Browns beat the Saints for home opener win! – WFNY Podcast – 2014-09-14
September 14, 2014Brian Hoyer offers perspective for NFL’s off-field nightmares
September 15, 2014Holy hell, the Cleveland Browns won a football game! We’ll have plenty more on that through the coming hours. But first…
Fare thee well, Cleveland Indians. After spending the entire season reminding everyone just how close you were to that second American League Wild Card spot, you went on the road and screwed the pooch. As a fan, one couldn’t have asked any more from the starting rotation—the piece that was supposed to be the question mark heading into the season of Unfinished Business. Instead, they were given a cavalcade of underperforming veterans, rag tag defense and a bullpen that is likely to finish the season leading the league in blown saves.
TD will surely have more on this later today, but Bryan Shaw blowing back-to-back games—his sixth and seventh of the season—in September should be a releasable offense. Sure, he may have provided relief throughout the season (a 1.07 WHIP heading into Sunday is pretty damn good), but a winning team wins games when they matter most. This is the same Shaw who blew the save on July 13 (a Trevor Bauer 10-strikeout gem) only to get the win.
Shaw is just one example out of a slew of players who were handed excuses or timelines for success throughout the season. “Just wait until Kipnis comes around” is a phrase that’s been uttered for months. David Murphy and Ryan Raburn were supposed to be a platoon, but neither could be trusted to play right field in a close game. (JB Shuck, come on down!)
There will be plenty of time to point fingers come October through March, so I’ll leave more for later. For some, meaningful baseball is September is enough. Not this guy. And I’m obviously not alone.
The 9,489 is the lowest attendance for a September game in Progressive Field history
— Joe Reedy (@joereedy) September 10, 2014
41,190 tickets sold at Comerica. Sellout No. 26
— Joe Reedy (@joereedy) September 14, 2014
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Fan of waterparks? Fan of excellent reporting and storytelling and production? Well do I have the link for you.
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So this happened:
#Survival #SoOutofShape pic.twitter.com/FCWs8ZjWUA
— Scott (@WFNYScott) September 13, 2014
A little known fact about yours truly is that I ran cross country for four years of high school. It started as a means to do something during the fall that would get me in shape for basketball and baseball. It ended up being the only sport I participated in for all four years of high school. The rub? I had not run in a timed race since then. At least until Saturday.
Having spent the last several years volunteering and working Akron and Cleveland’s Race for the Cure (to benefit Susan G. Komen’s northeastern Ohio affiliate), my sister and I decided to run this year. It was her first 5K ever, but she had spent considerable time in the gym prior to the weekend. I, conversely, had not.
The first mile (down Lakeside and up E. 18th toward Carnegie) wasn’t so bad save for the wind and the whole uphill thing. Shit started to get real once we made the turn down Carnegie toward Progressive Field. What I thought would be a fairly easy second half given that the uphill portion was behind us was quickly confronted with some crazy winds off of the lake, tearing down the north-south running streets like E. 9th and W. 3rd.
It was very wet and very windy but nevertheless—we made it happen.
I’m not about to brag or slap a “3.1” bumper sticker on my car. Craig, Jon and Denny are easily the resident runners around these parts. And I’d be lying if I said my quads and calves hate me every time I try to walk down a flight of stairs. It was a wake-up call of a reminder that running isn’t exactly riding a bike. But it was good to get back out there, weather conditions notwithstanding. Plus, it’s for a great cause.
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So, this TJ Lane thing was pretty crazy, eh? I know it was late last week, but we really haven’t had a chance to talk about it much. Craig and Brian discussed the social media implications of what went down in the latest WFNY podcast; Brian’s “the Internet loves a good manhunt” was perfect. But as with any story that appears to have closure once the antagonist has been apprehended, there is subsequent fallout that results in internal finger-pointing.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see if the state keeps Lane at the same Institute, or moves him to one that can actually keep an eye on him.
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Blow up that bloviating. Here’s this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting
“Exit Wash: The beloved Texas Manager Steps Aside” by Brian Curtis (Grantland): “In 2010, it was revealed Wash had tested positive for cocaine the previous season. That was shocking, and yet in a strange way, it fit the period in Arlington. […] I gently asked about the coke bust. To my surprise, he didn’t repeat the homilies he’d given the press.”
“Curt Flood’s Monopoly Man” by Mina Kimes (ESPN The Magazine): “Baseball card collecting, like baseball itself, is a world governed by tidy metrics — achievement, timing, scarcity. But every now and then, an aberration throws things into disarray. […] Many fans build collections around a single player. Very few, though, have sought out multiple copies of a single card.”
“How to be a Saint” by Kevin Van Valkenberg (ESPN The Magazine): “Standing in the hot Louisiana sun after a recent Saints practice, swarmed by a battalion of reporters with their television cameras, microphones and notebooks, Jimmy Graham couldn’t help but feel as if he’d committed a heinous crime. The charges — though ambiguous — were serious: dishonor, disrespect, selfishness, immaturity. The evidence had been broadcast on national TV just a few nights earlier when the Saints played the Titans at the Superdome, only Graham’s motive was unclear.”
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Julius Thomas is COMING RIGHT FOR US!
And finally, SNL fans (old and new) will really appreciate this “complete history” of weekend update anchors. The earliest I remember watching was Kevin Nealon in the early 1990s. I absolutely loved Norm McDonald, who followed him before he was canned due to too many OJ jokes. It took a bit of a weird turn with Colin Quinn, but the ship was quickly righted with folks like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLQg6U6jUk0
I think Cecily Strong got a bit of a raw deal, but I’ll be interested to see how (long-time writers) Colin Jost does with Michael Che.
Also: Saturday Night Live is still on. Happy Monday, you guys.
58 Comments
yes, so does nearly everyone else. i don’t see how we afford hitting in the FA market, so it will need to come from within. good thing is that our positional prospects look stronger than our pitching ones.
Our positional prospects always look good in Triple-A. I feel like the Indians have a special PR department that handles hyping our farm system until we demand to see them at the Bigs at which point they all hit around .210 with a terrible K-ratio.
Except, we are finally seeing some of these guys do well in MLB. Chisenhall hit well this year, Kipnis had until this year. Ramirez has been a breath of defensive air with enough at the plate.
There were glimpses from Holt, Walters, and Perez. And, Kipnis is the only one of those 6 mentioned who is older than 25!!!
All of them won’t pan out, but we have more in AAA and I am actually starting to have some hope that we’ll get some of these guys coming to play well.
Hopefully, we will keep having pitchers step up because those aren’t nearly as highly thought of past the ones we have seen in the rotation.
3 days later, but, sigh.
” It’s not me; it’s you.”
It’s also you Garry. That’s not a criticism. You should enjoy baseball to the extent that you want. I get that 85 wins isn’t playoff baseball (unless you play in the crap ALC of the mid 90s). But it’s a lot better than most people in this town are treating it.
Was being ironic with that line.
Fair enough. Tough to tell from the rest of the post. Like I said, no criticism. If people in this town want to get geared up because the Browns won a game, and leave the Indians at the bottom of the attendance table despite going over .500, that’s their prerogative.
Though I would argue that if they got out to a hot start and beat the Tigers (and hey they did do that latter part for the first four months), it’s not like people would have embraced the team, they didn’t in 2011. Not that that matters anyway.
The whole comment was meant humorously. I am serious about the 2 primary shortcomings that I saw (not showing up to play in April and consistently losing to the Tigers), but I acknowledge that it’s wholly unreasonable to trade the Indians for the Browns . . . but, it’s what I do. Therefore, it’s obviously “me” (but this team really has frustrated me to no end this year – mostly because (1) it’s obvious what they’re capable of doing; and (2) I did embrace them).
Again, fair enough. I’m right there with you in the frustration. And right now, I feel exactly like I do when the Browns are around 4-8, and I’m figuring out which permutations sneak them into the last playoff spot, knowing full well how futile the task is.
We’re going to disagree on the need for a hot start and beating the Tigers. Last year’s team showed that there’s no set path to 90 wins. I don’t care how you figure out how to get there as long as you do, but there’s no reason to belabor the point.
I’m still left wondering if it really is completely playoffs or bust for this fanbase. As much as I agree on the frustration, this is still a pretty good year, and they’ve got a guy in Kluber that should be a hell of a draw.