No, not Chicks Dig the Longball. Everybody remembers that one. But I love this one:
For something that’s only, what, seven years old, it’s so…dated. A fun-loving Mark McGwire? Lycos?
150 thoughts on “Nostalgia Lane: Mark McGwire Commercial”
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Good grief, that is bizarre. In hindsight, maybe the pillowfight with the “friend” was Mac subliminally wishing he could do to the media. I vaguely remember the name Lycos, but damned if I can come up with what they were/did.
They were a search engine–like yahoo!, excite, and hotbot–if I remember correctly.
And the one with a nautical theme that was the best for about 15 minutes. Northstar?
I had forgotten about that one–good stuff!
Thanks, sal!
Where’s the Elway part? You had me at Elway.
SFGate has a
listpoll of the Bay Area’s “team of the decade” … the options show it’s been kind of a lean decade. The A’s entry is the ’02 edition.’01 A’s weren’t too shabby either.
Is that 2001 squad the best team ever (well, post 1969) that didn’t win its division? The 1993 Giants come to mind, but that’s it off the top of my head.
I always think of the 93 giants and 01 A’s when that discussion comes up.
Two things come to mind (for me) about the 2001 A’s: 1) they actually had a *better* Pythagorean record (104 wins) than their actual record (102 wins) and 2) Johnny Damon, in his age-27 of what would end up a borderline HoF career, put up an 82 OPS+.
That’s a team that could have cleared 105 wins.
The pitching really was incredible that season. By the end of the season, all five starters in the rotation had ERA+ > 120.
Still, the 2002 team was my favorite of the two teams.
Fucking Johnny Damon.
You might throw in the 94 expos, depending on how you define the parameters of “win its division”
(Management wants me to make it clear that in my last column I wasn’t endorsing inappropriate threats against Mr. Lieberman.)
No word on appropriate threats.
Yikes. Three days of all-family projectile vomiting appear hopefully to be at an end. (I think it was the Crisp news that pushed our collective nausea over the edge.)
That’s no fun. Although, the real question is who won the projectile-vomit-off?
JP won after weighting for distance and volume to body mass.
What metric did you use to convert? I have deep disagreement with the xBMI+ method.
talk to PT. He’ll straighten you out.
I’ll never forget the first time it happened to our family.
Junior got it first, and we took turns staying up with him and giving him pedialyte. The next night, I wake up at 2 am feeling sick and head for the toilet. There’s mrs, already hunched over and hurling. Panicked, I run to the kitchen and find the biggest mixing bowl I can. Junior starts crying in bed, mrs is lying on the bathroom floor, I’m puking into a mixing bowl. BTW, never eat our homemade muffins.
Good times.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Dreyer’s frozen fruit bars were sent to this world straight from the hand of Ba’al.
Really, you think that’s what did it? I like those.
I’m guessing he meant “that’s what fixed us up.”
Right-o.
Oh. I thought Ba’al was a bad thing.
It has been to the entirety of human civilization except, apparently, for the last few years and only when uttered by monkeyball.
and those lemonade ones are fucking yummy.
I’d worship Satan for those.
I love you for your good-natured willingness to worship the devil when necessary or helpful to do so
C’mon, those things are fucking yummy. I’d hit Grandma, close-fisted, in the face for one. She’s 89.
Christ, what a monotheist troll
Heh.
“KALIMA SHAKTI DE!”
Gatorade.
We eventually went, as a family, to the urgent care facility on campus. mrs was bad enough to be placed on IV fluids. I was borderline. junior was fully recovered by that time, and he wanted to play with daddy. Worst. Day. Ever.
Yeah, I was about 12 more hours from just having us all trek down to the St Francis ER up the street.
I had the IV + anti-puking meds thing happen on a road trip with my Grampa. Unfortunately, the trip was Denver to Indiana (southern route) and it happened in OK City. The next couple days were… fun.
Ah, holidays with the family. So many nauseous memories.
So thinking of ** reminded me of the more-than-once banned user hacotton or cal2001 or something. I bought an ALCS ticket from him once, and he periodically gchats me with random links, one of which was to pac10poontang.com. I think he may have been stoked to find that website. Someone should hire him to be a human who types in the word on blogs to post spam.
Can’t you block users on gchat?
I don’t really use it, just have it on sometimes.
You can set it to “unavailable” too. That’s what I do.
My two little-remembered **ers:
1. hattebergexpress
2. 3e8
Banned for the same thing on two consecutive nights, right after the ASB in 2005. Two very good nights for the A’s, too. Incidentally, 3e8 is ~the speed of light, in m/s, of light in a vacuum.
Was that the no-hitter superstition idiocy?
bingo
that sounds remotely familiar…refresh me?
Not much to tell: one of the earliest bannable offenses on ** was mentioning an A’s no-hitter in progress. Because apparently indulging other people’s superstitions is important.
IIRC, hattebergexpress made an innocent mistake, but 3e8 was a troll. I think.
I’d almost bet the mortgage against Cal. I’m not very impressed by their offense, defense, or special teams.
Other than that?
awesome fans.
Oregon State didn’t give me or the Pac 10 much of an endorsement tonight. But I stand by my picks, and still feel good about Cal tomnorrow.
they got crushed by BYU, right?
Not a ringing endorsement getting slapped around by Mormons.
{waits for JL to slap around LB}
BYU’s got a solid team. Tough luck that they play in the same conference as TCU this year, though that does strengthen the MWC.
MWC was tough this year. I love teams, like Boise State, that will play anyone anywhere. That helps out the mid-level conferences out almost as much as the individual teams.
That’s how Florida State got big. Before Bobby got old.
I hate Boise State because they stole and misinterpreted Kentucky’s thing.
the blue grass?
The Kentucky people kept smoking it.
I know this is almost a week late, but I have to call BS on one part here. Boise will play anyone anywhere provided they get a home and home and the team they are playing is not the best of the best. They made their name by playing a powderpuff schedule for several years and are only now starting to toughen it up so they can get respect.
And I think the “anyone, anywhere” line is a trademark of FSU (not the FL one, and not the FK one-the one that gets their butts kicked by Boise every year…)
I enjoy making the occasional Bowl bet each year and my usual crib sheet is which are basically like pythag rankings for all of the college teams.
According to those OSU was seeded to beat BYU but it was pretty close.
Cal is rating is 76.56 and Utah is 76.46, 42nd and 43rd in the rankings, and Cal is giving 2.5 points. That’s a dead heat right there and probably not worth a bet on Cal’s side.
I’ll generally treat the bowl season like an investment bundle and will pick 5 or so games where the lines don’t jive with the ratings and will spread a wager over those games. Nothing major, just enough to make normally meaningless games more interesting.
But as far as the Pac-10 goes, yeah it’s the best conference in CFB this year but the lines do seem to reflect that- I don’t think it’s easy money at all. Actually, the single best bet I see in the whole bowl season so far is Nebraska over Arizona. Nebraska is getting 1.5 points and has a 86.45 rating (9th) against Arizona’s 82.14 rating (22nd).
The one P10 bet I like is Stanford +8. Oklahoma rates better but not by that much and 8 points is quite a bit to give a team as good as Stanford.
And that’s probably enough degenerate gambling info for one post. I do love the bowl season.
Sorry, embedded link tag fail. Wish I could edit that.
Fixed.
I don’t see any argument at all that the Pac-10 is better than the SEC this year. Second best sure, but there are no great teams in the Pac-10.
Not to be a homer (at least for another month and a half), but I think the top five or six teams in the SEC could beat the top Pac-10 team. SEC’s fucking brutal.
Sagarin loves Stanford v Oklahoma, as you point out, and gives a small edge to Oregon v OSU. Interestingly on that one, his “ELO-CHESS” and “PREDICTOR” ratings diverge sharply. I see a flat Buckeye team getting waxed in the Rose.
I’m still liking my three “locks” a lot, and likewise the slate of 7 Pac10 picks to be a money maker. I think Nebraska’s going to fall flat, along with most of the overrated Big 12. And I’m not a Pac10 partisan by any means
For forensic purposes: Cal -2.5, Stanford +8, Oregon -3.5 as my solids, Oregon State -2.5, USC -7.5, UCLA -4.5, AZ -2 for the rest of the P10 slate.
Interesting. I don’t see Cal as solid at all. I agree on Stanford (although mrs. nevermoor is an OU fan, so I have to keep quiet).
I’ll admit to a bit of buyer’s remorse on Cal. They’re the least solid of my solids. In my breakfast buffet, they’re the oatmeal to Stanford’s stack of pancakes and Oregon’s slab of ham.
FSU, I love you, but please don’t ever bet on me.
I’ve got $5 saying Bloom never leaves Florida.
Maybe he should drive that woman and her kid to Chicago after all.
I don’t listen to “Get Jiggy With It” or whatever Chris makes Snoop ask the Eastsider New Yorkers about.
Mormons 2, Pac-10 0
Fucking Mormons.
That reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of flotsam in my brain, from Cheers:
Rebecca: I don’t know why more men don’t give flowers.
Woody: Mormon can’t give flowers?
Rebecca: No, Woody, I just want someone to give me flowers!
Woody: Why does he have to be Mormon?
Mwahahahaha. We’re secretly out to get you. Or, I guess, not so secretly anymore.
The PAC-10?!
It’s important to set achievable goals.
My take on the Cal loss is that bowl games are inherently hard to predict. FSU was right in thinking the Pac-10 was better than many thought it was this year. But there is this three-week gap between the regular season and the bowl games, during which any momentum built up during the regular season evaporates completely.
I think most of us don’t know college football that well, and so our picks for games like this are based largely on whatever momentum we perceive each team or conference has … and so our chances of picking bowl games correctly evaporates as well.
Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a BB fan, it’s that momentum doesn’t exist.
I think FSU’s premise is wrong (neither Oregon, Stanford, and USC are the only potentially elite teams, and all have some embarrassing blemishes). The SEC is playing at a whole ‘nother level, and it might just be that the Mountain West is in the conversation for second place.
Top to bottom, SEC is scads better than anything else out there. Big 12 has been good, but weren’t as good this year, with Bradford getting hurt.
I’d hate to bet against Mack Brown and Colt McCoy, but I think that fuckhead traitor bitch that coaches Alabama can coach his ASS off. I don’t see Alabama losing. And when he does win, I hope the collective fans of the Dolphins and them Tigers in Lose-E-ana go to his house and burn it to the fucking ground and piss on the ashes. You know, in celebration of his accomplishments.
On the bright side, as far as college football goes, things just got A LOT brighter in South Bend. That cat’s a winner.
and, I completely agree. College football is VERY difficult to predict and FSU should be praised for just putting himself out there like that.
TWSS
Dude, this is the blog you actually talk on…remember?
Angels want to sign Rodney, who is probably worse than Darren Oliver, who signed with Texas.
Mariners trade Morrow for League, other dude. Jack Z. on somewhat less of a roll.
I actually think the Mariners trading Morrow makes sense, although maybe the critique is that they didn’t get enough for him. The Mariners strength is great D and a forgiving ballpark. A guy like Morrow who doesn’t put many balls in play fails to take advantage of those strengths and is relatively less valuable to them than he would be to other ball clubs. Add to that his injury concerns and I can see why they’d move him. But yeah, League and a A ball outfielder isn’t much of a return for a flashy, cost-controlled “name” pitcher.
Prior to 2000 there were had been no major league baseball players with the first name Brandon. In the subsequent decade there have been 24.
The name definitely peaked in popularity during the 80s and 90s. Will historians refer to this as the Jason Priestley Effect?
Strangely, there still haven’t been any major leaguers named Dylan.
Well, there was that guy in the White Sox farm system who drank himself to death in that bar…
Little Hurt?
I was making a very muddled reference to Dylan Thomas–one that even confuses me at this point.
I grew up in near South Bend, Indiana, which is about 60 miles from Chicago. Any reference at all to a big city became Chicago in my mind.
… and I thought maybe he was Frank’s little brother.
AHA!
So we WERE on the same page!
re: the Angels link, when are the Angels going to really get involved this off season? They can’t possibly just sit by while their best players sign elsewhere and not back-fill, right? I keep dreading a Holliday signing and am hoping that the Sox/Cards/Yankees all strike soon to clear the corner OF option pool.
Maybe Bay. He’s not *that* much better than Rivera, though, is he?
Slusser notes
1. Rajai lives in Connecticut?
2. Rajai says that Coco will “add more fuel to the fire.” Well put.
Blatantly partisan link. Filed under “highest and best use of balloon juice”
If you’re ever in the market for gnocchi delivered to your home, Sarasota, Florida should probably not make your list.
Bob Knight just spent the last 5 minutes of the Cal-Kansas game talking about Jeter. It started with some guy making a layup, and he said it reminded him of Jeter…
I’m from Indiana, and as such, have been programed from birth to assert and believe the General does no wrong, so not only am I glad I didn’t hear that, I will now deny it ever happened.
I actually like him, generally.
As the recent national debate revealed, there’s a lot about him to like. I mean, he obviously has had some anger management issues and can be a real asshole. But it’s equally obvious he cared deeply for his players and their welfare, particularly the great majority who did not go on to become NBA stars.
He taught at least one class every semester he was at IU, the last Big Ten coach to do that by at least 10-15 years. I’m not sure if he continued to do that at Texas Tech, but it would not surprise me at all.
Yeah, Bobby Knight’s not so bad, if you can overlook the part about him being an overbearing asshole of a level rarely reached since Napoleon (not the blogging one).
And when people say of him, or his tyrant acolytes like Kryzewski, “yeah, but you’d want your son to play for him,” I can only reply that I’d no more want my son to play basketball for Knight than I’d want him conscripted into the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Blasphemy, sir!
(slaps FSU in the face with glove)
I demand satisfaction!
I subliminally noted the authorship of this post before I finished reading the first line, and ended up reading a post about some guy named “Jester.”
Meadow Soprano is now single.
Do you think she might like an unemployed ex-sign making fat man who constantly complains about diverticulitis and has a penchant to occasionally appear as if he has Tourette’s? I mean, I can’t be any worse than Turtle, right?
Tourette’s helps put the “tic” in diverticulitis.
Fuckin’ A
I’m pretty sure that reading this column made me lose brain cells.
Sure sign of a columnist operating outside his ken: too many x, y, and z lists where neither y nor z illustrate the point he thinks he’s making.
It says something about Jenkins that the entire subject of baseball is “outside his ken” even though he’s been covering it for like 35 years.
Hah, I was just reading that, and trying to figure out if there was any way to delete it from the internet.
I found it boldly refreshing.
Yay! Everything’s going to be okay now!
(drools)
He stole his idea for that column from that story about the bears and the porridge.
Yglesiasm alert!
fucking China.
Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.
Fuck you, Walter! We’re not talking about building the fucking railroad here!
What happened China? You used to be cool!
When I read columns like this they make me wonder if people have always been saying the same thing (like, say, how politics used to be cleaner or people used to care more about religion). Perhaps Ezra not getting his optimum policy is a good thing (even though I agree with him).
Nevertheless, it rings true. Like the observation that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, if only we could ensure a benevolent dictator.
I almost cried.
And I may still.
If Ezra’s policy specialty was environmental legislation rather than healthcare, he’d have said what Yglesias said about Copenhagen, and would have written this piece verbatim about HCR.
?
health care reform
(I’s being snarky)
Don’t worry. I bought Obama a how-to DVD on “arm twisting” for Christmas. Everything will soon fall into place.
Apparently, he could’ve used that in Copenhagen.
Well, if I remember preschool correctly, it was the Chinese who invented that arm twisting move that is in wide use on playgrounds, so surely they would have been prepared.
In
formercurrent Communist China, preschool remembers *you* correctlysneaky fucking 3 year-olds.
comma Dude
you’re going to hell, you know. Pagan.
Indians, not Chinese, I thought.
Olney via MLBTR: A’s could be bringing back Duchscherer.
Is it just me, or is Calcaterra’s new home at NBC nothing more than a gussied-up MLBTR?
Calcaterra’s contributions are only kinda sorta in that vein, and only then because it’s the goddam offseason. He’ll deliver once the games start.
that’d be good, right?
I’d love that, because I’m a huge fan of Duchscherer.
I think so. Especially good if you love reading those “A’s offered more money, but wanted to play for Boston” stories…
Or those “A’s pitcher out 2-4 weeks” stories in spring training that lead to 8-10 starts all year.
Rotoworld likes to call Duke the “Duke of Hurl.” This is:
1. Sort of disgusting.
2. Not a nickname anyone has ever used.
3. Seems to be a play on “Duke of Earl,” which does not make sense.
4. Does not make any sense, b/c “hurl” denotes throwing hard, especially contra nibbling at the corners and changing speeds
Via Bookslut, this is fantastic:
Hand over all your comic books or I will fucking END you! I mean it! I am not kidding around!
Don’t have any.
Pot?
No.
Can I have $5?
1. This made me laugh so hard, I almost blacked out.
2. This was one of you, wasn’t it?
3. Yes, it fucking was. Admit it.
1. Agree.
I lol’d (and only use that in the literal sense).
As for #3… [redacted]
Wasn’t me. What would I want with comic books?
I think it was most likely #21.
Everidge?
Just an obscure reference that no one here got.
{sigh}
Venture Bros. FTW!
You. Rock.
Unfortunately, you’re also in Japan. We can’t hang.
He says, while e-hanging
GP.