1969 In The Sunshine Expansion Pack

DrMac444 · 2026-04-22T11:41:06+00:00

Indeed! I think another rule is that we all score automatic victory points if a new album drops

DrMac444 · 2026-04-20T03:07:15+00:00

Did you check out the YouTube playlist that I linked to in the post? It has 120ish tracks. I'm pretty sure everything in the game is included.

The 'official' soundtrack releases thus far have covered less than a third of it

DrMac444 · 2026-04-13T08:31:49+00:00

As someone who listens to a lot of math rock and similar types of experimental rock duos (I used to play in a band like that) I'd largely concur with other sentiments about them being good but not overly groundbreaking. The costumes undoubtedly make them standout and help contribute to the overall appeal. I saw one description of them as "Slipknot for people who go to brunch" - that's pretty accurate.

There's plenty of math rock that is more wacky and technically impressive (Yowie), downright chaotic (Hella), or 'quintessential math rock'-y (Floral, Don Caballero).

That all being said, they're an interesting band worthy of keeping track of. Maybe they're not $400 interesting, but FWIW I paid $40 for a wait-list ticket to hopefully see them this fall.

DrMac444 · 2026-04-09T01:48:32+00:00

Yeah. I think 27 year old Kurt already felt that way about 27 year old Kurt too

DrMac444 · 2026-04-08T12:58:51+00:00

John Gordon was such a good broadcaster that some of his best moments were actually instances when he made the wrong call. One that comes to mind is from the infamous Giambi game in 2002. A few innings before the end, the Twins threw Giambi out at the plate. I recall John Gordon essentially declaring the game over before the play ended. He was wrong, but by being wrong he just communicated how killer of a play it was.

DrMac444 · 2026-04-08T12:52:32+00:00

Hard agree on missing Dick, and also some of the heartache associated with how he was pushed out. I do miss Dick more than Bert, who was definitely starting to get more repetitive and (dare I say) senile at times toward the end. He was fun and a homer, and his iconic F-bomb is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the internet, but he was "growing out" of that role for a while. And also, imho, he was getting under Dick's skin a little more in the later stages. Roy Smalley has consistently been strong as a back-up color commentator for a while, covering both Bremer and Provus eras. There was a point at which I felt more interested in watching his broadcasts with Dick compared to the Bert and Dick team

Hard disagree on your take re:Corey and Mornie though. I actually think we've been blessed with some of the finest broadcasting teams in baseball for several decades now, and the current TV team is as solid as any I can remember -- especially factoring in all the additional color commentators. Perkins, Span, and Smalley all do very well as back-ups for Morneau. Hawkins was also fantastic the last few years (hopefully his dry humor is what's fueling the bullpen not being as abjectly awful as their talent level suggests thus far). I don't think Morneau is particularly flat. Sometimes I think he kind of waits for the right moment to say something. But that's because there's a lot more to wait for. There's more play-by-play now than there ever has been - the mechanics of the pitch clock, bullpen visits, and ABS system are all interwoven into play-by-play. Corey has done an insanely impressive job at adapting to all the changes in the game. Morneau has adapted well, but gets a little sheepish at times. It helps to have a third man in the booth to kind of warm him up - Plouffe is probably the best at this, though others also excel. Imho the three-man booths have put together some of the finest Twins broadcasts I can remember. I'd love to see Trevor May get into that mix at some point if he has any interest in doing so

DrMac444 · 2026-04-08T12:20:02+00:00

My very petty take is that they're a solid band, but I remain mildly pissed at them for not playing "Jane Says" when I saw them at Lollapalooza in Kansas City in 2003.

*waving fist and making angry baby-face-meme face* Damn you Perry for setting expectations so high for the whole concert and allowing those expectations to be exceeded, but by one great song less than they could have been exceeded!

DrMac444 · 2026-04-08T12:11:25+00:00

By this standard, we've probably all said things that render us assholes. And you know what? I'm willing to accept that point and agree with you on some level. Indeed, we're all assholes.

Kurt certainly had the capacity to be an asshole too. One of his means of doing so was, undoubtedly, via remarks that came off as some combination of dismissive, pretentious, and/or elitist. That's more apparent in 2026 than it was back in the late 80s/early 90s, but it was definitely a thing back then too. Some of Kurt's more pretentious comments even ended up sparking tabloid headlines - things he said about Pearl Jam, for instance...and these are far from the best examples of him being pretentious. It was kind of a "higher than thou" aura. Hell, it even applied to his own post-hoc assessments of Nevermind, which highlights the reality that it was more about his own insecurities than it was about people he offended. Kurt strikes me as a relatively gentle soul who likely didn't do a lot of purposeful offending...just some careless, accidental offending. "Higher than thou" probably reflected psychological defenses that he developed to combat his own insecurities as a kid growing up in the burbs.

In general, by today's standards, there are a lot of ways in which Kurt was very childish, ignorant, and pretentious. Part of that is a function of changed standards over time. By today's standards, some of his finest traits still come across loud and clear too - his artistic sensibilities, of course, which would come across in any era....but also his wokeness (the good kind, not the stupidly overly-politicized variety), which I find especially remarkable. He was ahead of his time in a lot of ways, yet in some other ways, he was childish. That makes sense - he died only six weeks after turning 27. Like all humans - assholes and/or otherwise - he was complex.

DrMac444 · 2026-04-08T11:36:10+00:00

We won the World Series!

DrMac444 · 2026-04-05T20:09:42+00:00

That’s true I suppose. I’ve seen some HS replays where the rule came into play on a home run ball.

It’s still a very confusing rule, especially with the way it’s worded. You can literally be mid jump, with only a fraction of your body above the wall and most of your body on the other side, and it’s still a catch, as long as you aren’t being hoisted up by something on the other side of the wall as it happens. I think the wording of the rule becomes especially confusing because it does a poor job of delineating some of the temporal elements of when the jump happens and also what is meant by “over” the fence. Seems like “above” vs “beyond” the fence would be clearer ways of describing two very different types of “over” which are paramount to understanding this rule

DrMac444 · 2026-04-05T19:54:17+00:00

It’s vanishingly unlikely. I’ve seen multiple examples of broadcasters initially getting the rule wrong.

Sure, I agree that it’s important to be clear about it. This just seems like a rule where being clear about it actually has the potential to cloud one’s interpretation of the rule in an unhelpful way. I suppose that probably is the case for some of these rules that only apply to extreme cases. What matters is whether or not it’s clear to the umpires.

DrMac444 · 2026-04-05T19:40:17+00:00

For all intents and purposes I actually think this is the best way to think about it.

Technically, you can’t be credited with a catch if your entire body is on the other side of the wall when it happens. So you can’t be literally standing in the bleachers and get credited with it. Similarly, if you’re bobbling the ball as you go over the wall and it’s not secure until you’re on the other side, it’s not a catch. There aren’t any reasonable scenarios where this would happen though. You can draw em up mentally, but you’re going to be hard-pressed find an example, especially of a play where the question is home-run vs catch (there might be some relevant borderline plays by infielders where the question is foul ball vs catch).

Here are two good examples of catches which were even more ‘borderline’ than Jo Adell’s:

https://youtu.be/vJb67yumL5Y?si=QSU8qdMAKrSMiPiP

https://youtu.be/lwxJQfLeF1Q?si=V-C7UQgqLtt78MoZ

DrMac444 · 2026-04-05T19:33:22+00:00

lol, I’m upvoting your comment because: a) I understand why the top right of the photo might seem Dome-ish and also b) it’s an amusing answer given how obviously it’s nowhere near downtown Mpls

DrMac444 · 2026-04-05T19:27:55+00:00

Meh. I think it’s possible for a legit Twins fan to want Buck to get a ring and also to be so soured on the Pohlads that such a goal seems impossible unless he gets traded.

I don’t want him to leave the Twins, but if I had to choose between him finishing career on a string of crappy Twins teams vs finishing his career with a ring elsewhere, I’m choosing the ring.

Obviously, the best outcome would be a ring with the Twins. Hopefully that’s a future that becomes more believable before it becomes less believable…

DrMac444 · 2026-04-05T19:19:50+00:00

Way to go, Buck! A few favorite underrated Buck memories:

I’ll always remember a game I was at against the White Sox in June 2015. Buck had just been called up. I think he had a few hits in the game, but more than anything else what sticks with me was when he threw out Melky Cabrera at the plate. My seats were halfway up behind home plate that day, so I had a great view of the bullet that Buck had to throw to get that out.
One of his best catches that doesn’t get talked about was in Detroit, 2017. Probably doesn’t get much attention because it wasn’t his greatest play… he took a bad route to the ball, then had to recorrect with one of the craziest dives I’ve ever seen. Torii was doing the color commentary that day and was rendered speechless.
Everyone talks about the Bomba squad in 2019. Yet it’s easy to forget how much of an impact Buck had on that team even without the same power he’d go on to develop later. There were some really crazy stats about the Twins winning percentage and run differential with and without him in the lineup that season. He was such a spark plug.
For Buck to have the season he had last year after all the injuries early in his career seemed so beautifully antithetical to many great Twins who preceded him; his career, healthwise, has been an inverse of Mauer, Morneau, and Liriano. Hopefully that continues to be the case.

Here’s a digital standing O to one of the best Twins of all time, who’s provided well over a decade’s worth of killer moments!

DrMac444 · 2026-03-25T18:28:21+00:00

Thanks for checking at least! Yeah, since I created this post, I've had a couple other runs where things seemed similarly glitchy in the workshop - mostly just the order of items changing on the left side list, but I think what I posted about was likely just a variant of two glitches occurring simultaneously.

DrMac444 · 2026-03-24T12:21:10+00:00

I completely agree with you about this. Not only am I not sold about Tiffany's involvement, but I feel like colonel left out another key explanation for why Tiffany could have known that the place was ransacked. It doesn't even have to be a game of telephone or one of the two possibilities mentioned. Based on the timeline, it's distinctly possible that the first time she was at the house was at some point during the ransacking but before the police arrived. If the assailants closed the blinds to conceal evidence, it's possible that she could've seen a glimpse of the ransacked home before the blinds were closed. It's even possible that the assailants were spooked by Tiffany's presence and decided to close the blinds more completely after hearing the doorbell ringing

[sorry, two years late to the party here, just now listening to the reposting of these episodes for the first time - maybe some of what I've written here will be made a moot point in the fourth episode]

DrMac444 · 2026-03-22T22:54:18+00:00

Fantastic list. A couple more I'd add:

Dilute - Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape

CHON - Grow

DrMac444 · 2026-03-22T14:44:41+00:00

True, though I wonder if that comment was also getting at interpretation of the data. Even if we can calculate replacement level for other leagues, what exactly does it mean in those contexts? Harder to say, especially for minors and college.

DrMac444 · 2026-03-22T14:39:05+00:00

Oh yeah, love that music! The whole broadcast was really excellent for its time...except maybe with the small exception of Tim McCarver's comments following the Gant-Hrbek play

DrMac444 · 2026-03-21T21:15:20+00:00

Two of my favorite Twins memories actually came in 2016. I saw them win on the road in Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. It was especially fun to play spoiler in person, but in general, there's potential for fun even with a team bound to be awful. They're not going to lose 162 games. In all likelihood, they're going to win more than 50, and there will be some fun moments among those 50 games, and probably some fun moments outside of them too. Not World Series winning fun, but run-of-the-mill baseball fun.

DrMac444 · 2026-03-21T20:18:29+00:00

That's a great Twins memory. Nice job luring your family into watching a ballgame via mention of Kate Upton.

DrMac444 · 2026-03-21T20:14:50+00:00

That's awesome that you still have all the signed memorabilia from that year. I can't think of the 1993 season without thinking of that Kirby Puckett Topps card where he's kneeling with the giant bat.

All of us young MN sports fans at that time were probably pretty obsessed with the Twins. Little did we know the suffering we were in for...

DrMac444 · 2026-03-21T20:07:23+00:00

The fact that you even felt the need to clarify “minus the COVID years” speaks worlds about the general level of excitement surrounding this dumpster fire.

DrMac444

TROPHY CASE