The Red Sox (one of the BIGGEST teams in baseball) is on board for what seems to be becoming a tradition of the Blue Jays hosting exhibition games on April 1st and 2nd at Montreal's Olympic Stadium...the ex-home of the Ex-Expos.
Baseball Legend, Cro, with owner and president of Red Sox
The official spokesman for the return of the Expos to Montreal, Mr. Warren Cromartie, President of the Montreal Baseball Project was in Boston a few weeks ago finalizing details to get the Red Sox to barn storm north of the boarder to the barren baseball-less city of Montreal where fans really want that baseball back. His mission seems successful as the Red Sox organization was excited at the idea of coming here to play some good ol' ball games.
We had the Mets come play here in 2014, where both teams honored the life of Gary Carter. They also invited the roster of the 1994 Expos to the pre-game ceremony and everyone collectively flipped out to see those dudes again.
Vlad, The OC, and the Mayor in 2015
We had the Reds come play two games here in 2015, Tony Perez and others came to hang before the game....but during the second game....VLAD showed up....and everyone collectively flipped again. Tim Wallach's son got to dress for that game for the Reds and got to see his dad's old stomping grounds and the fans gave a standing ovation to Chad Wallach because they remembered and liked his dad so much. It was fun, it was good, everyone had a good time at it.
In 2016, thanks to Cromartie's trip to Boston, it is 100% confirmed that the team coming to the Big O next year will surely be the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox are very popular here in Montreal...mainly I think due to their championship seasons and it probably has a lot to do with Pedro "sharing his ring" with us when he won one with the Sox.
Pedro back at Big O (circa 1999)
I remember the first time I saw the Red Sox at the Big O, it was 1999 and interleague play was still a new fangled thing-a-ma-bob. The pitcher at the game I was at for the Sox was none other than Pedro Martinez, the guy who won the only Cy Young in Expos history for Montreal two years prior in 1997. We friggin' crushed Pedro in that game (box here)...well he only gave up 4 runs over 6 innings...we crushed Mark Portugal and Mark Guthrie more than we did Pedro. I remember that game, I even remember where I was sitting and everything. It happened like over 15 years ago too.
Things are Gettin' Nuts, Yo.
I saw baseball legend Ellis Valentine tweet something today while I was at work to a sports writer. Valentine, who comes up for these games to sit with the fans in attendance and watch the ball game and reminisce and chill and everything, tweeted that he might have to sit in the "nose-bleeds" this year round. ("Nose bleeds" refers to the altitude being so high that your nose starts bleeding. It means bad seats. It's those seats Bob Uecker sits in when he drinks Miller Lites. It's those Uecker seats).
Why? Because after being on sale for ONE SINGLE DAY....both games are almost 100% SOLD OUT. Wow. If you live in Montreal or want to travel here to watch these games you better buy your tickets right now because they went like HOT CAKES, MAN. They sold like hot cakes.
I've sat in the "400s" before over the years, I sat there for the Reds games this year...I never took no elevator as Ellis Valentine states in that tweet exists. I didn't know there was one. I always walk up those winding gray cement pathways. I actually liked doing it this year too. Walking with all the other fans and seeing all the Expos hats and shirts...seeing old people with hats and jackets that looked worn in and like they bought those Expos hats in like 1985...and seeing young kids with new shiny Expos gear. I liked being with those people. Those are my people, they really are.
Every year I write an article about these exhibition games and every year I predict that 100K will come over the course of 2 games. Both years they came close with well over 90K both times...this year we hit 96K a mere four thousand off of getting One Hundred Thousand Baseball Fans over two days.
This year I am not predicting/speculating/prognosticating 100 thousand fans...I am 100% GARAUNTEE-ING that 100K will be there over the course of two days at the Big O in 2016 for Red Sox versus Blue Jays. Mark my most humble of human words on that.
I love you, Baseball. I seriously seriously do.
I got a sinking suspicion that Pedro might be honored before one of these games. I haven't heard anything official....but there are rumors abounds that Hall of Famer and all-around legend Pedro Martinez will be back at the Big O in 2016.
Gonna right a short one just to point something out. Social media is wigging out loose over something that I'm not sure the average hippie/jabroni/mongoloid really understands.
The main conspiracy/natural/organic sites and publications are running wild with news that California is putting a warning label on products that contain glyphosate. It's a very scary sounding chemical and the natural-conspiracists are having a field day with this.
All I want to do here is make a little chart which will list common crap we expose ourselves to everyday and what the general consensus is on what is the Median Lethal Dose of those substances.
Term Define:
What is Median Lethal Dose? Or LD50? It is the amount of a substance that if consumed by a human guy or human lady...will more than likely result in the death of that person.
I've had many jobs where I've worked with chemicals and I know how dangerous they can be...but I also know that it will actually take a fuck load of them in a lot of cases to kill you. I got that Heirloom Furniture Stripper (or some such product) in my eyes, big time once. The old formula too...the new formula smells worse but it won't even fuck you up at all.
Yo, my brush was hardened from the last time I was using it and I pushed the brush to the bottom of the container of stripper I was using to force the brush to open up and un-harden...and it did...but really fast and it shot the stripper up into my eyes. Yo, I still remember that...and my memory is stupid. I remember that pain like it was yesterday...maybe the top pain event I can think of. So much of it and directly in the eyes...it was like burning and burning. I was jumping mad...I thought I was gonna go Super Saiyan or some shit, g. It was bad.
Ya, and one time....I swallowed deck bleach by accident while I was water sealing a deck. It tasted bad, bleach, fuck.
I dunno, I can attest that chemicals are very bad for you and dangerous but I mean...I'm still fucking alive...I'm not even that scared of them, really.
Anyways this isn't important, it's just a personal preamble....okay, here is a list of various substances and their Median Lethal Dose.
LD50 Chart
Consuming this amount of the following, WITHOUT VOMITING or pee-ing or sweating anything out, will very likely spell the end for you....
These are denoted in mg/kg (this stat means how much of it in grams into how much you weigh in kilos) and the list is in descending order from safest shit to least safest shit to consume. We'll start with water and work our way down, okay?
(with mg/kg...let's say you weigh like 170 pounds or 77 kilos....you'd have to multiply the mg/kg by your weight of 77 kilos to find out how many mg will kill you. For example salt is 3000mg times 77 which is 231K in mg or about 231 grams. It would take 231 grams in one sitting of just eating salt by the spoonful to kill more than half of all people who weigh 77 kilos)
I love these stats...they are like Dragon Ball Z power levels. The higher the number the safer it is, okay?
Water: Too big for mg/kg...You need to drink about 8 liters or 1.5 gallons without puking/sweating/peei-ing to overdose on water. Unless a body was rendered unable to sweat or pee or puke I don't think you really can overdose on water.
Table Sugar: 29700 mg/kg (about 150 table spoons in one sitting without barfing will do it)
Vitamin C: 11900 mg/kg (it's hard to OD on OJ but it is possible)
Alcohol (ethanol): 7060 mg/kg. (About 20 hard shots without vomiting or without getting your stomach pumped may kill you.)
Table Salt: 3000 mg/kg (about 14 table spoons without pukin')
THC (the muscle relaxant in weed): 1270 mg/kg
Arsenic: 763 mg/kg
Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol): 352 mg/kg
Aspirin: 293 mg/kg
Caffeine: 192 mg/kg (About 100 cups of coffee)
Cyanide (the stuff from James Bond movies): 6.4 mg/kg
Those are the toxic levels of dosage for stuff around us that we've heard about. Note that things like Vitamin D3 indeed are very toxic but our body needs it in small doses or you'll get rickets and gait. Our body needs all kinds of scary sounding things in small doses to be healthy like iron, zinc and other metals, even.
Nicotine is very toxic but you're not getting a lot of milligrams from smoking one cigarette. Still, I would rank smoking as the least healthy thing you can probably do. It really is.
So I'm not showing you these lethal doses to scare you...Vitamin D3 is low on the list but it's not something to be scared of.
So where does Glyphosate, the substance California is putting warning labels on, fit on the LD50? It's about 5000 mg/kg...putting it between salt and alcohol. It's lethal dose isn't that insane.
"If it's 'Safe' You Should DRINK IT, Smart Guy!!"
I was watching a video the other day where a natural-conspiracy type is saying to some old business PR-looking guy...that if glyphosate is safe then why don't you drink it, Mr. Man!? In my opinion, that man shouldn't drink it to prove its safety as a pest-control substance....there's no reason for him to drink a glass of glysophate to appease people's worries.
My response to that would be...well, you naturoes use animal shit to fertilize your plants while they are in the fields...if you think animal shit is safe to use on the plants we eat...then why don't you prove it's safe by eating a handful of manure?
I think people should start drinking glyphosate to prove this silly point ONLY after organic people eat shit to prove shit fertilizer is safe to use in fields.
What's that? You're not going to eat a bowl of manure? Well then why are you using it on the food I eat? You're not gonna eat a bowl of pathogen infested shit to ease my concerns of organic farmers using poop to grow food for people (AND CHILDREN) to put in their precious human bodies?
In the end, that logic gets us no where. Look, I'll eat food that was fertilized with shit and I'll eat food that had bugs kept off it with glyphosate. Neither is something that really scares me...I wash my fruits and stuff anyway before I eat on them.
IMPORTANT: If you Think you are Poisoned!
Drink water! Vomit! And Call your Doctor or poison control! It's not a joke...I'm not trying to say poison is safe by any means...I'm just trying to put the LD50s into context. If you really ever do get poisoned and shit then remember those three things. It's like STOP n' DROP n' ROLL for fire...but it's for poison...it is... 1. Drink Water 2. Puke 3. Call your Doctor or Poison Control
AEEEEIEEE! He's using POISON! AAAAAH!
I'm not trying to say poison is safe...I'm just saying that, sometimes I don't think the Organic/Natural community really understands chemistry. Everything on earth is a fucking chemical. Our bodies evolved to feed off of some of these chemicals (oxygen, water, and other shit) so people who think they can live a chem free life don't understand anything about the world around them.
You can over dose on all sorts of stuff and die. The science right now that is available is placing glyphosate in the region of pretty safe to have exposure to. That can change, but as of right now it is not known to be a fantastically dangerous chemical.
You know, I've had strong chemicals pretty much burn out my eyes...I've felt bleach work its way through my system....I know how fucking awful these dangerous chems can be...but when it comes to this particular chem...I'm not sure glyphosate is as crazy dangerous as the Naturals make it out to be. Its LD50 is pretty chill.
Would I drink a glass of glyphosate? No, I wouldn't...I'm not stupid. Probably tastes bad. Then again, I wouldn't eat a bowl of manure either. Both of these are used in fields to help grow crops and whatever residue, if any, that is left on the produce before I eat it...is negligible and I'm not scared of it because (A) I know it's not a lethal amount and (B) I run water all over fruits and vegetables before I eat them to get any weird stuff that's on them off (like crap from the farm or people who handled them).
I'm not a schill, I'm not anything. This is my opinion. I don't get any money from anyone at all to write opinions in this blog. I don't like these big companies either, I'm not on their side. I just honestly don't think the organic crowd has any grasp on reality sometimes. Like, you can argue with a scientist about facts but you can't argue with a natural/organic person because they really don't have any concrete knowledge loaded into their brains to work with other than conspiracies they've read on the internet.
They really have a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" thing going on. What if glyphosate really is bad but the Natural-Conspiracy-Enthusiasts have just been so offensively misguided over the years that everything they say is taken by anyone with intelligence as being automatically wrong. I don't think it's constructive for them to have distanced themselves so far from rationality to the point where no one can take them seriously anymore.
What if the Natural/Organic weirdos really do have an important and correct concern to voice one day but years of nonsense will act as a miasmic wall which will prevent anyone from taking them seriously? They've crossed the Boy Cried Wolf line so long ago...what if one of their concerns actually does hold merit one day? There's no chance in hell anyone would take it seriously after the years and years of offensively misleading nonsense they promote.
I didn't watch baseball for like 10 years. From 2004 to 2014. When my team (Expos) moved I didn't watch it or follow it anymore. I play baseball sometimes for fun and stuff but I didn't follow it for a full decade.
The exhibition games in Montreal lately and the talk and the Cro and the mayor and everyone trying to get the team back has me following it again big time. It's different now than 10 years ago I can tell you that much. I can say WITH CERTAINTY from what I see that most if not all of the roids are gone....at least the whacky whacky hormone ones at least.
There's things in the baseball world I missed a lot...and now that there's some hope that my team might come back....I gotta follow it again. I like the Royals, I like the Mets....I like those pitching teams...I love how the Royals run the bags.
I miss this shit, man. I do.
I wanna talk some baseball, I really fucking do, I want to talk more about the science end of the game right now though instead of something funner. I've been reading shit's that getting me up into a jabroni of a tizzy lately, I must say. I want to rap loose about the Supination vs. Pronation debate...which is not very talked about...outside of hardcore mechanic circles.
I want to first define what Supination is and what Pronation is before we even get started because... if you follow this debate online the main search result is: "What is Pronation?" and we can't have a buck debate if most maw flippers don't even know the terms even.
I'm interested in this lately because Science is coming into the equation here and it's not looking pretty. I'm not happy with University people's "findings" and the articles being published in accredited academic journals at this point. All the S vs. P meta-data journal articles were done on CADAVERS (non-living bodies)...the findings are close to useless and absurd. I'm just gonna tell you straight up what the heck all this crap is. Okay?
Let's Define These Terms of Terms
Supination
What the heck is Supination? In pitching mechanic terms we gonna deal with arms so....Supination is the act of turning the arm out as you make your arm motion....you corkscrew your arm out pointing away from yourself. It is the act of turning it "Out" and that's basically it. It's not hard to understand what Supination is.
When I was a kid at grade school, kids used to impress each other and make each other flip by turning their hands back or I used to curdle my fingers into my hand sorta...we called it beng "Double-Jointed" but that was just nonsense talk. You CAN stretch like this...it's hard...you don't need "two-joints" but you can. The thing is...why would you want to?
Now, what is Pronation?
Pronation
Well if you're not OUT then you IN like Doug Flynn, no? Basically, yeah. Every human on earth who has arms...I'd say 99.9999% of humans with functioning arms....can turn their dumb arms In pretty much a billion times easier than they can turn their arms Out. This lady for instance can pronate to the point of the arm being upside down:
She's not "double jointed"
In like Flynn
She can do that because that's Humans base setting...we can turn In WAY MORE than we can turn Out. If she would have tried to go Upside Down with her arm by going Outwards she would have done an incredible amount of damage to her body. Turning In to go around is actually pretty easy. That's just the base setting of the Humanistic Body As Such...we can go In with our dumb arms but we can't go Out.
Try it right now...try to Upside Down your Arm by going In/Towards yourself and see how far you get...now try to Upside Down your Arm by going Out/Away from your body....which one was easier? Yeah if you're like any other person then In/Towards was way easier and you got farther.
That's just how our bodies are...it's plain fact. Plain as day. plain as rain. The Arm can go In way better than it can go Out. Get used to it.
What Does this Mean?
Many baseball pitches rely on Supinating the arm..an act which is not compatible with the human body. Coaches want the arm out and the hand back...both are unnatural motions to us...yet pitchers are expected to train the supination muscles in the arm to the point where they can endure throwing 100+ pitches every 4-7 days (plus training and warm up pitches). Many have trained these muscles to do that and it is downright an act of masochism.
Maybe they love the pain, I dunno. I've worked very hard jobs in my life...and I can attest that a body will develop a Love for Pain...and it feels good to deal with it and feel it and grow from it...but we have to factor in that injuries to pitchers and time spent on the disabled list is something that happens to almost every pitcher at some time in their life at this present time. Scouts, owners, coaches and the like get heart attacks when their gem of a young arm gets injured. Can pitchers who are impervious to injury be developed? Nope. Can you develop pitchers less likely to get devastating injuries? Yes.
The Scientists are getting into it and their findings so far have been jabroni-esque, I will say, many of their published findings are in the terrain of... "oh Pronation 'aint shit, baby" sort of angles...but like I said these articles being published have been on cadavers. They cut up dead arms to see how developed the S-Muscles and the P-Muscles were in dead dudes. It is data that I don't consider relevant.
Yes, as the cadaver data suggests, you can train Supination muscles to be wicked powerful and tough but you're still dealing with muscles that are not designed to do the task being assigned to them. If the dead arms had over-developed Soup muscles then good for them....it doesn't change the actual facts for living (non-dead) humans.
If you throw soup pitches for long periods of time you WILL damage your body... an incredible amount.... no matter how much you've trained those muscles. You cannot make dat funk da p-funk!
Let's Look at Two Pitches, Ok?
I'm gonna use the top Google search videos for the two popular pitches in question and then go from there....Okay?
A Supination Standard Curve Ball:
This man is teaching the 12-6 curve and he's telling kids not to "turn the door knob" too much (OUT) although the pitch is designed with the hand opening out on release...and even though he says kids shouldn't snap off and "turn the door knob" (why are door knobs designed for supination? good question)...that's how you sell this sucker...that's how you get the fuck spin off this shit...you turn the door knob on it...you SNAP OUT....you whip out and snap off OUTWARDS with the hand. This is a poorly designed pitch.
A Pronation Screw Ball (again the first how-to google result video I got, nothing fancy):
Haha, he uses the word Pronation in it. I couldn't have asked for two better videos and they just happened to be the top google search terms for "how to throw curve" and "how to throw screw."
When the screwball first came out, people hated it, it was such a break from the normal procedure that everyone thought it was so stupid...but it is designed for a HUMAN BODY and not some kind of backward ALIEN body.
It's not new to baseball....Carl Hubbell, Tug McGraw, Mike Marshall, and Fernando Valenzuela amongst others mastered it and had amazing careers. None of them had Tommy John to replace the supination muscles....in fact one of those names in the above sentence introduced Tommy John surgery to Tommy John (my homeboy Marshall). The Man of the Science Mike Marshall introduces the Baseball World to the Science World with that recommendation to Tommy John.
Semantics get in the way a bit too. Japanese pitchers love the screw ball but they refer to it as the "Shootoh" or the "Gommu Gommu No Shootoh Sanzen Sakai Hyakuhachi Poundo Ho." The Japanese LOVE the screwball and understand the science of it. Basically, "Shooto" is the name for "screw ball" in Japan. It's not, in any way/shape/form a different pitch.... it is literally the screw ball... so all the Japanese guys who throw the Shoot-Oh are screw ballers too. Watch Dice-K whip a "Gyro-Ball" which is another fancy fucking name for the screw ball:
From the 9 second mark to the 11 second mark you can see his hand go towards himself instead of away. It is 100% a beautiful pronation pitch that doesn't destroy his arm. Whether you call it a "shoot-oh" a "gyro-barrooh" or a "100 pound dying pheonix three styles succession of my ancestors pitch" it's still the pronation break pitch in physical terms.
That's the shit he threw in Japan but when he came here to the West...he had to become a standard Curve/Change/Fast/Slider pitcher.....and what did you ("you" as in those who paid him to come here) get out of it? Tommy John surgery, that's what. Let him throw two-seamers and shoot-ohs all day and he would have pitched for 10 more years for the Red Sox.
Dice, who I saw pitch as a Met at those Jays/Mets exhibtion games in Montreal live and in the flesh before they sent him to Vegas....he looked good but.. like a fish out of water, I knew something was wrong with my boy ...this Legend was okay from the age of 19-25 in the Nippon League but only lasted two full years in the American League? Why? They wanted to change his shit and they fucked up their investment. His two-seamer and shoot-oh/gyro/screwball (whatever you want to call it) combo would have lasted another decade before breaking down. Well, then again maybe he would have got homesick and went back....he's a human... when thinking in retrospect.... it's not all this "would've this and could've that business" ..though I'm sure his demotion to Las Vegas (the Macau of the West) wasn't all that of a terrible ordeal for him.
I remember, Irabu, he pitched for Montreal and probably had fun....but a as a Yankee he was tormented into suicide. He blew his head off, as my friend Hide the Ultra Bide told me. Homesick is a real disease...so I can't just say in regards to anyone "this would have been or that would have been" ..... Rest in Peace, Mr. Hideki Irabu, I saw you pitch in Montreal at Olympic Stadium live on three occasions... people think because I'm not religious that when people die it does not break my heart,, but, yeah, it does.
Sports and Science: The Universes Collide
I'm a Mister Inbetween when in comes to Sports colliding with Science. I love Science like shit and I love Baseball like crazy. I'm really a Mr. In Between when it comes to Soup versus Pro, g. In this collision of worlds...I'm like this:
Yeah, I mean...I understand the science types...they play with cadavers and dead bodies and pretend like they're smart....yet due to their non-hands-on experience they are maybe but mere jabronies. Oh wait, that song above is a little too old...I'm more modern-ish.... I'm more In Between like this kinda In Between.......
I am actually In Between. Baseball and Science are like literally my two favorite things and just like I can see why the Science World doesn't understand the Basball World... I can see why Baseball people don't like Sciencey-smart guys too. The good ole baseball boys have been doing their country-honed methods for a century and don't want any smarty pants g-units to tell them what they are doing wrong...but sadly they are doing a lot of things terribly wrong. They sit around and chew tobacco and pretend they are smart.... everyone in both worlds are sitting around just pretending they are smart... and never learning from one another.
Everyone pretends they are smart...but....when can both these worlds just Collide in Perfect Harmony? Can the things that are Right from the world of Science and the things that are Right from the World of Baseball just combine at some point and merge..and stop being perpetually In Between?
Conclusion
Pete Rose? Who cares, man. Honestly.
Mike Marshall is the black balled player who deserves to be a Hall of Famer. This guy deserves to have his name in the Hall of Fame....twice (for player and doctor).
Mr. In Between
Add-on Note ( Sept. 06/ 2015): I didn't find a good video of the slider the other day for one of those sections but here's a good explanation of the slider and the supination it requires to be effective:
Like Carlton and Gibson mastered...this pitch has a nasty break that moves horizontally from one end to the other....but it requires a GREAT DEAL of soup to throw it and has a high risk factor when it comes to arm damage.
