Halos Heaven

I agree...especially on the close-up of it, where you can see the subtle red outline of the diamond.

I'm curious about Torii's new leg kick he said he was adding to his swing. Hopefully it works for him as well as it has during the spring.

Torii doing his best Captain Morgan?

He's definitely got a little Capt. in him...but in a ST game last week, he was talking to Hud and Phyz about how he's trying to add a little Kirby Puckett-ish leg kick. Seems to have helped so far, but ST is not Regular Season.

I spy a new name for Hunter...."The Captain"

Mose

Swinging Hahahaha

Ha. "Mose"...anybody watch The Office? Dwight's cousin Mose...could be apt for Mosely

well, i love the office.

anyway, mose is too country for mose, if you know what i mean

Whoever chose Morales in pre-game picks for 1st to make 3B...

…you are winners (not me).

Damn it's been too long

I had forgotten that I even made picks

As per Gameday, Mose showing good velocity

Fastball is consistently in the 90-92 mph range. Last year his velocity was down due to the ulnar nerve surgery he had done in October 2007.

Fan Since 1981 - April 2, 2009 reply

Blake steals cheese from Moseley

44FAN - April 2, 2009 reply

Howie...

…don’t understand looking at a 3rd strike like that.

Come on Vladi

Nice K x2

Where'd everybody go?

Scully putting everybody to sleep? i’m getting close..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.........

He's putting me to sleep. I no like him.

He needs to be taken care of out in the woods, Miller’s Crossing style.

Ease up on The Vin, guys.

It was HIS voice that carried the game into the present era. He had to message the game through pocket transistor radios. Now that we are in the podcast era, with chronic ADHD needs to be fed in a sport designed for spawning boredom, we should still respect the guys who carried the beer before us.

Respect and liking him are 2 different things

Different strokes, I guess

But if you hate on the Vin, you’re Just Plain Wrong.

scareduck - April 2, 2009 reply

hating on vin

and falling asleep listening to him ramble are two different things..

Word.

Being lulled into the quiet bliss of sleep is one thing.

Waking back up to complain to us about it is hatin’.

in all fairness

i never fell asleep. i’m just having trouble keeping my attention focused on the game..

Stirrups...c'mon man.

I thought you were an Angels fan.

You’ve been on game threads before…yet you’re surprised about us HAVING to listen to Vin “please crush my” Scully?

I grew up the only Halo fan among 9 other family members bleeding blue.

Tough years, man. Tough years. But I had to admit, most of the time the best brand of baseball came to me through the voice of Vin Scully.

As my co-screenwriter on Switch Hit, I will look past that.

Stay focused.

I’m now committed to sneaking in some Scully cameo in Switch Hit 2: Crossed Up!

As long as he's humiliated somehow.

Have him interview Huddy?

+1!

That would be fantastic!

Clutch - April 2, 2009 reply

I get it. I'm not an idiot....I GET IT.

But just like Chick Hearn…it’s better to burn out than to fade away.

yeah, you old guys stick up for each other, don't you?

kisses hee hee hee

That's what I was gonna say...you know someones old when they say "everybody has ADHD nowadays"

No Country For Old Men

Directed at Stirrups and Mayhem I presume?

No. No, no, no, no,noooooooooo....

sounded like yes to me

Oof.

Clutch - April 2, 2009 reply

stirrups only

I think mayhem’s young enough to be my son

Ha!!!

I thinkI wil just pull up a chair and watch…or snooze again.

coherent english to follow upon termination of fatigue...

oh hell

it isn’t much to watch. Stirrups can kick my ass in the debate area any day. I just get my tiny jabs in every once in a while

ok then...

(yawn)

ladybug is easily defeated. just type the word B E E R.

...you're saying she goes down easy?

That is kinda rude.

+1!

B E E R!

IPA!

(changed bait)

You missed my point.

We typed the word, and she evaporated.

You should have used IPA before I used B E E R.

Well, it's still spring training.

i’ll keep it in mind for the regular season.

Ladies and Germs...I present to you...MANNY...IN...A...CONTRACT YEAR!!!!!!!!

He actually trys.

Hey look! Spring Training officially over! Strained hammy miraculously cured!!

No kidding...a couple days ago he's "behind schedule". Now he's running full speed from 1st to home just fine. I smell drama, Dodger fans!

Gotta love the Doyers' walk music

Except for the part where they don’t actually walk like men…

Clutch - April 2, 2009 reply

well the angels offense has definitely left arizona

ihearhowie2.0 - April 2, 2009 reply

I think it STAYED there

scareduck - April 2, 2009 reply

Doug's bat sniffing

almost puts Juan to shame.

TheTypingFiend - April 2, 2009 reply

Nice hit, Izzy.

Izzy looked better as frosty tips, Jr.

I still like my share of Izzy.

Queitly effective, while we keeping looking at all the bright, shiny prospects.

I agree in general. He is one of the Halos best clutch hitters.

Attendance guess...15,000?

Lots of empty seats.

its the 5th inning

are the la fans still on their way? or have they just left already? lmao..

No shyte. And those faded pastel seat colors make the empty stands look even less appealing.

Revised estimat after crowd shot...

25K.

Abreu looks like an old man carved into a pumpkin.

Gourd-o

im digging arredondo's buzzcut

I'm not digging his pitching...

and soooooooo it goooooooes

with maaaanny ramirez.. holy crap..

We need some big hits now Angels.

44FAN - April 2, 2009 reply

ewww

what was that?

that was

vintage vlad.. but hey, its still ST right?

First Halo game on TV for me this year...

…and it looks pretty much like where we left off last year.

So what the hell was all that noise coming out of Tempe?

The housing market in its final collapse?

us beating the living daylight of inexpereinced retards who are drunk half the time they pitch

no examples, but main point is ST doesn’t matter AT ALL.

I'll bet it sure the hell matters to Brandon Wood.

I don't even know you anymore.(throws expensive plate against the wall, dramatically)

Considering your standing threat to drop more bombshell photos on our unsuspecting eyes...

that might not be such a bad exclamation to make in public well beforehand!

"Standing threat"..don't give him any ideas a la the "luxirously reposed" Kelvim Escobar...

You guys just got yourself a season full of "sack"!!!

FIRES OF AGONY RAGING THROUGH MY BRAIN!!!

Drink deep...it always goes down easy.

Now your picking on ladybug again.

IPA! IPA! IPA!

Vintage GMJ.

The more things change…

Well, this hasn't been good.

Fortunately, I’m here, and we can score now. :-P

'bout time. The "excitement" is trying to think of anything to stay awake.

Nuts.

Seems pretty familiar doesn’t it? We’ve put 10 men on base in 7 innings, but only one has crossed the plate.

Stirrups made that point about 10 comments up.

Regular season form has returned? I hope not.

Too quick to say after just one game.

They’ll get shut down every once in a while. It’s the nature of the game. Certainly one bad outing doesn’t outweigh everything they showed in Tempe.

And notice that Mayem ain't throwing any plates at Zu.

fickle.

Mayhem is snoozing

you'd think the commercials would wake him up.

Also, I said it nicer. :-P

And I’m better looking, so I can get away with more.

being better looking than me is a pretty low bar to set for oneself.

I don't recall putting "than Stirrups" in my sentence.

unnecessary within the context of the subject.

It appears that way,

but still gives me the out. I’m also sneakier. >_>

point taken

Fuentes in during the 7th.

Gotta be some kind of record for Sosh.

GMJ having another adventure in the field. Good times.

All offense to Scully fans

this guy is the most boring commentator around.

Honestly, if you replaced his actual VOICE with any other commentator in the world’s, and kept the EXACT things he was saying the same, and had people sit through the games, they would wonder who this dreary, boring, totally uninteresting dude is, and why he’s talking.

Really, there’s just nothing to his game calling right now, or in any game I’ve ever heard, that shows any greatness over a billion other guys. Most over-loved dude in baseball. He makes me yearn for my mattress.

Also, this is pretty clearly exhibition for the fans, too. Dodger fans clearly need practice recognizing the routine flyball. Then again, the same can be said in the 159th game of the year for them.

Do you believe that radical ideas threaten institutions, then become institutions, then reject those ideas that threaten institutions?

So institutionalize me already.

I'll agree with Stirrups here.

Scully is a creature from another era. I don’t believe he translates well to the current generation.

In terms of service time (whether you like him or not) It is remarkable that he started with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and shared broadcast time with Red Barber.

I don't question the astoundingness (did I make that word up?) of his tenure

but I flat out refuse to accept that my dislike of him is solely a product of my generation. Either that, or the previous generation just loved its tedious boredom.

He just doesn’t say anything interesting. I don’t have attention problems, I don’t need the bounciness of Rex and his inability to shut up…it’s just that his votes has this grating drone, monotone drone, and he rarely has anything to say that isn’t already grossly apparent. He gets caught up in his own little side stories about Scott Schoenweis’ testicles (yes, it really happened), and just finds an idea or theme and runs it into the ground over the course of a game.

Votes? Lord

*voice

Definite victim of ADHD

It's quite important to realize

not all people with ADD have ADHD.

Joking.

My wife works with 3-5 year olds with a variety of learning disabilities.

So was I

For example

I can get bored and phase out of a boring conversation.

But I probably won’t start chasing a poodle around my backyard after doing so.

The poodle should be thankful.

In fairness, I have not heard the vintage Vinny for over a decade now.

At one point, he conveyed boatloads of interesting material, insightful and educational and unique. And the clarity of his thought process was commanding. And, most famously, he knew when to shut up and when to paint the picture in a society dominated by radio and B&W TV. The soft, warm delivery created a perfect balance in compliment to the raw information that came your way. It was most obvious when Ross Porter would take over, and his gravelly voice hammered mind-numbing statistical minutae into your brain like an ice pick punched through the ear drum.

That Scully is gone forever. So, yeah, the integrity of his work would have been better preserved by checking out a while ago. Now all we get is the voice. And Schoenweis’ family jewelry.

The thing that I think gets me

is that he didn’t seem to age with the game. I’ve watched a few ESPN classic games with his call (most famously the ’86 World Series, game 6), and while he used to sorta fit, he just never moved on.

He seems sort of stuck in his older game…before big scouting reports, and sabrmetrics, and digital scoreboards, and corporate sponsorships, and 162 televised games a year, and live internet updates. He just wants to talk about little James Loney’s high school nicknames, and how many DINGERS we can expect Matt Kemp to hit this year. There’s so much advancement in baseball and the culture and technology surrounding baseball that he seems perfectly willing to neglect.

In his defense....

…after working at the same profession for 60+ years, you tend to stick with what works (at least in his mind). Which may add fuel to your general sentiment that his time has passed.

Fair point.

The vast majority of his career was when the ONLY data available to fans was the daily boxscores in the local paper. And for mid-west and east-coast fans boxscores for west coast games (and standings!) were two days out of date all season. Game recaps were usually two sentence paragraphs.

So, the most important thing to accomplish was to present the actionon the field, but you had to do it for huge numbers of fans who had very little practical information. Scully’s skill was the ability to put the knowledgeable and newbie fan into a virtual seat, inform them of the action occuring on teh field, allow them to celebrate the fan experience without interfering, and fill in the background of the sport and the personalities. And, as a wordsmith he had moments of sheer brilliance.

But, as you point out, over the past 30 years the information age has totally overwhelmed that previous definition of the most typical and common fan. We already know more raw infromation than Vin can cover in the game, and we proabbly have more current and accurate data on the baseball issues of the day. His craft did not remain out in front of us.

P.S. - it took me a few minutes, but I found it.

Before you listen to this, imagine yourself away from any broadband, any wireless, any cellphones. You are up in the mountains, deep in some remote wilderness. You and your buds have been up there for a week, and have lost touched with the daily information flow. That is about what it would take in the modern era to connect to the usual and customary of the 60’s and earlier.

So you and your buds are sitting around the campfire beers in one hand, cigars in the other. You are listening to the game. Pay attention to how Vin pulls you down from the mountain and parks you in Chavez Ravine, and then puts a knot in your stomach.

Listen here.

Facts. Play by play. Documentation. Atmosphere. Player background. Humanity. A masterfully detached presentation of the tension. In living color. Compared to what we get from Angel broadcasts, Scully was a Rembrandt while Phys is still mastering finger paints.

FUENTES

wow, i love those quick innings…

Rev Halofan - April 2, 2009 reply

Way to stare Bobby.

Eventually the ball will just throw itself over the fence.

that's a winner. save that for the regualr season.

woody!

WOOD

SIGN THAT MA… oh. Wait. He’s already been sent to AAA.

That actually happened?

Man, when word gets out somebody around here is gonna be pissed.

Yeah, it happened

and someone (probably Rev???) already updated my post to reflect it.

And yes, I’m pissed. We excel at wasting talent.

Nothing is more annoying than watching an entire Triple-A team full of major league ready talent grow older without getting a chance with the big club, or cashing in their value in a trade.

Well, there IS one thing more annoying:

Waiting until that talent finally gets to the big leagues, parking them smack in teh middle of an already congested pipeline, and the waiting until they get to their walk year when it is too late to realize full trade value for them in the end. (Looking at you, Figgy.)

And then

having that same talent block the progress of yet MORE talent that was riding right behind him, waiting for his chance, as Figgy has done!

Now i’m catching on!

The problem is we have so many guys too good for AAA...

…but not quite talented or experienced for AAAA.

I'll bet the Padres want them. They just don't want to pay my price.

That's a good fit

because that entire franchise seems more or less stuck between AAA and MLB

And they have a manager who knows our names.

Poor Buddy

I miss him.

But Butcher seems to be doing a fine job, himself. Maybe even a tad underrated.

Whoever the pitchers’ strength and conditioning coach is, however…different story.

Yeah. Makes you wonder if we picked up some trainers from Oakland in the offseason.

AAAA?

You mean the National League?

This fanshot

says it has.

Torii GIDP.

/head
/hit
/keyboard

Herndon puts us even further behind the 8-ball.

5-1