Thanks for posting that - I came in here to do the same thing. The general “Ty Cobb was an asshole” is a shitty narrative. I have no doubt Cobb was a prick - but so are 70% of the general populace, and it’s probably higher in the professional athlete sphere. There wasn’t anything special about Cobb’s assholery.
So, Curt Schilling, guess the power of your prayer didn’t work so well, did it?
So much for the power of prayer.
I don’t know why this pisses me off even more now. It’s like Schilling was in a hurry to break the news before Wakefield died. What a fuck nugget.
Clearly I agree.
That’s Curt Schilling.
You know who he was.
You know who he is.
Just who do you think was listening to the prayers of a Sack of Sh-t like him…!?
( You New England folk best just hope he doesn’t try to bury Tim Wakefield in a Pet Cemetery )
A Cemetery might be okay. A Sematary, on the other hand…
Slight nitpick: the pitch thrown perennially in animated cartoons is a changeup, aka “slow ball”. The cartoon comedy comes from the seemingly easy pitch striking out multiple batters on a single pitch (“Strike one! Two! Three! You’re out!..!”). The pitch doesn’t bobble, but throws off the timing of a batter who was expecting a fastball, and so swings too early.
The knuckler does indeed bobble and weave, due to its nearly complete lack of spin, making it more susceptible to slight wind currents. This also makes it a nightmare for catchers. As Tommy Lasorda is quoted, “You don’t want a knuckleballer pitching for you. Or against you”.
Or, to quote Bob Uecker: "The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until the ball stops rolling and then to pick it up.”
That’s good!
It reminds me of the joke about a bunch of farmers swapping tall tales of scarecrows they’ve built. One farmer claims his was so scary, the crows brought back the corn they stole last year.
Aye, I just found and watched “Baseball Bugs” and his “slow ball” goes straight past by three Gas-House Gorillas at a walking pace and has a bit of rotation too. The “Eephus pitch/Lollipop curve, etc…” with it’s high arc and often sub 40MPH speed is sometimes called the “Bugs Bunny curve” yet he didn’t ever throw such a pitch to my knowledge.
I’m sure I heard it in the 80’s and likely from Tim McCarver who had been a catcher long enough to know, so long before this guy wrote a 3 part series and it is indeed a thing:
Back in the 1990’s, before the web revealed Schilling to be a giant asshole, he rescued a ‘popular’ war game system called Advanced Squad Leader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Squad_Leader.
The company (Avalon Hill) that produced it was bought by Hasbro, who then promptly stopped published 95% of their titles, including ASL. Schilling put a bunch of his money into creating a new board game company that licensed ASL from Hasbro - this company has since been quite successful in the war game world, continuing to publish ASL as well as many other games. I do not think he is involved with them at this point.
He was a player of ASL, as he was/is a history fan and game player. It’s a shame that he is also an asshole about so many other things.
That sparked a memory, that a former baseball guy helped get Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning made. I wondered, this can’t be the same guy, could it?
It is.
He founded the studio and they only made one game then shut down permanently. The thing is, the game is freaking awesome. I played the hell out of it.
I’m sure it helped that such people as R. A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane were also involved in it.
Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole, and actually there were some financial shenanigans involved that led to investigations. No criminal charges were ever filed but there were lawsuits settled out of court.
Schilling is apparently an MMO fan and loved EverQuest, which I almost respect, but then again there is a lot of toxicity in online gaming so I guess it shouldn’t be a huge surprise.