Watching Every NHL Team

 

So earlier in the day (I guess it would be yesterday by now), I watched the Dallas Stars beat the Los Angeles Kings in a stunning come-from-behind win by a score of 4-3. It was significant for the Stars in their playoff push as it helped them get into a Wild Card spot. However, more significantly on a personal level, it was the first time that I watched the Kings in person. Which means that in my almost-six years of watching hockey games on the NHL level, I have finally seen all of the teams in person at least once. It took me only 67 games to reach this milestone, 35 games less than it took me to watch all of the MLB teams in person!

Back in 2018 I had written about every MLB team I had seen in order. I will now do the same for the NHL teams.

AMPS 2021: Best Picture Nominees

So back on Christmas I had posted the annual vote for the final Best Picture nominee in the first of my three fake movies awards: the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS). Thanks to all seven of you that decided to humor me in placing your vote, but one film has surfaced as the winner and has been elevated to the fifth and final Best Picture nominee. The full list shall be presented now after the break.

Last year I had done something unprecedented and had y'all vote on the winner. That was a fun little experiment, but there won't be a repeat this year. Feel free to post what you feel should be the winner in the comments below.

Meanwhile, here are the previous years where I posted nominees.
2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020

AMPS 2021 Best Picture Nominee Vote

Merry Christmas everyone, and for us it means it's time to focus on...Fake Film Awards! That's right, it's the time of year when I come and look over the movies I've come up with over the year and select a few of them to compete for awards glory in one of my three set of fake awards. For the past several years I've allowed people to vote for the fifth and final Best Picture nominee in the first of these awards, the Awards for Motion Picture Services (or AMPS for short.) I've already come up with four films, and then here are three more films that everyone here can vote on to take the final spot. I'll introduce the candidate films with a short summary, and then comes the poll where you can pick one of the three films, and leave comments about the films. 

And in case you are curious, here are polls for previous years: 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2008

And here comes our annual disclaimer.

YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THESE MVIES
THESE MOVIES ARE MOVIES I'VE MADE UP
NOBODY HAS SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST
EXCEPT IN MY OWN IMAGIANTION
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.

2011 World Series Game 6 - 10th Anniversary Retrospective

So yesterday was October 27, 2021. It's the 36th anniversary of the day the Kansas City Royals clinched the 1985 World Series with a win in Game 7, and the 17th anniversary of the day the Boston Red Sox clinched the 2004 World Series to end 86 year of heartache.

It's also the 10th anniversary of the infamous Game 6 of the 2011 World Series. The Texas Rangers were one win away from capturing the 2011 World Series. Of course they blew it in historic fashion to enhance their legacy of failure.

And of course, because I was so masochistic I decided to watch the entire game for the first time ever, since ten years earlier I only tuned in for the seventh inning onward. And I decided to Tweet the entire debacle. Here's a collection of my tweets.

Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day, 2021

It's that time of the year again, it's Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day, or the anniversary of the day that Randy Johnson became the 24th member of the 300 Win Club, all the way back on June 4, 2009. Yes, I have gone ahead and made it a holiday. I'm probably the only person in the world that celebrates it. 

In the past several years I've generally written something on Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day. This year will be no different. However, whereas in the past I've written about the game itself, I'm going to stay away from that. After all, how many times can you write about the same game, especially after I dedicated almost 500,000 words to the 10th Anniversary of the game. Instead, this year I am going to focus more about the prospects that any future pitcher has with reaching 300 wins.

And frankly, this year things don't look too good.

The Art of the Walk-Off

It has been said that the triple and the inside-the-park home run are the most exciting plays in baseball. However, I disagree with that assertion. I feel that the most exciting play in baseball is the Walk-off. A walk-off refers to a play that leads to a run scoring to end the game. Normally baseball is measured in outs, and a game ends when the losing team runs out of outs. However, in some games the team scores a run to take the lead in the final half-inning, after which the game ends. The run can score due to everything from a hit to a home run to an error to even a strikeout, but at any rate one team comes away with the joys of victory while the other team has the agony of defeat. Any time a walk-off becomes a possibility the buzz in the ball-park become palpable, and when one actually happens the excitement goes through the roof.

The walk-off is about as old as professional baseball itself, but the term "walk-off" was first credited to Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley, who in 1988 referred to a game-ending home run as a "walk-off piece," as the pitcher that allowed it has to walk off the field in shame. Incidentally Eckersley would give up one of the most famous walk-off pieces in baseball history later that year. Walk-offs aren't all that uncommon. 193 of the 2,429 regular season games in 2019 (the last full season) ended in a walk-off, plus three more in 37 post-season games. It comes down to 7.9% of all Major League games ending in a walk-off. Nevertheless, many of baseball's most famous moments are walk-offs: Gabby Hartnett's Homer in the Gloamin' in 1938, Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Around the World" from 1951, Bill Mazeroski's Yankee-killing home run in 1960, Carlton Fisk's "Wave It Fair" home run in 1975, Ozzie Smith's "Go Crazy" home run in 1985, Bill Buckner's "Behind the Bag" error in 1986, Gibson's "I Don't Believe What I Just Saw" home run in 1988, Kirby Puckett's "We'll See You Tomorrow Night" home run in 1991, Joe Carter's "Touch 'Em All" home run in 1993, Robin Ventura's Grand Single in 1999 Luis Gonzalez's Yankee-slaying single in 2001, David Ortiz's "We'll See You Later Tonight" home run in 2004, and unfortunately David Freese's hit in 2011.

I have seen 12 home runs in the 149 Major League baseball games I attended, equaling about 8.0% of the games I've seen. Back when Facebook had the Facebook notes, I had written about the walk-off games I've seen, making a post once every two years. Well, obviously Facebook has deleted the posts, so I figured I might as well re-write it for this blog. In my original post in 2015 I had ordered the games by win probability added (WPA), but this time I will just do everything in chronological order and list the WPA among other facts.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/1012622782535273/
https://www.facebook.com/notes/350088632769894/
https://www.facebook.com/notes/346225136604238/

20 Years of AMPS Winners: 2000-2019

I had wanted to post this yesterday, but then came the report of Don Sutton's passing, and that scuttled my plans for the rest of the night, as I had several Excel spreadsheets to update while writing my tribute post while watching Sutton's 300th win. But now I can come back to present a little bit more about a little about my fake movies.

As I mentioned when presenting the winners of the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS), this was one of my fake awards for fake movies from my fake country. There are actually three sets of awards that I've come up with. The L Awards was the first set of awards I made up, way back in 1998 to celebrate the films of 1997. This was the most prestigious set of awards and is similar to the Academy Awards. However, a few years later I came up with two other awards to act as precursors for the L Awards, just as how there are other awards to predict the Oscars. One of these is the Movie Magazine Awards, which was designed to be the awards voted on and presented by the editors of the Movie Magazine, who also annually selects the ten best movies of the year as well as the ten best performances. They actually hold two sets of awards, one for comedy films and one for drama, so it's similar in that way to the Golden Globes. And then there's AMPS, which is nominally voted on by a select group of industry professionals but are similar to the Critics Choice Awards. 

Anyways, even though the L Awards are the most prestigious and Movie Magazine Awards has the most potential to be fun with its two separate sets of categories, the AMPS has been the set of awards that I've made the most public. I actually started out by allowing users of the Nintendo NSider forums to vote on the final Best Picture nominees for the L Awards in 2006 and 2007, but they made some dubious selections, so I switched to having votes for the final Best Picture nominee in 2008. I took a break in 2009 and 2010 as I was just trying to survive the first two years of medical school, but I went back to holding the votes in 2011, and they have been held annually since then, and this year I went with having a public vote for Best Picture. I thought it went fairly well, so maybe I will continue doing this going forward.

With all that said, I've decided to present the AMPS awards that had been going on since 2000. I've actually retroactively come up with winners dating back to 1989, but I'm going to keep this to 2000 onwards, largely because the "All persons fictitious clause" don't necessarily apply for the years before 2000. Anyways, I will present the winners in all 15 categories after the break, plus the Best Picture winners for Movie Magazine and L Awards, and some commentary just to show how much time I've wasted in coming up with these fake awards. And I'll post the five films nominated for AMPS Best Picture nominees for the heck of it. Names would be given only for acting and directing awards. We start with 2000 after the break.

RIP Don Sutton (1945-2021)

With just 24 members, the 300-Win Club is the smallest of the three major milestone clubs in Major League Baseball history. The members come from a diverse background, but are linked by their individual accomplishments of winning 300 games. There has been at least one living member of the club since Pud Galvin first reached the milestone back on September 4, 1888, but between June 4, 2009 when Randy Johnson joined the club and August 30, 2020 we have been living in an unprecedented period with ten living members of the club. This historic period ended with the tragic death of Tom Seaver on August 31, 2020. After Seaver's death he was quickly joined by Phil Niekro, the man who followed Tom Terrific in the 300-Win Club, who passed away on December 26, 2020. It hasn't been a month since Niekro's death that the news hit today that the fellow that followed Knucksie into the 300-Win Club, Donald Howard Sutton, had passed away in his sleep on January 18, 2021. In the space of less than five months months we had went from ten living members to just seven, still a decent number but which had fallen below the eight living members from Grover Cleveland Alexander's entry on September 24, 1924 to the death of Christy Mathewson's passing on October 7, 1925.

Sutton's career is defined by his consistency. He reached double digits in victory a record 21 times, including 17 straight from his rookie season in 1966 to 1982. That allowed him to achieve 300 wins despite reaching 20 wins just once, in 1976. He was less than flashy on the mound, and was overshadowed by teammates in all five of his Major League stops, but still managed to court some controversy with his tendency to doctor the balls to increase the efficacy of his breaking pitches. He helped four of his five teams to the post-season, and went to four World Series in 1974, 1977, 1978, and 1982. Yet he never had a chance to celebrate a World Series victory. He was released by the Los Angeles Dodgers on August 10, 1988, a little more than two months before they would upset the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. By then he had announced his retirement and would settle in his second career as famed broadcaster. He did most of his broadcasting work for the Atlanta Braves, where he got to see the prime of fellow 300-game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. He was hired by the Washington Nationals for the 2007 and 2008 seasons, but he returned to Atlanta in 2009, thus costing him the chance to call Randy Johnson's 300th win on June 4, 2009. He battled renal cell carcinoma for most of the 2000s. It went into remission for much of the past two decades, allowing him to continue working. However, he suffered a broken femur from walking in March 2019 (possibly from a bone metastsis?) and he struggled to regain his mobility. With the 2020 season coming and going with him outside of the booth, his health failed rapidly, and he died on January 18. It was the end of a long and fruitful life.

Anyways, the wins of Don Sutton after the break

AMPS 2020 - Winners

Well, it's been over two weeks since I posted the five Best Picture nominees for the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS), one of the fake awards I created for my fake movies I came up with from the fake country that I made up when I was around seven or eight years old. (The fake country is called L World, because seven-or-eight-year-old me was so creative.) I am pleased to report that there were enough votes for a clear winner to come out, so the fake ceremony was held this past weekend. Of course, Best Picture is just one of the 15 awards being given out in multiple different categories pertaining to all different aspects of moviemaking. So here we go: the winners for AMPS from the year 2020.

Before we get started, a big thanks to my good friend Nathaniel "Diamondwhits" Whitman who used his graphic design skills to create the AMPS logo, obviously based off a film reel. Oh, I miss my projectionist days.

Also once again, these movies and these names are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. (That hasn't always been the case...) 

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 1180 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 295 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 615 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 143 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 128 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.