After an exciting divisional round, Mets-Cubs and Royals-Blue Jays felt like a bit of a letdown (although the Jays are still alive!). In my latest post for Banished to the Pen, I looked at whether the best of the still-ongoing 2015 MLB postseason already is behind us.
The full post is available here.
It was a tough week on the health front for a couple folks we keep track of here at ALDLAND. First, Phil Lesh, best known as the bass player for the Grateful Dead, announced that he has bladder cancer. Lesh previously was forced to undergo a liver transplant due to a hepatitis C infection, so word of a new, serious condition was worrisome. The good news is that Phil’s cancer is “non aggressive,” and it sounds like he plans to make a full recovery soon.
Three days later, new Detroit Tigers pitcher Daniel Norris revealed that he’d been battling thyroid cancer this season. Norris’ cancer is malignant, and he will be undergoing treatment in the offseason.
For this week’s Jam, here’s Phil doing his warbly best with the Grateful Dead, twenty years ago in Memphis:
The MLB postseason begins tomorrow night, and my latest post for TechGraphs is the single-best source of information I know for details on how you can follow along using your television, computer, smartphone, or radio.
The full post is available here.
Today, Banished to the Pen hosted a remembrance of the 1988 baseball season, to which I contributed a review of the movie Bull Durham, which was released that year. The ’88 season was a big one for baseball: lights at Wrigley Field, Kirk Gibson’s famous World Series home run, and Jose Canseco becoming the first player ever to hit forty homers and steal forty bases in the same season.
The full post is available here.
iPads in baseball dugouts. Drones at football games. Gambling on gambling. All that and more in my latest post for TechGraphs, a roundup of the week’s top sports technology stories.
The full post is available here.
The most famous Yankee catcher, a veteran of twenty-one World Series and one World War, died yesterday at the age of ninety. It’s a testament to the power of Yogi Berra’s personality, which remains his strongest legacy, that it casts a shadow longer than the remarkable numbers that attempt to illustrate his baseball achievements. What follows is a sampling of those numbers:
If you’re not going to know nothing about baseball, these are some pretty good things to know. Now get on to Yogi’s funeral, or else he won’t come to yours.
One of the cited reasons for the unprecedented decision to relocate the Atlanta Braves from their downtown home at Turner Field to a new suburban stadium location in Cobb County was that the downtown location offered too little parking for fans. After the new stadium deal was approved, however, it was revealed that the new location would offer even less parking than currently available at Turner Field. That, together with Cobb County’s continued resistance to public transportation service, undoubtedly would render the new stadium less accessible than Turner Field.
Now comes news that, when it opens in 2017, SunTrust Park will be even less accessible to fans than previously thought. That’s because funding sources and political support for a bridge connecting the stadium to fan parking has dried up, if they ever existed.
The bridge is an unquestionable necessity, because the new stadium site sits at the intersection of I-75 and I-285, and the latter, obviously an extremely busy interstate highway, separates SunTrust Park from this fan parking. Here’s an approximate view from a June 2015 Google Maps capture:
While the new stadium will open in April 2017, according to the latest report, the earliest the bridge would be ready is September 2017. Even that late date may be optimistic, though, as it is completely unclear from available information that any reliable sources of funding– or even a consistent cost estimate– exist. Until the bridge is complete, fans will be left to ford the above-depicted urban river by their wits alone. Maybe a bicycle would help?
_____________________________________________________________
Previously
Georgia Supreme Court Upholds Cobb’s Braves Stadium Bond Deal
Braves Break Ground on Baseball Boondoggle
The yard sale at Upton Abbey continues
From Barves to Burbs: What’s happening to baseball in Atlanta?
Hey, football is a thing that’s happening, and my latest post for TechGraphs reflects that, highlighting news stories about the NFL, tennis, baseball, and even a hint of hockey.
The full post is available here.
While the ALDLAND Podcast‘s technical hiatus continues, I returned as a guest on this week’s episode of the Banished to the Pen podcast, where we discussed current baseball stories, including the latest Dave Dombrowski news, the status and outlook of frequent trading partners the Detroit Tigers and Toronto Blue Jays, and issues surrounding the possible expansion of safety netting in MLB stadiums.
You can download or stream the entire podcast here.
My latest post at TechGraphs examines some of the legal and technological questions raised in Payne v. MLB, a recently filed lawsuit seeking more safety netting in baseball stadiums, and asks whether past events in the hockey world might provide a helpful lesson.
The full post is available here.
ALDLAND 