “Thanks, guv’nor.”
Whatever happened to Cockneys? When I was a kid (as you may recall, I starred as Oliver Twist’s grandfather Mr. Brownlow in the 1970 St. Francis de Sales production of Oliver!, utilizing my main performing talent, tallness), they were the most prestigious working class people on Earth.
The story behind why Turner, who is said to be the fastest runner of any major league regular, is suddenly on the Los Angeles Dodgers is part of baseball’s rich-get-richer trend where mediocre teams suddenly give up and trade all their star veterans to contenders for prospects. So the Washington Nationals, who had won the World Series in 2019, decided a few weeks ago to give up, so they traded for prospects a likely Hall of Fame pitcher Max Scherzer and their wonderful shortstop Trea Turner (a career .300 hitter with 18 homers so far this season) to the already loaded Dodgers.
The current thinking is why go 73-89 when you can go 53-109 and get ready to contend in a few years?
The Dodgers, in contrast, really ought to win a second straight World Series. But they are 1-12 in extra inning games this year (their standout strength is a high team on-base percentage, but the recent rule where a runner is automatically placed at second base to begin each extra inning negates that strength). So they are in second place to the SF Giants, who seem like a Team of Destiny, which foreshadows a more perilous route through the postseason.
If you win one of the three regional divisions, you are seeded into the second round of the playoffs, but the 4th and 5th place finishers (likely Los Angeles and San Diego or Milwaukee) face off in a one game first round playoff, so having an all-time great pitcher like Scherzer to start that one game can be the difference between going home and a long run deep into October.
The Dodgers may have more white star players than any team since maybe the 1987-1991 Minnesota Twins:
And the above is not counting guys who have been hurt and/or bad this year like 2019 MVP Cody Bellinger of the big but erratic swing and 2020 World Series MVP Cory Seager (now back from a broken hand), plus the two new arrivals from Washington, Scherzer and Turner.
On the other hand, the ancient Dominican Albert Pujols has had, to my surprise, a ton of RBIs for the Dodgers after the L.A. Angels released him, and the young Venezuelan Brusdar Graterol struck out Shohei Ohtani in the clutch with a 102 mph fastball.
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So Cuomo changed his named to Turner, but is also a tranny, thus the clearly female name Trea? At least Steve is keeping up with news.
Justifies the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn.
Don’t sleep on the Padres.
I had also expected this to be about the Son of Sfaccim.
Apropos,
Might the late Ambrose Bierce have defined sexual harassment thusly?
Beautiful slide and wonderful player, but the fact that the Nats felt they had to dump him and this idiotic ghost runner rule are two reasons that my interest in MLB is fading. Yet another institution that will have to be destroyed and rebuilt, come the revolution
Sucks as a Nats fan to send away a player this young, fun and good. F the Lerner family.
Slick, but I still prefer manly …
Nats GM Mike Rizzo will just sign two more latinos and pay them each 1/4 of what Turner was making!!! The Nats will be 100% latino very soon 🙁
Wait…, what?!?
Many of the female harassment claims were minor and dumbed down. The common female dilemma of today. Being attracted to working for the pseudo-macho man, the can do man. Then when he spins out a few minor sexual one liners, they get mightily offended. Offended for real or not? No one knows, and of course not even the woman. Because she is of two minds about it all, stuck in fluctuating excitements and assessments of her boss, the man, in this case Cuomo. All in all what a laugh and few day’s entertainment from the Democrap party.
Cuomo should get away from this all, move to Florida and buy a swinging bachelor pad (actually ritzy a house) where he can offend girlfriends to his hearts content. The type that don’t mind being offended for pretend, in sexual jousting. For sure Florida to escape the New York State mad taxation rates that he hates too. Bonus, lots of retired mafia there to pal around with.
So we see what brought him down. It was not his criminality of sending ancient senior Covid19 sufferers into nursing homes to spread the Cov19. Cuomo racked up 8000 dead or more this way. What a man! Though the offended called him a pig, with lousy (sexual) one liners. Dated, uncool one liners which really got them steamed. A regular Henny Youngman he wuz, yes he wuz. At least in his own mind.
Like a tree
In which there are three Democrats."
Actually the whole Cuomo business is not about sexual harassment issues at all, it is about backstage Party comings and goings, but really now, from henceforth who cares? Ever since the January coup, we now live under a permanent one-party regime and effectively a faceless Jewish junta (and it would not be the first evil Jewish dictatorship my family has seen). There will never be real elections in this country ever again, so why bother reading tea leaves when we can just make a smidgen of iced tea? They'll come for that too, soon enough.
https://youtu.be/4Fj2B9z4DbwReplies: @NJ Transit Commuter, @SunBakedSuburb, @68W58
As a Phillies fan, I’ve always wondered how much Rose’s play against Fossey influenced the most influential win in Phillies history a decade later.
No matter how much I explain to my college student son, there is no way to explain how much more violent and pure 20th century sports were.
On the T Turner play, give Bryce Harper some love for the great throw that necessitated the slide.
Cryptic Sailer.
I like how he seems to shoehorn in a little Moonwalk at the end. No homo.
Would have interesting to see how long a young Pete could have kept up such a slide had he started out doing it.
“Because she is of two minds about it all, stuck in fluctuating excitements and assessments of her boss,”
Or as Mr. Stevens would say…..
“I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three Democrats.”
Actually the whole Cuomo business is not about sexual harassment issues at all, it is about backstage Party comings and goings, but really now, from henceforth who cares? Ever since the January coup, we now live under a permanent one-party regime and effectively a faceless Jewish junta (and it would not be the first evil Jewish dictatorship my family has seen). There will never be real elections in this country ever again, so why bother reading tea leaves when we can just make a smidgen of iced tea? They’ll come for that too, soon enough.
Globalism. It ruins everything.
I can only imagine that having Trea Turner at the plate is a mind-f’ing experience to a pitcher. You’ve got to get this guy out or else he might humiliate you.
The trade deadline dates too far into the season for my “don’t really care” taste. Compare it to that ridiculous NCAA rule whereby a transfer has to sit out the next season.
MLB might as well go all the way and eliminate the deadline.
The team that will eventually go up against LAD for the wildcard should be allowed, up til the Play ball! of that game, to buy Scherzer away from them, and start him.
https://youtu.be/4Fj2B9z4DbwReplies: @NJ Transit Commuter, @SunBakedSuburb, @68W58
“Slick, but I still prefer manly …”
Football is brute force, no grace. This is why I, a former high school/college football player, prefer to watch baseball if I’m going to squander any precious time on corporate sports. The precision skill set required for baseball along with the athletic grace displayed by that home plate slide is akin to ballet without having to endure the dreaded bottom half of the male dancer’s costume.
Clyde, I want a criminal investigation and I want him stripped of his pension. I wonder if he has a car? He has been at the trough so long he probably doesn’t have either a car or a home. He can live with his mom.
Yankees loaded up again for a stretch run, adding Rizzo and Gallo. Two paisans like the old days. I watched the other night and they rotated pitchers in every couple innings. Still need solid pitching over an occasional HR.
Yeah it’s very telling about our society that the whining of females who feel rejected by the alpha is more important than cold blooded murder of thousands of elderly people
Cuomo needs the two weeks to find a place or face bunking down with Chris or Mama C. But he has wheels — he is well known to fancy his sports cars, zipping around his kingdom on weekends rather than studying policy papers in Albany.
I suspect the 14 days also are needed to shred more papers and keep his legal help on the state’s tab rather than his own pockets.
Good memories. With the passing of JR Richard last week I was reminded of this series. The Phillies were fortunate that Richard was unavailable due to the stroke he had suffered that season.
On the T Turner play, give Bryce Harper some love for the great throw that necessitated the slide.
I missed the original context of this story about a mass superspreading event for some sporting franchise — a real “corpore”/“public” health conundrum — but do know Steve sometimes changes around the published story after it goes live, which would be very Minitrue/Wikipedian on his part except for the oblique samizdat hints of what the original post was about, viz. the racial disgrace of NY Governorship from early Lerner-Loewe period to current greaseball Gotterdammerung
I don’t remember when exactly I lost that level of nimbleness but it’s definitely been gone for a long long time. Lost on the young etc…
Would have interesting to see how long a young Pete could have kept up such a slide had he started out doing it.
Joe, this is what the numbers are telling the managers, try to have your 1-3 starters go 7, and the other two rotation spots are like 3 or 4 ip max.
https://www.fanchants.com/football-songs/leeds-chants/cockney-batard/
Nothing to see here, move right along. Dinger after dinger!!
KF, didn’t know about cuomo and his penchant for sports cars. maybe he will plow into the back end of a tractor trailer and the dems and the left will send him off in george floyd fashion.
Didn’t expect me previous post to have such a quick impact in the Dodgers’ bleachers, which I think is what you call terraces
Don’t know if this was intentional on Steve’s part, but it’s actually Brusdar Graterol.
The 1987 Twins have the worst record of any team to win the Series. Several AL East clubs had more wins at the end of September than Minnesota had at the end of October. Only because Milwaukee, which is slightly farther west than Chicago, was placed in the East “division” were the Twins able to finish in mock first place.
That year’s Detroit-Toronto race, one of the century’s best, was rendered meaningless. The Twins clinched their division of losers with a week to go, then went on holiday, losing every game scheduled thereafter. Whoever survived the Tiger-Jay battle was bound to be exhausted.
1987 was one of the worst seasons in American League history. Only the October collapse of the record-setting 2001 Mariners comes close.
“The current thinking is why go 73-89 when you can go 53-109 and get ready to contend in a few years?”
And thats called hookwinking the public and pocketing the revenue. PIT used that same thinking for 20 yrs during an MLB record setting 20 consecutive seasons of sub .500 ball.
This isn’t without precedent. After winning the AL pennant in 1910, ’11, 13, and ’14, HOF M PHI Connie Mack concerned about the coming Federal League (and possible bidding war to keep his MLB stars), promptly sold off several key players of his team, or allowed them to depart to the Federal League. From 1915-21, the A’s finished in last place seven consecutive seasons.
After rebounding in the late ’20’s and winning the AL pennant in 1929, ’30, and ’31, at the height of Depression and strapped for cash, Mack once again sold off his star players over a 2-3 yr span. Beginning in 1935 the A’s didn’t finish in the first division until 1948.
Apparently for some franchises, maintaining revenue at all costs trumps winning every time. And, PHI wasn’t then (and certainly isn’t now) a small market team.
Cockneys are in Essex now, bruv.
Great slide. It was showoffish and show-upping of the other side, but hey, it was pretty.
Too bad the traitor didn’t do it…on his knees.
Saurez’ slide in the 9th Tuesday night against the Braves was beautiful. Though he was 20′ short of the bag.
https://youtu.be/4Fj2B9z4DbwReplies: @NJ Transit Commuter, @SunBakedSuburb, @68W58
You can see Rose start to slide and then it looks like the bat is in his way. Fosse was never the same, but I think Pete may get some unfair blame for that play.