Comments on: Dan Meyer

By: nunyer

nunyer — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:54:23 +0000

johnq11:
In defense of Dan Meyer, take away his cover-your-eyes-awful 1978 and he wasn’t terrible by what expansion teams had to work with back then. For three years of his Mariner prime, he was a .275 hitter who averaged 18 HRs with the aforementioned low strikeout totals… Nothing earth shattering of course, but sabermetrics be damned, as nobody will convince me that you are going to find that production from any triple-A scrub off the streets in the late 70s.

By: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:01:26 +0000

Duly noted. Thanks.

By: roccocolavito

roccocolavito — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:47:40 +0000

Josh,

I’ve let it pass three times. But I can’t let it go by again. The word is discernible. I thought you would like to know.

By: pschroed8

pschroed8 — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:29:29 +0000

Forget the soft 70′s rock angle, I think Mr. Meyer has an evil twinkle in his eye. He looks a lot like the crazy, psychopathic killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry.
I’m a big A’s fan, so I remember when Dan Meyer came to the A’s in the early 80′s. What I remember most about him was his ritualistic, Nomar-like, neck stretches that he would do when he stepped out of the batter’s box. He would swivel his neck around, trying to crack it, I guess. I found it odd that he had to do it before every at bat…..just a goofy memory I have about this guy.
Now, next time I catch Dirty Harry on cable, I’ll be thinking of Dan Meyer when Scorpio makes those kids sing about going to get ice cream when he holds them hostage on the school bus.

By: roblisben04

roblisben04 — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:05:33 +0000

There was also Steven Bochco’s short-lived TV show about minor league baseball from the fall of 1983 – “Bay City Blues.” Check it out here: http://www.ask.com/wiki/Bay_City_Blues&qsrc=3044.

By: Lonnie Smith for president

Lonnie Smith for president — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:46:46 +0000

I’m a big fan of both BALL FOUR and all the BEARS movies (well, maybe not so much the one in Japan), having grown up in that era of Toughskins and air hockey. Yes, a BALL FOUR-esque movie is exactly the SEMI-TOUGH vibe I’m thinking of, and I just think baseball was running a distant second to football by that time, which is unfortunate. A cynical unromantic movie of that era, say, based on the A’s (world champs to crappiest of the crappy, they would be great anywhere on the story-telling spectrum) is sorely absent from the culture.

BULL DURHAM, while fun and well-written, is very much a product of its times. In a greenie-induced haze, Dave Kingman would have beat the shit out of Crash Davis with Dan Meyer’s acoustic guitar, and Davis would have crawled back to Annie, only to find her fucking Rick Manning while Sparky Lyle was leaving his assprint on every frosted surface in the house. Dock Ellis would be rifling through Annie’s closet, looking for extra hair curlers.

By: johnq11

johnq11 — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:33:47 +0000

LS for president,

It’s kind of interesting that that there was never a baseball film in the style of “Semi-Tough, North Dallas Forty, or even Slap Shot” considering the sports expose really started with Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four”.

There was actually a short lived t.v. show called “Ball Four” that lasted about 5 episodes in 1976.

The closest they came to a baseball expose in the ’70′s was “The Bad News Bear” but that was based on a children’s little league in California.

The first baseball expose that I could think of was “Bull Durham” in 1988.

By: Lonnie Smith for president

Lonnie Smith for president — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:05:50 +0000

Is that K-Lite Rock, man?

Well, turn it up (softly), man!

I just watched SEMI-TOUGH last night for the first time in at least 15 years. Dan Meyer would have been a smooth fit in that scene, perhaps as one of the B.E.A.T. counselors or driving Bert Convy’s limo. If only there was a 1970s movie that exposed MLB in the same way… but by then, the pointyball was already eclipsing the once-majestic sun with 108 stitches. To everything, turn turn turn.

By: baddude22

baddude22 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:47:44 +0000

For me, expansion teams mean the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies. I am a bit younger than you guys. Expansion teams also mean to me the sweet magic of being on the Little League Senior Minors Yankees to the next year being on the downtrodden Senior Major Marlins because they were one of the two new teams uniforms the league bought. The Marlins and Rockies. Bleck. An all-star pitcher and hitter one year with the Yankees, and then a middling finish and only an alternate player on the All-Star team the next year with the Marlins.

The song that is slowly and softly driving me insane right now is the Monsters of Folk song, “Say Please.” Just saying.

By: slavetothetrafficlight

slavetothetrafficlight — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:54:20 +0000

“Is it a good sign or a bad sign that I know the 1977 placement in the standings of the three lousiest American League teams the year I was nine years old without looking it up?”

You never know when the topic may come up, possibly in a situation involving you, a hot tub, and the cast of “Girls Next Door.” I know which teams (Mets and Padres) finished below the expansion teams in the year I was nine years old. Then again, that was 1993, which is why I’d skip right over the creepy infomercial hoping to find Holly, Bridget and Kendra.