Earlier this week, the wonderful "Sesame Street" celebrated its 40th anniversary. Which is just amazing if you think about it: "Sesame Street" has been around as long as the Kansas City Royals or the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals. When it debuted in November 1969, Willie McCovey and Harmon Killebrew had just been awarded their MVP awards, Tom Seaver received his first Cy Young award, and Lou Piniella had just been honored as the American League Rookie of the Year. Oh, and Jamie Moyer was a prime target for the new show, being only one week shy of his 7th birthday. I'm not sure there's any other way to explain just how old that is.

But here it is, 2009 and "Sesame Street" is still going strong. It's pretty cool, really. In honor of that, and to end the week on a nice positive note, I thought I'd share a few of the baseball-related clips that I was able to find. Above is a ballgame from the Teeny Little Super Guy, who I easily recognize on site but who I would never have been able to name in a thousand years  (or whose theme music I wouldn't have been able to sing, unlike the terrific girlfriend...). The next video is a great little story called "Home Run on the Range", a "Sesame Street" take on "Casey At the Bat" starring Forgetful Jones.

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Today is Veterans' Day, and I wanted to take the time to thank every veteran out there for all that you have done for us and for all that you have sacrificed for us. It is a tough, seemingly-thankless job, and we all appreciate what you do. So thank you.

I also wanted to take the time here at the blog to explore baseball's ties to the military and to war. We all know the tales of Ted Williams and Bob Feller and all the other major leaguers who went off to fight in World War II - books upon books have been written on those guys - and so I was hoping to find something a little more rare, a little different. I spent all yesterday evening browsing through old newspapers, magazines, books, and photos, just looking for the right one to use as inspiration. One that would be entertaining and intriguing, and that would remind us just how important military veterans are to our lives. In this day and age, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers overseas can sometimes be an afterthought. This wasn't always so, and I thought that, by finding the right story to tell, I might be able to remind a few people of that.

You see, Veterans' Day is important to me. Much of my family has been in the military at one time or another (one uncle just finished a 25+ year stint in the Air Force, for example), and my brother is currently a captain in the Army. He is serving his second tour of duty in Iraq as we speak (Camp Taji, about 20 km north of Baghdad). Not only does that mean that he's been in harm's way for 24 of the last 36 months, it also means that his wonderful family - his wife and three daughters - has been without him as a father and husband for that period. And, believe me, that's a huge sacrifice.

After spending a few hours looking through all those different sources for just the right story, I still couldn't find it. I don't know - maybe I just didn't know how to search for the story I wanted, or maybe I didn't know what it was I was looking for well enough. Whatever the case, when I went to bed last night, I didn't know what I was going to write about today. But then it occurred to me: today is important to me, as it is to millions of other people out there, because of my family - because of my brother. So why not tell a quick story about baseball, him and me? Sounds good to me...

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EDIT: Someone pointed out that I'm wrong about the number of players born in Germany. I got that information from Baseball-Reference, but I didn't stop to think to check for West Germany, which BR keeps a list of separately. If you look at that list, you'll see some famous names like Ron Gardenhire or Glenn Hubbard. It certainly explains why the gap in players born in Germany began right at the onset of the Cold War. I suppose this takes much of the wind out of these sails. Enjoy the piece anyway - at least the sentiment remains the same.

Since 1901, there have been only three players born in Germany to reach the Major Leagues. The first two were born before the Cold War era got well-underway in 1950:

• Heinz Becker was born in Berlin in 1915, and played in 152 games for the Cubs and Indians between 1943 and 1947, during the War.
• Mickey Scott was born in Weimar, Germany, in 1947, in what would soon be known as East Germany. From 1972 through 1977, he pitched in relief in 133 games for the Orioles, Expos, and Angels. He also served in the military in Vietnam in 1967, a year after leading the New York-Penn League in wins and strikeouts.

The third player is Tobi Stoner, who was born in Landstuhl, West Germany, in 1984, and made his major league debut for the Mets less than two months ago. Stoner finished the AAA season strongly, winning his last four starts, before getting the call up. He pitched well enough in limited relief for the Mets, giving up four runs in four appearances for the Mets (with three of those in one three-inning stint against the Phillies). He'll certainly be hoping for some more innings next year, as he enters his age-25 season.

There is little written about Stoner's time growing up. He graduated high school in central Maryland and went to a small West Virginia college called Davis & Elkins College. Seeing as how Landstuhl, Germany, is home to two key U.S. military stations - Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and Ramstein Air Base - it seems likely that Stoner was born there due to military ties (much like other famous Landstuhl-born performers, such as LeVar Burton and Rob Thomas). I cannot find any verification of this, though.

I write this because yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sadly, I have no memories of when this happened (though I do remember the earthquake-scarred Battle of the Bay only one month earlier), so I can't add any personal recollections to the discussion around the blogosphere. Shysterball and his commentors provided some good stories, though, and the Wall Street Journal's Daily Fix gives us an interesting perspective on how the sports world changed that day.

Baseball is most assuredly not as important in the grand scheme of things as the fall of the Berlin Wall. That wall coming down meant freedom and the end of oppression for millions of people, while baseball is just a game that we like to work ourselves up over for the fun of it. But sometimes it's nice to analyze how a major event affected minor things, to get a feeling for the full impact of the event.

I suppose a player born on a military base in a foreign country (and that's my assumption, of course) isn't exactly the textbook definition of the league expanding its horizons, but, considering the long history of American military bases in Germany and the complete dearth of major league caliber players born in Germany in the last 60 years, it could be seen as a start. Stoner might not be the next Dirk Nowitzki, but it's nice to see that, after a century of war - both hot and Cold - we can celebrate a momentous anniversary like this one with at least one German-born player in the big leagues. Hopefully that expansion, growth, and diversity will continue on for decades to come. It can only make the game more exciting.

Not that I have to remind anyone here, but today marks the start of the first full week of the baseball off-season. With the end of the World Series, all that we have to look forward to over the long, cold winter will be MVP awards, Hall of Fame voting, and the hot stove. Meaningful baseball is not going to be played for another five months. It's a sad statement really, especially for those of us who have committed to writing about the game on a daily basis. What are we to do in the meantime (besides rail against Scott Boras, of course)?

One worthwhile suggestion is to spend the winter revisiting the old classic baseball movies. With so many great baseball films out there - Death on the Diamond, The Pride of the Yankees, Bad News Bears, Field of Dreams, Major League, Mr. 3000... - one could easily watch a film a week all winter long without running dry, and it might just be the best night of your week. (Okay, maybe not...)

Whether you decide to spend all winter watching baseball movies or not, it's still nice to look back at some favorites every now and then. I'm not going to give you a top ten list or anything like that - there have been way too many attempts at that over the years. Instead, I thought it'd be interesting to see how some of our favorite hardball movies were received when they were first released.

The foremost movie critic of the last thirty-plus years has, of course, been Roger Ebert. He's been reviewing movies for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and has been synonymous with film for nearly my entire life. Thanks to this wonderful internet-age that we all live in, his entire collection of movie reviews can be found online at his website, rogerebert.com. Using that as a resource, I went through and found Ebert's reviews of a few of the most popular baseball films of the last three decades. How did he see them at the time? Are our memories and feelings tinted with years of nostalgia, or were these movies just as good when they were new? What did people think of them with a "fresh" pair of eyes?

The Bad News Bears (1976)

It's been so long since The Bad New Bears was released, and so many movies, tv shows, etc. have tried to copy its formula, that it's hard to realize just how new and unique it was when it came out. This is what Ebert had to say about it:

The movie's about a team that's surely one of the worst ever assembled (although I once played right field for one that wasn't much better). The kids are uncoordinated and demoralized and afraid of the ball, and wouldn't be playing at all except that a liberal city councilman has made them a test case. The members include a black, a couple of Mexicans, various other minority group members and, eventually, a girl.
...
All of this is pretty much as we'd expect it, and there are obligatory scenes in which the Bears finally get their uniforms, Matthau finally shaves, the boys say they won't wear their athletic supporters until Amanda wears one, too . . . and the team wins its first game. But beneath this entertaining surface stuff, there's something else going on. We begin to sense how important, how really crucial, Little League is to the adults involved in it. How much emphasis they place on winning.

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2009, Yankees over Phillies (click the image for a larger size)

This was the sight that greeted New York Times subscribers yesterday morning after Hideki Matsui powered the Yankees past the Phillies for the World Series crown. It was the twenty-seventh time that the Yankees were World Champions and it was the twenty-seventh time that the New York Times memorialized the victory on their front page.

One of the greatest things about the Times is that its entire 150+ years history is available online. Much of it is behind a paywall, but, if you have access to the archives, there's a ton of information to be found.

I thought it'd be fun, then, to take a look through the Times' archive to see how the various Yankees' titles were celebrated. I originally wanted to create a slideshow of all twenty-seven front pages, but that seemed like it might be pushing things a little bit. Instead, I chose a select few to feature here that hopefully show how the front page celebrations have evolved over the last 80+ years.

Enjoy!

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Yesterday afternoon, in anticipation of the Phillies/Yankees Game 6, SportsCenter came up with a list of the ten best Game Six moments in World Series history. Joe Carter's series-winning, walk-off homer off of Mitch Williams in 1993 was their number one moment, but there were plenty of other memorable ones. One of the most famous, of course, was the Bill Buckner error in the tenth inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series (and to my friends who are Red Sox fans, I apologize for bringing it up).

We all remember that moment - and that World Series - as one of the most exciting and memorable of the last twenty-five, or even fifty, years. It seems impossible to think of it in any other way. With that in mind, I found it pretty funny when I came across this article the other day. Written by Bill Conlin and published Sunday, October 26, 1986, the article was called "Paled by the playoffs/This Series is truly an anticlimax". An excerpt:

"In the wake of two of the great individual games in the history of the pastime, two emotionally spent ballclubs have produced what so far has been a forgettable World Series.

Major-league baseball must now ask itself a serious question: Is it fair to expect 48 guys who already have driven themselves through 30 exhibition games and the 162-game regular season to hang out their skills for what could be 14 consecutive Super Bowls with their attendant media circus?

"I think that's a bit much to ask of professional athletes," Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson said. "We get paid a lot of money to play the best we can play, but we're human beings and we can only stay on an emotional high for so long and you have to come back down again and go back up again."
...
"After you put so much into a series there's bound to be a letdown," Wilson said. "We've had somewhat of a letdown after that series (with) Houston. We're just beginning to get ourselves back up.""

Mookie would, of course, go on to have a key role in the Buckner game. Conlin wasn't done explaining to his readers just why the Series was underwhelming that year.

"In case you've dozed off around 11 p.m., or the fifth inning - whichever came first - nobody is comparing this World Series with the 1975 classic between the Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds. Nobody is even comparing it to last autumn's forgettable Missouri Waltz, when the only play anybody can remember a year later was a blown call at first base by American League umpire Don Denkinger.

Cutoff and relay men have been missed, and the baserunning has been right out of a 1962 Mets lowlights film. Wade Boggs, the best average hitter the game has seen since Ted Williams, has flogged the ball at a .227 clip."

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Happy November everyone!

As we prepare for Game 6 tonight - it's still hard to believe that it's November 4 and we haven't even played Game 6 of the World Series yet - I just wanted to take a few minutes to point out a couple of things that I found pretty cool.

1924 and You Are There! - This is about one of the coolest blog ideas that I've ever seen and I really hope that Jeff can keep up the output (which, I have to say, is pretty outstanding already). In short, Jeff is replaying the 1924 baseball season through Strat-O-Matic and writing about the games (and the world of 1924) through the eyes of two young fans. It might sound a little strange at first, but it doesn't take too long to get it and appreciate it. Here's a random sample from a recent post:

July 26, 1924

Okay, enough of this already. The Phillies had lost six games in a row, and hadn't won since we beat the Cubs 5-3 nine days ago in Chicago. Heck, me and Benny had even been kidnapped by Al Capone's men and ridden to Indiana on a smuggler's boat since then.

Well, luck finally showed up today for us in the personing of Vic Keen. With his crummy 6-13 record, the Cubs hurler has loads of talent but never seems to catch a break. Ring is the same kind of black cat pitcher for us, but Johnny Couch was going instead so I knew we had a chance. 

The players all have their own ways to fend off the spooks, though. Mokan always stops to grind his shoe into the foul line chalk when he runs out to left field. Holke starts wearing his underwear inside out whenever we lose three straight, and even Art Fletcher puts a dollar bill under his cap if we have a lead in the 9th. I personally don't believe in that stuff, and got no problem walking under a ladder on 13th Street on Halloween night, but I can see why baseball people do it, because sometimes there's almost fifteen sec

It truly is some great stuff. If you're at all interested in reading about the old-time players, or in reading classic-style baseball recaps, or even just in supporting someone who has thought of a completely novel way of enjoying the game of baseball (especially as the season is about to enter a six-month hibernation), I highly recommend clicking on through and checking out "1924 and You Are There!".

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

There's plenty of talk today, as there has been all month, about the poor umpiring in these playoffs. In last night's Game 2, we saw Ryan Howard pull off a 3-4 double play after the first base umpire Brian Gorman incorrectly said that Howard caught the ball on the fly. Replays seemed to show that the ball took an oh-so-small short-hop into the mitt, but Gorman wasn't in the best position to see it. It was a tough call and one that you can't really fault the umpire for, but it was wrong all the same.

And it was exacerbated the next inning, with the Phillies up to bat. Chase Utley grounded the ball to second and, after Cano and Jeter did an excellent job turning a tough relay to get the lead runner out, he was called out at first by Gorman for the double-play. Replays were much more conclusive on this one, and Utley was clearly safe. Many people, Phillies and Yankees fans alike, had no choice but to wonder if it was a "make-up call" by Gorman (don't believe me? Twitter will vouch for that.)

So, considering all of that, this quote doesn't seem too far-fetched:

Whatever else this World Series is remembered for, it will be remembered for the uneven quality of its justice. As in previous Series, plenty of solid work was turned in behind the plate and on the basepaths. But in this one, much of it was undone by a few fateful blinks of the eye.

Okay, maybe it's not 100% true, but it's pretty close. And since it's a column from 1992 (by Jim Litke), when the Blue Jays were busy winning their first of two back-to-back championships, I think that's understandable. The point here is that, while it may seem like the umpires are worse this year than they've ever been, it's really hard to say if that's true. Umpires have been blowing calls on the big stage for years, for decades. More from the article:

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

The first two games of the World Series have been great. Strong pitching performances have kept the games close late, and most of the scoring has managed to be exciting. The umpires were a little questionable last night but, in the end, the Yankees earned their victory. With the Series back in Philly and tied at one game apiece, the next few games should prove to be a lot fun. I can't wait.

In the meantime, on this off-day, I thought I'd keep you entertained with this clip from the South Park Little League episode. If you haven't seen it, it's great: the South Park kids make it all the way to the Little League State Finals despite not liking the game at all. It's not exactly the Bad News Bears, but some of the elements are there. Enjoy this scene, as the kids finish off what they think is their last game of the season.

Before I forget and it gets too late to do anything, I just wanted to mention that I'm nominated for Best Baseball Blog over at the First Annual Bloguin Awards. Yeah, it's exciting.

The Bloguin network was born only 1 year ago with a grand total of four basketball blogs. In that short time, things have exploded. There are now 100 different Bloguin blogs covering all the major sports and more. It's a pretty good list, and everyone's putting out great content on a regular basis.

I joined Bloguin only two months ago, and I'm very happy to be here. I can't imagine going back to Blogger and having to leave this place behind (especially that sweet banner). It really is nice to be nominated alongside some great blogs so go check it out and vote for your favorite!