AMPS 2020 Best Picture Nominees

Well, it's about the end of the year, and that means it's about time to announce the results of the AMPS Best Picture nominee votes. Thank you to all that had voted in the preliminary vote. I had more votes than ever before. It was a pretty close match, but in the end only one film came out on top, and the winner joins the four other films that I had pre-selected for spots. Each of them will be introduced after the break.

Normally whenever I present the nominees it's just for your edification, and I had a winner already pre-selected Big Brother-style. HOWEVER, this year will be different. I haven't spent all that much time thinking about these movies, and I don't have one that I am particularly attached to. So that means I will open the vote up to all of you! That's right, you can help select the potential Best Picture winner in the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS) of 2020! The process will be the exact same as before. I will present the five nominated films, and at the end there will be a poll that will allow you to pick a winner. Since these films are fake and all you have are my (poorly-written) summaries, there really is no criteria for how you should vote. 

And just in case you're wondering, here are the nominees from previous years
2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019

Yes, back in 2014 and 2018 I didn't care enough about the films so never bothered to present all the nominees. This year could have been the same, except I am giving y'all this wonderful opportunity to play an even bigger role in my fake film awards.

And once again the disclaimer

OF COURSE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ANY OF THESE MOVIES
THESE MOVIES ARE MOVIES I MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGINATION
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM

RIP Phil Niekro (1939-2020)

Well, we thought we can get through 2020 with no other major issues, but alas the accursed year proved that it was not done with its accursed reach. It has claimed yet another baseball legend, to join with the six other Hall of Famers that have passed away. Moreover, it was yet another member of the 300-win club. That's right, knuckleball specialist Philip Henry Niekro has passed away at the age of 81 of complications from prostate cancer. His long career with the Atlanta Braves will never be forgotten. 

Furthermore, with the passing of Tom Seaver back in August this marks the first time ever that two members of the 300-win club had passed in the same calendar year. In fact the three month and 26 days between their passing is now the shortest in between deaths of 300-win pitchers, just beating out the four month and 17 days that came between the deaths of Christy Mathewson (in 1925) and Eddie Plank (in 1926). This leaves just eight living members remaining of the illustrious 300 win club: 2/3 have passed away.

The Wins of Phil Niekro below the break.

AMPS 2020 Best Picture Nominee Vote

Well, we're finally near the end of 2020. That's probably a cause for celebration for most of you, but it just means it's time for me to focus on my fake film awards. That's right, for those of you that don't know, I've been coming up with fake films and awarding them with fake awards since 1998, because I've got nothing better to do. For the past decade or so I've been having my friends participate through polls done on Facebook notes. Alas, Facebook has shut down their notes, which means I have to migrate to my blog. However, this might not be a bad thing after all. With Facebook notes I was limited to just my Facebook friends, and they have to vote by leaving comments. However, with the vote being held on my blog, it is available to anybody that has to my blog, which could be the entire internet! And I could create a poll in something like SurveyMonkey and embed the poll on this page, so you can just read the choices, click on your pick and go on with your day*. I can get something that far dwarf the 1-5 votes that I normally get on these things. This is getting exciting.

*While comments are not necessary, I would certainly welcome any comments about the films or about how bloody crazy I am.

Nevertheless, as I had mentioned this is a poll to select the fifth nominee for Best Picture in one of my three film awards: the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS). (Yes, I have more than one of these awards). I have already selected four pictures out of the many that I've come up with throughout the year that would get Best Picture nominations. Then I have selected three more that would be up for this vote, and the winner will go down as the fifth Best Picture nomination. I will be presenting the three candidate films below the break. I am not going to tell you what criteria to direct your vote there really is no criteria. Just vote for what you think should be the final nominee.

If this all seem confusing to you, here are the votes from previous years: 2008 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Before I get to the candidate films here is one final announcement

OF COURSE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ANY OF THESE MOVIES
THESE MOVIES ARE MOVIES I MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGINATION
DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM

Anyways, now that I got that out of the way, the movies will be after the break

Every Deceased Major League Player from My Lifetime

I had maintained this list over on Facebook, but with Facebook shutting down its blogging services, I might as well transition this to this forum. Over the past year or so I've been keeping track of the players in each of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey) that made it to the top league in their respective sport (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) sometime in my lifetime (I was born January 25, 1985) that has since passed away.

This is the master list of all 962 players from all four sports that played in their respective Major Leagues within my lifetime that are now deceased. In the individual lists the players were listed in reverse chronological order. However, in this one we are listing the players by chronological order by date of death. I will list the dates of their last Major League game. If multiple players died on the same day, the then I will list the player whose career ended earlier first.

Every Deceased MLB Players From My Lifetime

I had maintained this list over on Facebook, but with Facebook shutting down its blogging services, I might as well transition this to this forum. Over the past year or so I've been keeping track of the players in each of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey) that made it to the top league in their respective sport (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) sometime in my lifetime (I was born January 25, 1985) that has since passed away.

This was the first list that I had made. I was working a night shift, and this was only a few days after Tyler Skaggs's tragic death of asphyxiation following an overdose of opiates and other drugs. During some down time I was looking up deceased MLB players and made a list of the deceased players that played in the 2000s, then since I started watching baseball in 1993. At the end I just went ahead and made a list of everybody from my lifetime. I was already keeping track of deceased players through baseball cards I had. This may have been from the fact that I've been a baseball fan for so long, and know more baseball players than the other sports. Since then I've been updating the list, which now totals 244 players. The players are listed in reverse chronological order by their final MLB game. If multiple players last played on the same day, then the player who died later are listed first.

Every Deceased NFL Player From My Lifetime

I had maintained this list over on Facebook, but with Facebook shutting down its blogging services, I might as well transition this to this forum. Over the past year or so I've been keeping track of the players in each of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey) that made it to the top league in their respective sport (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) sometime in my lifetime (I was born January 25, 1985) that has since passed away. I was inspired to create the NFL list after watching Killer Inside, the documentary about the life and death of former Patriots wide receiver Aaron Hernandez. As I went on Pro Football Reference and compiled the list it struck me at just how many former NFL players have died. There are a grand total of 500 former football players that's played in the NFL during my lifetime, more than the other three sports combined. It's true NFL teams have larger rosters than the other sports, but it's not significantly larger than something like baseball where teams swap players from their minor league affiliates all the time. I looked up a lot of the deaths and it seems many of the players died prematurely from things such as murders, suicides, car accidents, and heart attacks, often before the age of 45. I don't know if it's all statistically significant or not, but it may be a sign of just how damaging football can be.

Anyways, these players are listed in reverse chronological order from their last game in the NFL. If multiple players had their last games on the same day, then the player that died later will be listed first. This is especially obvious since there are almost 40 players that last played in October 1987, almost all of them replacement players from the 1987 NFL strike detailed in this video. 

Every Deceased NHL Player From My Lifetime

I had maintained this list over on Facebook, but with Facebook shutting down its blogging services, I might as well transition this to this forum. Over the past year or so I've been keeping track of the players in each of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey) that made it to the top league in their respective sport (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) sometime in my lifetime (I was born January 25, 1985) that has since passed away. The list of NHL players that has passed away has been fairly small, which makes sense since the rosters are generally pretty small. The list now consists of 113 names, nine of which passed away in the tragic Yaroslav Lokomotiv plane accident in 2011. These players are listed in reverse chronological order from their final NHL games. If they played their last game on the same day, then the player that died later is listed earlier.

Every Deceased NBA Player From My Lifetime

I had maintained this list over on Facebook, but with Facebook shutting down its blogging services, I might as well transition this to this forum. Over the past year or so I've been keeping track of the players in each of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, hockey) that made it to the top league in their respective sport (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) sometime in my lifetime (I was born January 25, 1985) that has since passed away. The MLB, NFL and NHL lists were easy since the Sports References site for those sports list every dead player by year. The Basketball Reference page does not. I had to click every player on every roster for every team since 1985. In the end I found this list of 105 players that have since passed away. They are listed in reverse chronological order of their final games. If two players played their last game on the same day, then the player that died later is listed earlier.

RIP Tom Seaver (1944-2020)

Well, it's finally happened. As you know I've been a fan of the 300-win club for going over 15 years, and over the past ten years I've been trying to meet the living members of the milestone club and going to the graves of the deceased ones. Through my efforts I had been able to visit the graves of all of the 300-win members with graves and meet nine of the ten living members. The only one I was missing was George Thomas Seaver. He had never gone to a baseball card show, and I had never been able to go to Hall of Fame inductions where he had been in attendance quite regularly. Things became rocky when it became revealed that he had been dealing with the effects of Lyme disease, and then the news that he was retiring from public due to the diagnosis of dementia. That essentially killed my chances of ever meeting him, and the tragic news yesterday that Seaver had died from complications of COVID-19 on August 31, 2020 officially ended it. Now we are left to contemplate the legacy of one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

Rangers/Senators season-by-season

I graphed the season-by-season record of the Washington Senators / Texas Rangers. The results are...not pretty...

Images after the break.

Randy Johnson's 300th Win - 11th Anniversary

Well, I wasn't originally going to do anything for Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day today other than watching the game, especially after the grueling failure that was my 10th Anniversary Special a year ago. However, I am constantly on the lookout for stuff related to this game, so might as well list some of my findings, plus update the progress of the 300-win hopefuls, which I'm afraid is not looking good.

First of all, I'm sure y'all heard that I met the man himself at long last. I wrote an entire post about it, so there's no need to rehash.

Walter Johnson's 300th Win - 100th Anniversary

As you probably could have guessed, I'm a huge fan of the 300-win milestone. There is nothing quite like celebrating the select group of 24 pitchers with the talent, the longevity, and the luck to average 15 wins a year for 20 seasons. It was enough for me to dedicate almost 500,000 words on celebrating the 10th anniversary of the last time the milestone was reached, almost a year ago.

Yes, I hear the criticisms about the pitcher's win. I hear the complaints how the men in the 300-win-club are mere compilers and not actually the best pitchers in baseball history. To that I say "Bah." The pitching win is an antiquated stat and reliant more on the team than individual performances, and win-loss record is often very deceiving. Yet it takes a certain type of pitcher to put in the innings required to achieve strong win totals. And with the complaint that the 300-win pitchers are not the best? I'd like to direct people to the JAWS statistic. JAWS is a creation of sportswriter Jay Jaffe, and stands for JAffe Wins above replacement Score. It makes use of the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat, which attempts to quantify the contributions of a baseball player in all aspects of the game. JAWS is basically the average between the career WAR and the sum of the total WAR from the player's seven best seasons. It's remarkably simple, yet gives equal consideration towards a player's career as a whole and their peak.

Each player has a JAWS score, and their scores can be compared to the scores of Hall of Famers at their respective positions to give a general estimation at their Hall of Fame worthiness. The list of the 500 best JAWS score among starting pitchers is available over at Baseball Reference, and it's worth noting that the 13 pitchers with the highest JAWS scores are all 300 game winner. One would have to get to the 14th spot before you get to the first pitcher without 300 wins (Bob Gibson with 251). The average JAWS scores among Hall of Fame starters is 61.6. Of the 32 pitchers that eclipse that mark, 21 of them are 300-game winners, with only Mickey Welch, Don Sutton and Early Wynn falling short. To see how much 300-game winners tower over their Hall of Fame counterparts without 300 wins, consider the fact that the 300-game-winning Hall of Famers have an average JAWS score of 78.3*, compare to the 52.5 put up by the Hall of Famers without 300 wins**.

*The average JAWS of all 300-game-winners becomes an even more impressive 79.3 if you throw in Roger Clemens, who has his 354 wins but isn't in the Hall of Fame. There are only 10 pitchers with a JAWS score above 79.3.

**The average JAWS of all pitchers with at least 150 wins outside the Hall of Fame is 38.1, and that's if you include all of the players still active and Roger Clemens. If you remove Clemens the average falls to 37.7. If you remove the active players the average falls to 37.6. If you remove Clemens and the active players, the average becomes 37.2. 

And yet among all of the pitchers that have ever played in the Majors, there is one man that stands atop the JAWS mountain, the player with a strong case for being the best pitcher of all time. That man is Walter Johnson. And today is the 100th anniversary of his 300th win.

Major League Baseball Game Summaries - Games I've Attended

Today would have been the Rangers home opener and their first official game in Globe Life Field. However, with the coronavirus delaying the start of the baseball season for months, the opening of the brand new ballpark, I am faced with the awful truth that the calendar may turn to June or July and there will be no box scores to follow, no Excel spreadsheets to update, and most critically no games to attend. What is there to do fill the void that should be occupied by baseball? Then it hit me.

A little more than a year ago I was writing 300-word summaries for each of Randy Johnson’s Major League victories - 303 in the regular season and seven in the post-season - as part of the festivities for the tenth anniversary of his 300th win. It was mind-numbingly dull and extremely repetitive, and I didn’t want to ever do anything like that again. However, with the games delayed, I might as well write 300-word summaries of each of the 136 Major League Baseball games I’ve attended (minus the one exhibition game from before the 2010 season.) I’ve written about some of the games before in celebration of the 100-game milestone, but those sure as heck weren’t 300 words long, and then I’ve got another 36 to write about.

And yes, I’ve only been to 136 games. That’s still less than the number of games a team plays in a typical season. As much as I think about baseball and talk about baseball I don’t go to very many games. Furthermore, my memories involving the actual plays are limited, so I’ve mostly reconstructed the games through Baseball Reference’s Play by Plays, which I’ll link to.

Meeting Randy Johnson

So, if you haven't followed me and my writing in the past 10 years, I've been somewhat obsessed over the 300-win milestone, specifically the 300th win of one Randall David Johnson. I've done everything from write-ups about the game to collecting stories of other people at the game to transcripts of the broadcast. And then on June 4, 2019 - the 10th anniversary of the milestone game, I rolled out a massive retrospective totaling nearly 500,000 words detailing everything from all of the 300-game winners and their milestone wins, all 303 of Randy Johnson's wins, and all of the other games played on June 4, 2009. So yes, I have spent a lot of my time thinking about and writing about the Big Unit.

Which makes it somewhat strange that over all this time I have yet to actually meet the fellow. I've spent the last decade either going around and meeting the other 300-game winners or going to their graves, but our paths had never crossed, just like it had never crossed with Tom Seaver. I am usually too busy to travel the great distances required to go to his public appearances, which are often out of state. The only time I saw that he was in Texas came ten years ago, on January 25, 2010. He was appearing in the Tristar show in Houston, but this was when I was celebrating a birthday with some med school friends, and there was a quiz coming up on the past week. There was no way I'd be able to drive eight hours to get a chance to meet the latest 300-game winner. I was able to get my ticket sent it for a signature complete with a "Win 300" inscription.

Since then I had been checking the Houston lineup every year. There have been plenty of 300-game winners that made appearances there, including Steve Carlton, Don Sutton, Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Tom Glavine. But Randy Johnson was always missing from the list. That is, until I checked in 2020. There he was, the Big Unit himself, making a scheduled appearance in the Houston Tristar show on February 9, 2020.