Woody wrote:"Listen here you beautiful bitch, I'm about to $#@! you up with some truth." -- ph-f**king-dave

Sig'd for truth

My stinkbug sense is telling me this question may have been asked before, but is Happy Pete the worst player in baseball?

WheelsFellOff wrote:My stinkbug sense is telling me this question may have been asked before, but is Happy Pete the worst player in baseball?

I dunno, but I thought this was funny:

According to the ESPN Player Rater, Feliz has a rating of 3.0 entering play Friday.

I read that as ESPN Player Hater at first.

Lenny Dykstra is a l33t haxx0r

TheFrank wrote:

I believe I've come across multiple cases where a landlord tried to steal a renter's chandeleer. Slam dunk case, if I recall correctly.

So, in one of my random trips through baseball-reference, initially to look at the Phillies attendance in 1981 and see what it projected to had they played 81 home games instead of the 55 or whatever they did play because of the strike, I got to looking at 1981 playoff game attendances. That year, a special playoff format called for an extra round of playoffs (baseball-reference calls these NLDSes and ALDSes, which to me is misleading, because they really don't have much to do with the later permanent playoff format devised for the wildcard era).

Anyway, perhaps unsurprisingly for a "made up" playoff format following a strike which certainly, I am sure, turned fans off as the strike did in 1994, the attendances at these special playoff games were not great. The Phillies didn't sell out a single one, and really didn't come within 30,000 of a sellout in two of the three games.

Anyway, this led me to look at the NLCS that year, which is the real point of my post. The Phils lost their series to the Expos, and so the Expos made their one and only trip to the NLCS that year. They split the two games in Los Angeles with the Dodgers, and came home for the final three. They won the first to bring themselves within one win of the World Series. Here are the attendances for the three games in Montreal:

Game 3 (first in Montreal): 54,372 (Expos win 4-1, take 2-1 series lead)
Game 4 (second in Monreal): 54,499 (Expos lose 7-1, series tied)
Game 5 (third in Montreal): 36,491 (Expos lose game 2-1 and series 3-2)

I mean, this is why I had to post. Doesn't that third number just pop off the page? This was a fifth and deciding game, the Expos, with a win, would go to the World Series. They led the game 1-0 even until the 5th, and the game was tied going into the 9th. 54,000 fans had turned up for the first two game - why not the last game, with a trip to the World Series on the line? What the hell happened between game 4 and game 5 to cause such a dramatic dropoff in attendance? I've got to research this.

Don't blame me. I was there in '81.

I went to one of those in near hurricane conditions. Effing Steve Rogers.

the series vs. the Expos that is.

They didn't have the dome yet and game 5, originally on a Sunday, was rained out, so it was played on a Monday afternoon. I'm guessing the first two games had huge walk-ups and the last one didn't because it was freezing and everyone went back to work...?

JFLNYC wrote:Don't blame me. I was there in '81.

Don't blame phdave either, he was at work.

Don't blame me. I was in kindergarten.

BigEd76 wrote:They didn't have the dome yet and game 5, originally on a Sunday, was rained out, so it was played on a Monday afternoon. I'm guessing the first two games had huge walk-ups and the last one didn't because it was freezing and everyone went back to work...?

Evidently. Read through some articles on LexisNexis, etc. I mean, part of what bothers me is that wouldn't people who had purchased tickets for game 5 on Sunday still have a valid ticket for the following day? In other words, the ticket should still have been good despite the rainout, so they should still have sold all those seats.

Just surprising to me that the game wasn't sold out well in advance. Suddenly I now wonder if the Phillies were having to hope for walk-up sales to the NLCSes from 9176-1978 and in 1980 and 1983. The Phils' attendance in 1983 was pretty abysmal, and frankly that team wasn't really all that good, so most of the tickets they sold to the playoff games were obviously done on an individual basis, rather than to season ticket holders.

Further evidence, however, that baseball was really in a malaise that began in the mid-50s and didn't really end until the mid-80s, which was then further interrupted by the strike of 1994. Since 1998, though, things have been better.

BigEd76 wrote:They didn't have the dome yet and game 5, originally on a Sunday, was rained out, so it was played on a Monday afternoon. I'm guessing the first two games had huge walk-ups and the last one didn't because it was freezing and everyone went back to work...?

BigEd76 wrote:Don't blame me, I was in kindergarten.

Wait a minute. If you were in kindergarten, how did you know the answer to that question so quickly?

I've seen that game replayed on MLBN. I didn't start following the Phils until the '83 WS...

BigEd76 wrote:I've seen that game replayed on MLBN. I didn't start following the Phils until the '83 WS...

Yeah, my parents say I watched the 1983 NLCS (and I guess the World Series), but I don't remember it at all

My first real baseball memories are from 1986, and really one series in particular are the first memories I have of the Phillies. I remember we were down the shore visiting my grandparents for the weekend of September 12, 13, and 14. My whole family was together and very much into the idea that the Phillies should not lose and allow the Mets to clinch the NL East in Philadelphia. Amazingly, the Mets that year were so far out in front that their magic number was 2 to begin the series, so the Phillies had to sweep the Mets to prevent that from happening.

The Phillies did sweep, and thus began my lifelong love affair with the Phillies, and my lifelong hate affair with the Mets.

Here's something hella random: remembering that 1986 season and series sweep of the Mets, I took a look at the standings to try to determine if the Phillies would have made the playoffs that year had the wildcard format had been in place. The Phillies did not play one scheduled game at the end of the season because of weather, which would have been in Philadelphia in September with the last place Cubs. Thus, they finished 86-75. This gave them a half-game lead over the Reds, who finished 86-76, so, had the wild card been in place, the Phils would have had to play that game against the Cubs to determine if there would be a one-game playoff or not. It's interesting to note that the Phillies were the only team in 1986 that had a winning record against the Mets.

Anyway, this caused me to look at the two games of that Cubs series that WERE played, and look what I found: Greg Maddux beating his brother Mike in front of 14,355 fans in Philadelphia. Nifty.

Weird to see Maddux with such a terrible ERA. It was his first season but still.

I originally posted this in the wrong thread but anyway...

Wheels Tupay wrote:http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=sh-redspadres092410

Aroldis Chapman(notes) was summoned from the bullpen one batter too late to make a difference in the game. No matter. The 22-year-old Cincinnati Reds left-hander made do by making history Friday night, throwing the fastest pitch recorded in a major league game, a 105-mph fastball.

Seriously, is it possible to hit a 105 pitch? Is there enough reaction time?

“I didn’t see it until the ball was behind me,” Gwynn said. “I was trying not to look at the radar reading because I’d be intimidated. I saw how hard he was throwing and just tried to be slow and work my hands.”

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