Wattage and Brass: Drive By Truckers, live at the 40 Watt

Posted on March 3, 2014 by AD

Sadness is the defining element of Southern rock in 2014. Checking in on its leading modern purveyors in one of their main clubhouses reveals a melancholy running deeper than the double-deep cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon that liquidate the room. Theirs is a blues without the form, which sometimes seems to be all that’s left of the aging blues. This is palpable, consistent emotion driven through late rock conventions. The bluesmen say they’re glad or proud about their affliction. While the Southern rock folks don’t despair, they are resolved: this is the situation, and the stories must be told. Listen for yourself.

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That Saturday was my first visit to Athens’ famous 40 Watt Club, the third night of Drive-By Truckers’ “Homecoming” stand at the downtown venue. I saw the Truckers for the first time last summer, in Atlanta, and I was struck then by the degree to which a) they weren’t what I expected and b) their performance reoriented me to what they were doing. By the end of their short festival set I understood why people like them so much, and I jumped at the chance to hear them again last month in Athens when Magalan suggested the idea. Continue reading →

ALDLAND Podcast

Posted on March 3, 2014 by bpbrady

Hello ALDLAND listeners, its the ALDLAND Podcast team, and we have quite the episode for you this week. Lip service is paid to the end of the Olympics and Canada is blamed for things that are assuredly their fault. If that’s not enough, your two favorite co-hosts get deep into discussing the NCAA tournament bubble.

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Friday Jam Approximately

Posted on February 28, 2014 by AD

February’s almost over, John Lee Hooker was almost a Chicagoan, (try Detroit) where the clip of this week’s Jam was set by someone who was not Harold Ramis (try Egon’s sometimes collaborator John Landis), who was directly involved in almost every other comedy movie of the last forty years.

If you need me tonight, I’ll be watching Stripes.

Baseball Notes: Lineup Protection

Posted on February 28, 2014 by AD

Part of the perceived strength of last year’s Detroit Tigers offense came from the arrangement of the middle of the batting order: Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, and Victor Martinez; two huge bats following the biggest one in the game. The idea was that Fielder, batting fourth, “protected” Cabrera in the three hole because he was there to make pitchers pay if they wanted to simply intentionally walk Cabrera to mitigate his potent power, the same way pitchers treated Barry Bonds a decade a go. With Fielder there to “protect” Cabrera, the theory went, Cabrera’s offensive numbers should improve because pitchers would have to be more aggressive with him.

The lineup protection concept makes intuitive sense, but it has been a popular target for the sabermetric folks, who insist that “protected” hitters show no measurable improvement as a result of lineup protection. In light of Prince’s departure from Detroit, ESPN’s Jayson Stark, who surely knows much more about baseball than me, is the latest to take up the advanced statistical ax against the lineup protection effect:

Continue reading →

Judges Take Swings at The ‘Baseball Rule’ (via Fulton County Daily Report)

Posted on February 23, 2014 by AD

A panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals on Tuesday tested the Atlanta Braves’ argument that the team should be insulated from suits by fans hit by flying bats or balls.

The Braves’ lawyer, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, said the appeals court should adopt the so-called “baseball rule,” which says teams are immune if they provide enough seats behind home plate shielded by a net to meet demand.

Hearing the case with two colleagues, Judge Michael Boggs wondered why the baseball industry should get its own rule. “The concern being, of course, if you carve out a rule for baseball, if we adopt the baseball rule, next week we’ll be adopting the hockey rule, and the week after that we’ll be adopting another rule,” he said.

The case was filed against the Braves by a parent of a 6-year-old girl who was hit by a foul ball while attending a game at Turner Field in 2010. A Fulton County judge has refused to dismiss the case.

Backed by the commissioner of Major League Baseball, the Braves say the baseball rule is used in the majority of states that have adopted a rule around errant balls and bats at baseball venues.

On Tuesday, Sears told the judges that the Braves need to know exactly what their duties to spectators are. “The baseball rule is a clear rule,” she said, “and, quite frankly, its clarity is its virtue.”

Arguing for the girl and her family, Atlanta lawyer E. Michael Moran of Law & Moran said it didn’t make sense to adopt a rule created for baseball in another jurisdiction about 100 years ago. “The game has changed,” he said, noting high rates of speed of balls hit by players today. … Read More

(via Fulton County Daily Report)

ALDLAND Podcast

Posted on February 20, 2014 by bpbrady

Few things call for a special emergency ALDLAND Podcast, but the US playing Canada in hockey is one of them. Join your two favorite cohosts and a special guest as we run down why the United States of America is the best country ever and why Canada comes up short. For real though, we love Canada and our Canadian readers/listeners. Just not today. Or tomorrow. And you have to give us Neil Young and Rush if we win. Sorry.

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Out Route (via ESPN The Magazine)

Posted on February 20, 2014 by AD

He’s done. He can’t take another year. The grind of football has exhausted him, and the grind is just now starting. It’s July. He’s in the weight room of his Huntington Beach home, in a gated community only miles from the projects where he was raised. He is about to work out, because his 37-year-old body might not last 16 games otherwise, because he has played in the NFL for 16 years and knows no other way. He is a physical wonder, sculpted to the last inch, but the imperative to work out is more draining than the workout itself. His body seems to be outlasting his will, rather than the reverse.

Tony Gonzalez has convinced himself that he can find happiness without football. Of course, he’s said that before. He all but filed retirement papers the past two years only to return. He exists in a state of conflict that he hates, of not being able to live with the game or without it. Now he’s tired. The energy required to train at his future Hall of Fame level is offset only by the certitude of finality. He looks around his weight room, littered with steel plates and bars. “I can’t wait to get rid of all this next year,” he says. “Should have gotten rid of it last year.”

He pauses.

“I’ll never need this shit again.” … Read More

(via ESPN The Magazine)

ALDLAND Podcast

Posted on February 19, 2014 by bpbrady

The ALDLAND Podcast is switching up topics this week, as we get to extensive Olympic coverage, ranging from breakout stars to favorite sports to an unfortunate lack of trash talk between Olympians. The Champions League is also in action and your two favorite cohosts are here to break down the early results and upcoming matchups.

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The Essential Michael Sam

Posted on February 13, 2014 by AD

Following NFL draft prospect Michael Sam’s announcement about his sexual orientation (he’s gay) last weekend, many people wrote and said many stupid things. Many more, I hope and believe, wrote and said positive things. The reality, though, is that few of us knew Sam’s name a week ago, which is a little bit baffling when we found out he was the top defensive player in the top college football conference, perhaps the truest testament to the bandied axiom that this is the football age of offense. As a result, the other reality this week is that few people’s responsive comments have been insightful or of much consequence.

Thankfully, there have been exceptions. The first was the video SB Nation/KSK’s Matt Ufford made the day after Sam’s announcement:

https://twitter.com/ALDLANDia/status/433045693540728833

The second was Jeb Lund’s intelligently written article for Sports on Earth, posted later that same day, which took aim at Sam’s critics with precision.

The other two items are the dispassionate scouting reports of SoE’s Russ Lande and MMQB’s Greg Bedard. Lande holds some optimism for Sam’s draft position, while Bedard is more cynical, even going so far as to write that Sam may not be drafted at all.

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One has to think that Sam has a better chance of playing in the NFL– whether a team takes him in the draft or offers him a chance as an undrafted free agent– than Jason Collins had of extending his NBA career following his own sexual orientation announcement. As those scouting reports imply, though, it likely will be impossible to know whether or how Sam’s announcement affects his draft outcome this May.

Baseball Notes: The Crux of the Statistical Biscuit

Posted on February 13, 2014 by AD

The purpose of the interrupted Baseball Notes series is to highlight just-below-the-surface baseball topics for the purpose of deepening the enjoyment of the game for casual fans like you and me.

In the interest of achieving that casual purpose, this series generally will avoid advanced statistical concepts. One need not grasp the depths of wRC+ or xFIP to enjoy baseball, of course, or even to think about the give-and-take between baseball traditionalists, who eschew advanced statistics, and the sabermetricians, who live by them.

Moneyball famously highlighted this debate, such as it is, and it arose in the 2012 season around the American League MVP race between Miguel Cabrera (the eventual winner, and the traditional favorite) and Mike Trout, and again last season in the context of commentator Brian Kenny’s “Kill the Win” campaign against ascribing significant meaning to pitchers’ win-loss records.

The reason this “debate”– the “eye test,” wins, and batting average versus WAR et al.– isn’t really a debate is because the two sides have different descriptive goals. In short, the traditional group is concerned with what has happened, while the sabermetric group is concerned with what will happen. The former statically tallies the game’s basic value points, while the latter is out to better understand the past in order to predict the future. The basic stats on the back of a player’s baseball card aim to tell you what he did in prior seasons; the advanced statistics on Fangraphs, Baseball-Reference, or in Baseball Prospectus aim to tell you something about what he’ll do next year based on a deeper understanding of what he did in prior seasons.

The previous paragraph represents an oversimplification, and probably a gross one, but I think it accurately highlights the basic, if slight, misalignment of initial points of view from the two main groups of people talking about how we talk about baseball today.