Cleaning out the Mental In-Box, Pirates Edition....I have come to the conclusion that it is time to declare a moratorium on the Neal Huntington Bashing. Here's why: A.J. Burnett, Wandy Rodriguez, Jeff Locke, Francisco Liriano, Gerrit Cole, Charlie Morton, Justin Wilson, Bryan Morris, Mark Melancon, Jason Grilli, Jeanmar Gomez, Russell Martin, Garrett Jones, Gaby Sanchez, Jordy Mercer, Pedro Alvarez, Travis Snider, Mike McKenry. Have...
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
I know that this may come off as sounding snobbish on my part, but I do not watch the competitive "reality shows" on TV. I used to be a huge fan of "Survivor", but that show jumped the shark, in my mind, anyway, about five or six years ago, and I haven't watched it since. And I have never seen a single episode to American Idol, America's Got Talent, Dancing With...
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED SEASON #6 OF "MAD MEN." IF THE FINAL EPISODE(S) STILL AWAIT YOU ON YOUR DVR, YOU MAY WANT TO COME BACK TO THIS POST AFTER YOU WATCH THEM!Here is what happened to Don Draper in Season Six of "Mad Men":He drank a lot.He had a very dangerous affair with the downstairs neighbor, who was part of a couple with whom the...
It has been my thought that first base for the Pirates should be a strict lefty/righty platoon of Garrett Jones and Gaby Sanchez. While the Pirates seem to agree with me about Jones (only 12 of his 220 AB's have been against LHP this season), Sanchez seems to be playing a lot against righties, so I decided to do some checking, and here is what Gaby has done thus...
With last night's victory over Seattle, the Pirates are now 47-30, one game behind the Cardinals in the NL Central, a whopping eight and one-half games ahead in the wild card race, have the second best record in ALL OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, and have now exceeded last season;s high water mark of sixteen over .500. Lots to be happy about, although the doom spreaders are still out there (and not without reason given the Pirates recent history),...
Monday, June 24, 2013
Well, if you really want to know.....Yep, after seeing the movie, I decided to reread the book for the first time since high school. Fitzgerald certainly had an elegant way of writing. His lavish descriptions of Gatsby's parties and a list of all the people who attended them were fun reading, and the story of the guy that everyone loves, until he gets down on his...
Sunday, June 23, 2013
If you grew up listening to Bob Prince broadcasting Pirates games, you will remember him often referring to his "Gal Friday, Sally O'Leary". Over the years, in my involvement with the local SABR Chapter, I had occasion to correspond with Sally, and yesterday, I had the pleasure and honor of meeting Sally in person when she was the very Special Guest our monthly...
Thursday, June 20, 2013
"Shocking" would not be too strong a word in describing the reaction to the news last night of the death of actor James Gandolfini at the way-too-young age of 51.It is impossible to name the "best show in television history", but I don't think that anyone would argue that HBO's "The Sopranos" would not be in the discussion for best dramatic show ever, and James Gandolfini,...
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
My post of last week proposing a Mt. Rushmore of American Rock & Roll didn't exactly caused the fiber optics lines to burn up, but it did bring a few interesting responses. Most agreed with my automatic choices of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, and by "most" I mean everyone except my friend Ray Queen, whose opinion I highly respect, by the way, who questioned Berry's inclusion for two reasons: (1) a questionable moral character, and (2)...
Monday, June 17, 2013
Spent Saturday and Sunday at PNC Park with 75,000 or so of our closest friends watching the Pirates and Dodgers have at it. Extra innings and a four hour plus game on Saturday, and a 90 minute rain delay prior to Sunday's game, and I want to be the first to nominate Marilyn for Wife of the Year for sticking through it all (plus handling my scorecard while I had to leave the seat for nature calls).The Pirates split the two games, Gerrit...
Friday, June 14, 2013
One thing that we residents of the North Hills do not have is an abundance of nice, upscale restaurants. Oh, all the chains are out here, but you are hard-pressed to find an independent restaurant.That changed this past week when Off the Hook opened in Warrendale. Tonight, Marilyn and I, and our friend Libby LLoyd took a ride out and had a great experience. Off...
So I took myself to the movies this afternoon to see the highly touted, much anticipated new Superman movie, "Man of Steel". I have a couple of thoughts:Why so serious? Superman originated as a comic book, right? Comic books are supposed to be fun, right? The Superman movies of the Eighties with Christopher Reeve were fun, right? Well, this one...
Thursday, June 13, 2013
With their 39th win of the season, and the 10,000th win in "Pittsburgh's" (more on that later) major league history, the 10,000 win contest came to a close last night, not, in the words of poet T.S. Eliott, with a bang but a whimper, and the winner was Don Lancaster. The contest wasn't even close.Of the 21 entries in the contest, Don's was the most optimistic. He said that win number 30 would come in game number 65, and last night's game...
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
I am going to throw out a bit of challenge to readers of The Grandstander.I have been commissioned to sculpt a new Mt. Rushmore, one dedicated not to American Presidents, but to American Rock & Roll. We need four faces on this new Mt. Rushmore. Two are indisputable:Yes, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley go on the mountain, but who are the other two?Keep in mind,...
I have seen the Pirates future, and he wears Number 45!In his highly anticipated debut with the Pirates last night, Gerrit Cole did NOT....(a) pitch a no-hitter (b) pitch a shut out (c) go nine innings or (d) strike out umpteen batters. Still, could you have imagined anything better than what he DID do? Go six and 1/3, give up two runs, strike out the first batter...
Monday, June 10, 2013
The Pirates are playing well, are 11 games over .500, and only four games out of first place, AND they are there due in large part to contributions of guys acquired, by one means or another, by GM Neal Huntington. The tendency is to now go a little easy on Neal, or at least easier than many of critics usually do.However, with Gerrit Cole now in Pittsburgh and set to make his debut tomorrow night, Neal still proves that he has a way with the...
What do you do on a rainy Monday morning when you have absolutely nothing on your calendar for the day? Marilyn and I decided to take a drive to Indiana, PA and visit The Jimmy Stewart Museum. As most probably know, Stewart is a native of Indiana, and in 1995, the town opened a museum dedicated to Stewart and his remarkable career. Hey, who doesn't love Jimmy...
Big Poppy, the Official Broadway Correspondent for The Grandstander, was forced to watch last night's Tony Awards while vacationing in Hawaii. How great for him? Two weeks ago I posted his predictions for this year's Tonys, and you are no doubt wondering...How did he do?Well, BP made predictions in eight categories, and he was correct on five of those predictions, correctly picking Best Revival of a Musical, Featured Actress in a Musical,...
Sunday, June 9, 2013
There are few better police / detective novelists out there than Michael Connelly. His novels featuring LA police detective Harry Bosch are among the best of the genre. I just finished reading the latest, "The Black Box", and it is par for the course.Harry, now working Open and Unsolved cases, stumbles upon one that is personal for him. A foreign journalist,...
Gerrit Cole, the young man who was the subject of so much sturm und drang on Facebook's Pirate Chat and other social media when he was sent to the minors at the close of Spring Training, will make his debut as a Pirates this coming Tuesday when he starts against the San Francisco Giants. This start will come just a little over two years after Cole was selected...
Friday, June 7, 2013
Last July 13, after it became official that first round draft pick Mark Appel would not sign with the Pirates, I wrote the following in this blog about the possible ramifications of Appel's non-signing...It forces Appel back into next year's draft, and any number of things could go wrong for the kid at this point: he could get hurt, he could fall lower in the draft because of the abilities of the other players available in the 2013 draft, he could...
Thursday, June 6, 2013
I made this post on Facebook earlier today, and thought I'd put it out here as well:The year the Pirates drafted Kris Benson #1 (and, don't forget, he was THE undisputed choice of everyone to go #1 that year), the guy who eventually became the best player of that entire draft class was Roy Oswalt, and he was drafted in the TWENTY-EIGHTH round. It is the most inexact science in all of sports. So, barring some obvious screw-up like Bullington-at-#1...
Everyone knows that I normally eschew politics on this Blog, but Brian O'Neill's column in today's Post-Gazette is too good to pass up:http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/brian-oneill/state-rep-incredibly-strikes-real-phony-pose-690500/For those of you who haven't read it, it is about Pennsylvania State Representative Jesse White from Washington County (to be honest,...
I posted the following one year ago today, and will no doubt post it on June 6 next year as well......Every year on this day, I always go back and re-read a section from Andy Rooney's 1995 book, "My War."There have been only a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed for the better in only one twenty-four hour...
Sunday, June 2, 2013
The Biennial Stonebrook Village Garage sale took place. It must have been the phases of the moon, but it seemed like every other neighborhood along Rochester Road had their garage sales yesterday, too. Opinions were mixed as to whether or not this was a good or a bad thing. Did the preponderance of such sales increase traffic, and, hence, sales, or did the preponderance of such sales mean that everyone spent all their money before...
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