SB Nation User Blog: joeschmitt

Las Vegas Watch Party at the Brewery on Sunset

joeschmitt — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:51:43 -0000

I received the following email from the Brewery Bar and Grill located at 3088 East Sunset Blvd., Las Vegas, NV 89120:

It's been a long century, but our Cubs are poised to make history! Sit in a Wrigley Field seat and sip on a Bud. Come and witness the demise of the "Curse of the Billy Goat"! The fun starts Wednesday, October 1st at 3:00 pm with the LA Dodgers entering the "Friendly Confines" of Wrigley Field.

We're serving $1.50 domestic draft beers and $2 Chicago Vienna Hot Dogs during all of the Cubs playoff games!

For our Gambler Bonus members, you'll be taking shots at the Billy Goat for Gambler's Bonus points!

Stick around after the Cub victory to see the Los Angeles (Anaheim???) Angels take on the Boston Red Sox at Los Angeles (Anaheim???) at 7:00 PM.

Thursday's Game:

LA Dodgers @ Chicago Cubs 6:00 PM

HOME OF THE CHICAGO CUBS

(WHEN NO ONE ELSE WANTED THEM!)

I may not be able to make tomorrow's game because of work but I will probably be there for every other game. It's a hole in the wall but they serve cold beer and I don't know of any other Cubs bars in Vegas.

Save Bob Howry!

joeschmitt — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:32:18 -0000

I don't need to read the 5,000-whatever comments from Monday night's awesome victory to know that many of you must be calling for Howry's head, especially in light Al's "Bob Howry Must Go" story this past Friday. I can't blame you all in light of Howry's 5.22 ERA, including 12.27 ERA and numerous leads lost in the last week.

Regardless, I have been sent here to defend him and to appeal to your gentler, more patient instincts.

Do you not remember Bob's consistency over the last 3 seasons? --

	Innings	ERA	WHIP
2005	75	2.47	0.89
2006	76.7	3.17	1.14
2007	81.3	3.32	1.17

And do you not remember the playoffs last season, when Howry pitched 3 innings in 2 games, allowing 0 BBs, 1 H and striking out 6?

Finally, note Howry's 1.38 WHIP for the 2008 season and the correlation between WHIP and ERA according to some smart dude at Berkeley:

Howry's been unlucky. A 1.38 WHIP does not usually translate to a 5.22 ERA. Let's give him some more time to straighten his S out before we pronounce him D-O-N-E. At least wait until he gets his Howry Cow! shirt in the mail.

Search your feelings, BCBers. You will know it to be true.

Addendum: OMG, for those of you who missed it, here's SWL's salute to the W from the last overflow thread:

Al, I call upon you to embrace the hate and put this on the main page for your recap story!!!

Poll

Howry - Must he go?

Dump him

57 votes

Keep him

21 votes

meh

46 votes

124 votes | Poll has closed

Edmonds's catch approaching Tal's Hill in Houston on May 19 (I think), saving a run.

joeschmitt — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:19:37 -0000

Edmonds's catch approaching Tal's Hill in Houston on May 19 (I think), saving a run.

Howry Cow! SWL on TV again!

joeschmitt — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:19:30 -0000

I'm gonna show you my tech crappiness but here's my "grab" of SWL on San Diego channel 4 (my local standard def feed in Vegas):

Right after Woody's 1st backwards K. it's via digital camera - i don't know how to actually grab an image from my TV - and a standard def channel, so you won't be able to gawk at SWL's womb broom or therioty good looks. we also won't be able to debate Mrs. SWL's milfiness. but there you have it.

For the poll:

SWL -

Theriot - (yes, that's SWL proclaiming his jealousy of Theriot)

Azaria -

Hughes -

Post your suggestion in the comments and I will add the good ones.

Poll

SWL looks most like:

Theriot

27 votes

Azaria

49 votes

Hughes

3 votes

79 votes | Poll has closed

Howry Cow! t-shirt TV debut!!!

joeschmitt — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:29:17 -0000

This thread on the original open thread for Monday night's game @ SD made me very excite! was the Howry Cow! shirt really on TV? i rewound my DVR'd game to the point right after the Cubs' 1st run to see if I could see it, only to realize that you guys must have been talking about the Chicago CSN feed while i was watching the SD channel 4 feed here in vegas.

if it was on, it is about 110% chance that it was SWL because he has the only other shirt(s) in existence and i wasn't at the game.

someone with the Chicago CSN feed on DVR please rewind and grab a screenshot!! here's what you are looking for:

(artist's rendering of what SWL may look like).

UPDATE: Thanks for the screen grab kaseyi!! --

Edmonds Diary!!11

joeschmitt — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:47:48 -0000

The Cubs are 13-5 (.722) since signing edmonds, having gone from 1 game back of the d-bags for best record in NL at 24-16 . . .

to best record in the NL by 3 games over the phillies at 37-21.

Also during that time, edmonds is 10 for 35 for .286 / .324 / .543 and an OPS of .867, eerily similar to his career 162-game averages of .285 / .377 / .526 / .903.

Thank you, Padres, for your benevolence. And welcome, Jimmy Ballgame.

Can we all get behind this CUB now and let go of the past?

Poll

Edmonds -- D-O-N-E?

No, recent performance will continue

49 votes

Yes, SAMPLE SIZE!!!1!!

31 votes

80 votes | Poll has closed

The Late Night DVR Report for Monday's Game

joeschmitt — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:16:07 -0000

I just finished watching Monday’s 7-2 Cubs win over the Astros on DVR, something I am trying to do more often so I don’t effectively miss 3 hours of work listening to Pat & Ron on mlb audio and posting in the game thread. I know you all missed my witty contrarianism and troll-baiting (*gag*), so I figured I'd post a writeup.

What a game tonight’s was. I definitely missed hearing Ron’s exhortations during the several great moments of tonight’s game. Still, regardless of whatever moaning went on around here about the ESPN telecast, I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially fellow-Vegas-resident Hershiser, whom I’ve seen on two occasions with his beautiful wife at the Red Rock casino. I’m sure a lot of metaphorical hairs were pulled out over the live look-in on the red sox game (east coast bias!!!!111!!1one), but I appreciated it, as the 9th inning of a potential no-hitter by a red sock at fenway is pretty cool. How great would a hit have been with 2 outs & 2 strikes in the 9th!?! Oh well.

Welcome to Chicago Jimmy Ballgame! Edmonds’ circus, over the shoulder, running-up-hill catch of a slicing 400-foot drive saved the Cubs a run in the 4th. In honor of the catch -- NOT "the Catch" (Reed Johnson) or "THE Catch " (Edmonds in 97 - I couldn't find video online, thanks MLB) -- I have added a new stat to the Edmonds-O-Meter in my signature line: DRS for defensive runs saved. So my signature is now "Before Edmonds: 24-16, (.600); With Edmonds: 4-1 (.800), DRS: 1." (I’ve also changed it to "Before Edmonds" and "With Edmonds" because (a) it currently backs up my viewpoint better; and (b) I don’t wanna have to keep track of whether he appeared in each game or not.)

No matter how you felt about him before (and I post as a hardcore Cubs fan who went to college at Mizzou during Edmonds’ heyday with the cards, so I probably hated him more than most), whether or not you think he’s still "got it" and how much you want Pie out there instead, he’s a Cub NOW and production from him will help us win NOW. I question the patriotism of any real Cubs fan who does not root for him as much as any other Cub. As is often the case, Seinfeld says it best:

There's a wonderful "Seinfeld" bit in which Jerry says that because players change teams so often, fans find themselves rooting for the uniform and not the athlete. "When you root for a team these days," he says, "you're mostly rooting for laundry."

He’s wearing our laundry now, so I’m behind him 100% and I don’t mind telling you that you should too. I'm looking forward to seeing this in Wrigley sometime soon.

Here’s the extent of my actual "analysis":

I LOVED the 2 on-the-deck shots on Carlos Lee!
How great does the end of games look about now with Marmol/Wood?!?!?
We can win on the road.
The HRs by Geo and ARam were SICK.
Welcome back Howry Cow! with a 13 pitch – 9 strike 9th.

With that, sorry for the likely-unworthy fanpost, feel free to ignore it, and I’ll leave the more substantive analysis to those of you who played ball in college (yes that's 8 separate links sports fans!).

Howry Cow!

joeschmitt — Sun, 11 May 2008 03:14:07 -0000

OK Cubs fans and offensive t-shirt haters, I may have the solution to the summer of our discontent caused by the Horry Kow shirts:

All design credit goes to our resident photoshop wizard, santoswoodenlegs.* Note that the shirt is not available for purchase. As of this writing there are exactly three (3) in existence - one for me, one for SWL and one for Mr. Howry, the latter of which SWL may use to bribe Howry into autographing SWL's shirt (and hopefully signing off on allowing us to use his image).

Before making this shirt generally available, I wanted to solicit the advice of BCB'ers regarding: (a) potential legal issues; (b) whether any of these would sell; and (c) if you know of a charity with which Mr. Howry is involved. I am not at all interested in making any money on these, and I figure that the charitable angle may alleviate the potential legal issues.

lemon20pie, feel free to ignore this Fanpost. ; )

* SWL only made the artwork as a joke and was not aware that I may make it commercially available.

Poll

Would you buy a Howry Cow shirt for around $25 shipped, with all profit (about $5/shirt) going to Howry's favorite charity?

Yes

43 votes

No

35 votes

Maybe if someone other than joeschmitt was selling it

11 votes

89 votes | Poll has closed

Game Over Open Thread

joeschmitt — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:26:21 -0000

Here's the place to pronounce "game over" before the game is actually over. Who will be the earliest to pronounce "game over"? Who will derive the greatest amount of satisfaction from his or her early pronouncement? Only time will tell.

GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER

BCB SHIRTS: CALLING KINKY REGGAE...

joeschmitt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:49:25 -0000

i totally missed this fanpost. sorry about that.

fact is i never received the shirt and neither did my former employer. regardless, i would like to take this opportunity to officially rescind my order and instead donate the $25 i paid to the fundraiser without expectation of receiving any merchandise in return.

i hope my accountant reads this.

and here's another 17 words to reach the limit imposed by our BCB overlords. go Cubs go!